Customer Reviews

Hunters of the Red Moon

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The previous post gives a lot of the plot and I don't want to spoil it so I'll steer clear of the plotline, and perhaps offer some of the conceptuals of the novel.

While this novel takes what is now a cliche concept - take a random group of diverse "people", throw them together in a dire situation and let them make the best of a bad situation, I'd like to think that this one is different enough that you could go look for it yourself.

Keeping in mind that this book was written 30 years ago, it is still not outdated. Space travel is still somewhere in the future, and some of the ideas Marion had back then are still likely to happen.

I thoroughly enjoyed her naming conventions for similar races (protosimians are humanlike species, protofelines are cat like races, protosaurians are based on reptillian species, etc) and the concept of the hunt is still a terrific idea.

The race known (and barely so) for hunting is the mystery that keeps you intrigued, but not necessarily the key point of entertainment itself. As noted, the hunt only endures the final third of the novel. The first two thirds of the novel are purely character interaction, and the depth of these characters in who they are, how they live and what they want of their lot in life is very clear.

Dane is an adventurer. Unfortunately everything worth doing on Earth has been done. But he does what's already been done because he loves the adventure. At one point he asks himself if perhaps he's merely an adrenaline junkie - but it is clear that he is! Still, he's a reasonable man, and has a strong sense of right and wrong.

Dallith, however, is an empath and for good reason, empaths from Spica IV rarely leave their planet. Marion has put a lot of thought into how an empath would react to various situations. The despair of her cellmates is the first reaction we see her emulate, through to the strong will of Dane, through to the anger of the Mekkhars (cat-men) - and this is merely on the ship! In training we see more of her character than in the cell, because she begins voicing her own opinion. And then of course, everything climaxes in the hunt. So does Dallith's emotion.

Rhianna is a strong willed woman that Marion loves to use as a stereotype, from what I have read. She is headstrong, yet supple. She is a warrior, fierce yet kind. Typical of an Amazon stereotype, she perfers the spear and close combat self defence.

Aratak is definitely one of my favourite characters - he is a ten foot tall protosaurian with glowing gills and philosophy to learn from. There are as many proverbs thrown in for amusement as combats, and the wise egg has something to say about every known situation - if you listen to Aratak long enough. Aratak is a peaceful creature by nature, but is devastating when desperation takes its course.

Even Cliff-Climber becomes a loved character once he is bested in close combat by Rhianna - merely a protosimian, and a female at that! But Cliff Climber has a strong sense of honour, not unlike the samurai that Dane ends up envying through the honour of using a sword.

The hunt itself is the culmination of the characters - the primitive still hidden within the civilised people. We see how our loved characters come out of their shell when it comes to the crunch. How the nerves and wit of five sacred prey manage to have anyone come out alive after 11 solid days of never knowing what is going on. Always being hunted, and never knowing who is the hunter, or who is actually a sacred prey like themself.

Marion throws in a lot of hidden philosophy on the standards of mankind which I could still relate to 30 years down the trail. She is truly a genious, and when she partners with her brother - a combat specialist, there is no stopping a good story, and no putting it down til you finish. And if you have read any of Paul's novels you'll know that this could not possibly end without a combat of epic proportions.

This is a fast paced and interesting novel that is hard to put down. It is an excellent book for people who are not familar with sci-fi books and will hook almost anyone to the wonderful realm of science fiction. Looking deeper into the book, it holds many interesting and thought provoking messages about life on other planets and the nature of speciation. Excellent read!

It looks like someone finally got around to making a movie based on this fantastic book. I remember reading it for the first time and how it effected me emotionally. It had that kind of effect.

The new movie Predators obviously and transparently rips off the book. I wonder if Marion Zimmer Bradleys estate is aware of it since it was one of her lesser known works, that and the sequel. While the movie does not include all the bipedal species, Simians, Reptilians, Felines featured in the book, there are enough other things to make it a slam dunk in court I would imagine. The abducted warriors, the hunting preserve planet, the samurai sword weilding fighter. Come to think of it, the second movie when Danny Glover is handed the flintlock by the senior surviving Alien, smacked of just such an event featured in this book.

If you haven't read this book, do so. It pulls you in and you really start to care about the characters. The sequel, The Survivors is good too.

Thi book is known to change - not much but a bit - a person's life. A very importan bit. My younger son JF read this book at a very young age I believe he had 9 or 10). He fell in love with the book and read it so many times the pages are lose. His favourite character is the big lizzard Aratak. It's still his internet nick, used and reused many times(he's 19 years old know). The fact that his favourite character is a cool philosopher and poet (and a terror with a bat in his hands) says much about my son's personality. I recomend his book for space travelers of all ages.

I read this fine novel many years ago when it was first released to paperback and was pleased with storyline and plot. As science fiction stories go this one was more plausible than many others while avoiding any sustained "hard science" to explain "the how".

What you find instead is a very well written tapestry of gender, culture, and race along with certain abilities or potential of "otherness", to go further on this line would spoil the story for potential readers. However, I will say that once the story gets past the introduction and build up it is continuous action with riveting changes.

I read this book about 10 years ago and went searching for it so I could read it again. Too bad it's out of print. This book is very entertaining. It's a worthwhile read. I couldn't put it down.

I WAS QUITE YOUNG WHEN I READ THIS BOOK.IT BLENDED IN WITH THE OTHER BOOKS I WAS READING AT THE TIME WHICH WERE JRR TOLKIEN HOBBIT SERIES AND ARTHUR C CLARKE RENDEVOUS WITH RAMA I READ THE ENTIRE BOOK ONCE I PICKED IT UP.SCI-FI FANTASY THRILLER!