Hunters of the Red Moon [Paperback]

Marion Zimmer Bradley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1973

This long unavailable novel by Bradley, the bestselling author of The Mists of Avalon, and her brother, a well-known science fiction author in his own right, tells the story of the Hunters--fierce killers and shapechangers who promise fabulous wealth to any opponents who can survive being hunted by them for the time between two eclipses of the Red Moon. Reissue.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: DAW; 1ST edition (September 1, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879977132
• ISBN-13: 978-0879977139
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,709,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marion Eleanor Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67.
She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to VORTEX SCIENCE FICTION. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels and for her Arthurian novel, THE MISTS OF AVALON.
In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called SWORD AND SORCERESS, which is still published annually under the title MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY'S SWORD AND SORCERESS.
She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great space fantasy full of mystery, suspense, and action, September 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hunters of the Red Moon (Daw science fiction) (Paperback)

Hunters of the Red Moon is a great work of science fiction. It is also one of my favorite novels. I first read it when I was ten years old and have been reading it just about every year since (I am 28).

The story involves Dane Marsh, an existential drifter who is abducted from Earth and put aboard a slave ship containing beings from all over the galaxy.

The creatures who kidnapped him are called Mekhars, cat-like beings who sell the more fractious of their cargo to the Hunters, creatures which no one has ever seen.

Dane and his friends, a lizardman named Aratak, a renegade Mekhar named Cliff-Climber and two women---one a gentle empath and another a hardboiled scientist---are taken to the Hunter's World.

There they are allowed time to train for combat on the Hunter's moon. They each select a weapon of choice and try to find out who these mysterious hunters are and what will happen when they are taken to the red moon.

What they are is prey. Left on the red moon, Dane and his friends are stalked for the length of the moon's cycle. It becomes a furious race to survive as the hunters (who are shape-changers) pick off the lone prey.

The book is fraught with tension and suspense as well as great characterization. And the mystery of the Hunters' identity keeps the reader guessing till the very end.

Marion Zimmer Bradley shows herself thoroughly capable of tackling interstellar action---a far cry from her quasi-medieval Darkover series.

Seldom have I read science fiction where the characters are more compelling. Following them through the hunt is a harrowing experience. At the conclusion you wish there were more adventures to come.

In fact, there are. The author wrote The Survivors as a sequel to this book. I recommend both to anyone who loves great science fiction. This is the way it should be done.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A species devoted to hunting the most dangerous game, December 29, 2002

By 

Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunters of the Red Moon (Daw science fiction) (Paperback)

Paul Edwin Zimmer, Bradley's brother, was initially an uncredited co-author. The lack of recognition wasn't Bradley's idea, and Zimmer was credited from the first on their sequel, THE SURVIVORS. The protagonist, Dane Marsh, is a lone wolf heroic type Zimmer wrote very well, along the lines of his character Roger Hogg in "The Hand of Tyr" (see GREYHAVEN). Marsh is a romantic born between romantic ages; he wants adventures, but in the late twentieth century, the world's fresh out. Every place has been explored, and somebody else has already been first to do anything worth doing. He saves his envy for whoever'll be first to hike around the Moon on foot, though, and gets on with his life - sailing around the world alone, even though it's been done.

At that point, a flying saucer kidnaps him right off his boat, and he learns that there may be a few more adventures left, after all. :)

The proto-feline Mekhar are notorious for their slave-raids, having refused Unity membership several times rather than repudiate the practice. Slaves being luxury goods, it pays to avoid damaging the merchandise, and even to install translator disks in their captives - although the Mekhar leave Dane's fellow prisoners to explain the situation. (Interestingly enough, proto-simians - humanlike beings - far from being lords of creation, are looked down upon, being perpetually "in season" and thus slaves of their sexual appetites. Superiority lies elsewhere: the proto-felines invented interstellar travel, and the proto-saurians generally look down on *everybody*. Aratak, the follower of the Divine Egg who befriends Dane, is an exception to this last.)

Dane's the only prisoner from Earth; the others figure somebody's being chewed out for grabbing a boat carrying less than a dozen people. Rianna's archeological team, for example, lost their gamble that the Mekhar wouldn't hit the otherwise deserted satellite they were working on.

Until Dane's arrival, nobody tried to escape more than once; not only are all the odds on the guards' side, but severe injuries may be a death sentence. Most of the prisoners have a fatalistic attitude that Dane violently disagrees with; he alone, for instance, interferes with the decision of the only captive from Spica IV, the empath Dallith, to refuse food and let herself die. (Oddly enough, while Aratak, the giant proto-saurian philosopher, remains silent, the vibrant Rianna protests Dane's interference, for reasons he comes to understand only much later.) Dane is the one who, spotting a security hole, masterminds an escape attempt - only to learn that it was just what the Mekhar were waiting for.

The final part of the Mekhar's standard operating procedure is to skim off the ringleaders in their escape-attempt test on each raid, and to sell them to the species known as the Hunters of the Red Moon for the role of Sacred Prey. The Hunters' only interest in life is to hunt the Most Dangerous Game: intelligent quarry, who can give them a challenge. Every batch of Sacred Prey is given some weeks to prepare on the Hunters' World before being taken to the Red Moon, and must survive there only until the next eclipse. They're even given a choice of weapons, short of firearms, but even that's disquieting; the Armory doubles as a huge trophy collection of the weapons of particularly excellent Prey. (In a really *cool* scene, Dane recognizes one weapon as the most perfect Mataguchi he's ever seen - something a samurai would *never* have left behind.)

The story revolves around Dane, as protagonist, and his fellow survivors Rianna, Dallith, and Aratak, with one startling addition: Cliff-Climber, a Mekhar guard who screwed up badly during the escape attempt, and took this option as an honorable alternative to suicide. While he knows more about the Hunters than any of the others, his proto-feline people take the proverb "curiosity killed the cat" very much to heart, and even though - he *says* - one of his own kinsmen survived a Hunt, he knows little about their destination. Dane and his companions have little more than the Hunters' word that successful quarry will be rewarded and allowed to leave. They don't even know what the Hunters look like; until the Hunt itself, the Sacred Prey only interact with robot caretakers, leading to a *lot* of theories among the Prey.

This is a mystery as well as an adventure story; only the last third covers the Hunt proper, the rest being split evenly between the slaveship and the Prey's prep time. Dane and the others must try to figure out the Hunters, knowing that the odds are against them. At the feast celebrating the end of the previous Hunt and the beginning of theirs, they learn that 47 Hunters faced 74 Prey. Nineteen Hunters perished.

*One* Sacred Prey survived.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very entertaining sci-fi, July 10, 2000

By 

"ucf87" (Ft. Pierce, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunters of the Red Moon (Daw science fiction) (Paperback)

I read this perhaps 17 years ago. I remember that my copy became quite ragged through rereading before I gave it to a friend who equally enjoyed it. I'd like to think it's still being circulated amongst friends.

Others have summarized the plot. I'll just reiterate that this book is a great way to spend a few hours if you're a sci-fi or fantasy fan.