Customer Reviews

Moon Dance

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A reviewer once called this book "the Great American Werewolf Novel." They were pretty much right on. Wildly imaginative, meticulously developed and grand in its scope, "Moon Dance" is unlike any other werewolf novel I've ever read. At times bordering on pure genius I have read only one or two others that rank with it ("Murcheston" by David Holland being the only one yet to exceed it.). The only weakness I can see is in the portions set in modern times. Those passages lack the romantic appeal of the Old West, where most of the story is told. Otherwise this book is darn near perfect. One warning however; I have recommended "Moon Dance" to several people but always with the provision that it is for the EXTREMELY strong in the stomach. The level of gore and general "R rated" material is strong even for this genre. If that doesn't prove too distracting (as it nearly did at times for me) you will find this to be one of the few truly great werewolf novels.

I loved this book - I've actually read it about 4 times now, each time you find detail you have previously missed. Somtow really created an atmospheric and chilling world, where the beast ruled and spirit had to fight for survival.

This book quite graphically portrays the werewolves, down to their smell, transformation, thoughts and feelings. The Shungmanitu a race truly at one with nature, and the european werewolves ruined by civilisation...

The historical detail and accuracy, and also the way the horrors of the native american conflict were brought across were compelling to read in a way that a car crash attracts a fascinated horror, we all know it happened, we all know it was horrible, we don't want to look - but we have to.

Somtow has created an epic horror novel which works on a visceral level and an intellectual level. Filled with gut-wrenching violence and searing beauty, this is one great read!

One hundred years from now, this will probably be regarded as THE werewolf novel, the one by which all others will be judged. A classic on a par with "Dracula" or "Frankenstein", but far deeper and darker than anything a celebrated 19th century "horror" writer could have spawned. Beautiful and bloody as history itself, this epic of werewolves, Native Americans and the "Wild West" will turn you inside out. Absolutely not to be missed.

From the outset, I enjoyed the book. Historical fiction wrapped up in elements of the horror genre (or perhaps vice versa). By the third part of the book, I was tired of it all, and was reading it just to complete it. Although the decription "epic" is probably incorrect, Moon Dance is certainly comprehensive, but only because everything was taken past the point of 'useful' into the realm of 'repetitive'. The consistently brutal violence and visceral imagery techniques make compelling reading if used sparingly, but overused they sledgehammer the reader with the less essential elements of the story. There were a number of battles, though none were particularly interesting, and a volume of characters who were typically flat and uninvolved. Why is it there were there no Lakota characters from the Shungmanitu? I left the book with the impression that the Native Americans were enlightened saints, the pioneers largely perverse psychopaths.

...and I have to admit that I'm pretty disappointed.

For one thing, while there's multiple characters, they've all got the approximate depth of a skillet. Speranza is a simpering ninny, Jonas's multiple personalities basically boil down to "good" and "bad", and the remainder are simply inert.

On top of that, the book suffers heavily from the whole "Good Indian, Bad White Man", where the natives aren't presented as people, but as helpless victims or as avenging angels. There's even an old Native man who gets to play the Yoda role before being tortured to death by an Evil White Man. It's tremendously irritating to think what could have happened if Somtow had bothered to put some depth into them.

His villains are worse - not so much in what they do, but more in terms of how utterly one-dimensional they are. One of them, Claggett, engages in every vice known to man - torturing and killing women, raping kids, abusing a poor transvestite, and, just to make sure that we know he's evil, pulling the wings off of a cricket. He's not particulary interesting, just raw evil, and his eventual comeuppance has the dramatic weight of a drifting feather.

On top of that, Somtow's werewolves really aren't that much different from vampires - they're aristocratic, have servants, gather in old castles, claim territory and so forth. They do a lot of things that are werewolfish, but you don't get the sense that they're werewolves so much as shapeshifting Eurotrash. The Native American werewolves are barely described - oh, but they don't kill wantonly or evilly; no, they basically engage in a little ritual with their victims in which their victims basically ask to be killed, according to the book.

Feh. I wasted $6 on this; don't follow my example.

-Darren MacLennan

I've loved werewolf stories since I was a child. With so many of them falling into the "werewolf cop" or "werewolf versus vampire" camps, I was very intriqued to read "The Great American Werewolf novel" (a quote from the dust jacket). I dived in expecting a unique perspective on what it means to be a werewolf.

The author accomplished this--to a certain extent. The most interesting thing was the distinction in personalities between the two werewolf packs. One pack is European, the other Native American. The Eurpoean werewolves are cut from the same corrupt nobility caste found in many vampires stories--they kill because it's what they do. The Native American werewolves are more interesting (they only kill to help people who want to cross-over), but they're treated as background characters and the reader gets only a passing glance or two at them.

As for the plot, the book takes place in two time frames, one in the wild-west and the other in the early to mid 1960s--both tied together. Unfortunately, I found neither appealing. My biggest problem was that I didn't identify with any of the characters in either time frame. Furthermore, some of their motivations were puzzling at best.

Another big issue for me was the pacing. It was painfully slow in some sections and in others several years were skipped from one chapter to another.

As for the ending, well, it was an ending. Some of the things that happened in the wild-west time line were out of the blue. I'm not talking about clever plot twists, which would have been endearing. I'm talking about odd things happening that were inconsistent with the rest of the book.

I wanted to love this book, but it took me two tries to get through it. The first attempt lasted four days, by which time I simply didn't want to read it anymore. Several months later, the book's promise called to me again. I picked it up and, over the next fourteen days, forced myself to finish it.

In the end, while the story's premise was interesting, the execution wasn't.

If you are looking for a werewolf novel then definitely read this one. I am always looking for stories about werewolves, and I was glad to find this one. The fact that Somtow describes werewolf society is in itself interesting. However what really makes this story move along is how much he makes you feel for Johnny Kindred. This was a good novel, and a great werewolf story.

Sometimes rambling, but I found myself riveted by about the halfway point- As one reviewer said 'The Gone With the Wind" of werewolf novels- that turns out to be true, as a positive statement and as a negative critique.
Myself not being a fan of gratuitous sex and violence, I was impressed how the author used these elements to great effect- They kept the novel from being a stolid and boring "Twilight" type take on the nasty business of werewolves. Touche!

A BOOK ABOUT WEREWOLFS COMING TO THE OLD WEST. INDIAN FOLK LORE,RAILROAD AND HORROR MAKES UP THE TALE. SPELL BINDING READ.