Customer Reviews

Minions of the Moon

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

 

 

Kevin Grierson has a problem. A really, really big problem. His shadow has a mind of its own. And a life of its own. Drugs, murder, felonious mayhem...only a few of the items on the list which Grierson would rather distance himself from. But he can't. He's as anchored to his shadow as his shadow is to him...and it keeps him bobbing only fractions away from the black depths of certain hell. If only he could break loose, free himself of the onerous weight his shadow puts on him. The responsibility. But, in the hands of Richard Bowes, one is never quite certain who is who throughout this compelling and nightmarish novel. At once a novel about addictions, being gay, and finding ones true self, MINIONS OF THE MOON is like an acid-flashback one can never escape. Grierson's plight and ultimate redeeming journey through the Hell's Kitchen (suitably used for the name alone) of his youth and adulthood takes the reader on one carnival ride after another. One never knows whether the shadow is the person or the person is the shadow. This is one read that will keep you interested and intrigued until the very last word. You might even find yourself searching for more pages after the last one has been turned, just to satisfy your curiousity! Highly recommended.

This is one of the most remarkable books I've seen in a long time. Remarkable not just in the quality of the writing - which is extraordinarily fine, but no surprise to anyone who has already read the author's short fiction in the SF and fantasy magazines - but in the tremendous courage that must have been required to write it at all.

It is obvious that this story is based on personal experience of the most painful sort - the kind that most of us would want to forget and hope no one else ever found out. Yet Bowes has had the guts to bring it all up and show it to us, so that he can share with us the things he has learned from his experiences; and perhaps help us learn too.

Not that this is a didactic or boring book; on the contrary, the story is an exciting and fascinating one, an exploration of the Doppelganger concept, rarely seen in fantastic fiction because it is so hard to handle well. But besides entertaining us, Richard Bowes is trying to tell us some things, about the split nature in all of us and about how we have to come to terms with our darker selves.

This is, in fact, one of those books that can be read at many different levels - as a straightforward supernatural thriller, as a psychological exploration of the human identity, as a symbolic treatment of schizophrenia and addiction, and many other things. It will repay re-reading; you will find things you didn't notice the first time around.

Homophobes may be offended by the frank and unapologetic treatment of the narrator's sexual development; some gays, on the other hand, may not like the de-glamorized descriptions of such things as child prostitution. But this is above all an HONEST book; a demonstration that, as Hemingway pointed out, the story that is made up can be truer than any mere narration of facts.

Richard Bowes is a fine writer and a brave man. I salute him.

I couldn't put this book down. Bowes is one of the best writers I've encountered in years. He gives us a tour, vividly evoked, of some of the more hideous realities of our time, but solidly in there with the horrors are courage, compassion and redemption. Bowes is a writer's writer. His evocation of a miserable Boston childhood and a horrific coming-of-age in Hell's Kitchen couldn't be more truthful, and nevertheless exhilarate. Through this world angels also walk, and strange illuminations. His hero survives, endures, and keeps the faith against tremendous odds. You won't find sleek and phony gothic figures in Minions of the Moon; there isn't a lie or a word of self-indulgence or hackwork in it. You will find demons in plenty, acute human pain, joy and hope. This book is good for the soul.

After I finished this book, I realized just how inventive and unique it really was. The hero Kevin is haunted by his 'shadow' who literally embodies all the bad sides of his character and past. Through solidly constructed chapters (especially a few right in the middle of this book, which are downright brilliant), Kevin both looks back at his past and confronts his shadow again after years.

At points the novel has very obviously been stitched together from many separate short works (as author admits in the preface), but once you get into the storyline and the reality as weaved together by the author, you'll let yourself go on a spook tour of Kevin's psyche.

Inventive, clever, unique, vivid, pervasive.

Someone recently said to me, 'I like books in which as a reader I'm not 100% sure of what's going on.' Me too.

Maybe one doesn't need to know how it feels to be a fifteen year old hustler selling his body at the Y, or walking through a rotten tenement to score some heroin from some animal that might just as well kill as deal. This author knows and communicates the disorienting merry-go -round of addiction, the intense highs as well as the loss of perspective as experienced by the protagonist, (and through superior storytelling,experienced by the reader.)The story takes some work to get through as it really is a tapestry or mosaic of vignettes,some in the present or near past and some only in dreams of the past.Does he really have a double? Or is the wraith-like figure merely an allegory for the evil he has done? The darkness of the story is gut wrenching as is his search for humility, charity and peace. Like a gritty film noir Alice in Wonderland, the story takes the reader to a place he longs to escape from,while hoping for the redemption of the hero and his eventual escape as well.

This is one of the most bizarre books I have read in quite some time. The tale that Richard Bowes weaves is an intricate and strange one, full of fantasy that just barely crosses the out of reality. Half of the time you wonder whether this could really happen, while the other half you realize how fantastical it really is. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but in many instances, it wasn't clear exactly what was happening in Kevin's encounters with characters such as Smiley Smile and the sojourners. I also found the interactions between Kevin and the "carousel" to be somewhat confusing. Overall, I would definitely recommend the book to anyone wanting to take a break from ordinary fiction, but not wanting to stray too much into the realm of fantasy.

I had never heard of Richard Bowes when I found this book at the library. I'm not deeply into SF, so I almost put it back in the New Books bin, but for some reason I borrowed it instead.

What a remarkable book!

I would recommend this to anyone, no matter what their taste in fiction, and I'll be looking for more of Richard Bowes's work. In fact, I decided to review it after coming to Amazon to see what other books this might be linked to ...

Every once in awhile you find a book that will stay with you. A keeper. This is one.

Embedded in _Minions of the Moon_ is a suberb ghost story, but around that fun, spooky story swirls a lot of rather disjointed narrative about addiction.

The coolest part of this book was the whole doppelganger motif: Kevin has a double and it is not a mere figment of his imagination. Like his mother before him, he has a doppelganger that often carries on a life apart from him. At first the eerie poem incantations from his old Irish aunt is his only apotropiac. Later in the book some mysterious characters called "sojourners" appear that never quite get explained, but are spookier for their vagueness. The best part of this idea was that it was only together that Kevin and the double form a "whole human being." The narrative then sets off in the direction of their union (one thinks).

If this were all the story, I would have liked it much better. But to this, the author tries to add less supernatural dimensions to the doppelganger theme with a alcohol and drug addiction subplot. And, admittedly, a writer would have to delve far and deeply into the psychology of addiction to write anything eye-popping on that topic after David Foster Wallace's phenomenal _Infinite Jest_.

But Mr. Bowes is a good writer. I just thought there were two or three distinct books here, much more disjointed than Kevin person and Fred the doppelganger.

If much fantasy consists of real toads in imaginary gardens, then Minions of the Moon is precisely the other way around. In most respects it is a book about a character struggling to overcome his own dark side. It is the world as we know it, only in this world a person's dark side can exist as a separate entity.

The tip o' the hat to Mr. Hyde in the Shadow is well done. The novel is gritty enough to have a nice hard-boiled feel without being unbearably grotty.

Why not five stars? Too disjointed. It does not quite hold together well enough as a novel to make it really memorable.

Good read all the same. Not a waste of time.

I think Bowes's story is incredible, but it was diluted by the structure of too many flashbacks and flashforwards. The story of a boy growing up with a shadow is not entirely new, and Bowes breathed new life in this by adding the queer element and in his refreshing settings. I found it rather confusing and couldn't always figure out when the events occurred: past, present, recent..?