Customer Reviews

Moonbane

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What I really like about Al Sarrantonio is his uncanny ability to marry some fantastic science-fiction with gut wrenching horror to produce a story unlike no other. This tale is of the abomination of man kind as it is pushed a step down on the food chain and its feeble struggle against a superhuman force.

Moonbane is about Jason Blake, a poet, who witnessed a meteor shower with his son, so blinding and luminous that it made night as bright as day raining rocks from outer space. We learn they aren't simply rocks, but containers for slumbering seeds that spawn a beast that is so smart and deadly that it sees nothing else but elimination of mankind while it spawns all continents and leaves no person unharmed. As Blake's family falls victim to the beast we follow him into survival mode as he hides away in his own house, fending off the attacker, while his bitten son begins the transformation, his loyalty to mankind makes an abrupt change that sends his father into a spiral of preserving life of men with revenge and a strong urgency for vengeance. Blake and a handful of others set up an expedition to NASA while tearing through hordes of werewolves who even slinked around in broad daylight and who were savage and ultra fast at night

Overall this was a very fast and intense read, and I cannot recommend it enough if you are interested in tale of extinction, lycanthropy and man's struggle against a force that makes his base, his core, the soul of his existence; Earth, the home of man an unwelcoming place to be, and with the only way out to simply give up and fall back into the animals claws. This writer is certainly on top of my list, for spawning such amazing pieces of literary fiction. I love horror movies with werewolves, but reading it in a book felt like having the wind knocked out of you, I had a blast.

Enjoy, I know I did!

This is a fast paced, intense read of horror and survival as mankind faces extinction from beings from Space. I've seen this type of plot before and this is one that clearly succeeds.

The book offers up a unique view and suggested origins for the myths of Lycanthropy and marrying it successfully to science-fiction.

This book had me hooked from the get go and I couldn't put it down til a couple hours later when I finally finished it.

One of the things that I love about Sarrantonio's work is that he quickly jumps into the action and gets you hooked. This directly leads to his novels being a fast and exciting read. They seem to be over so quick.

This time we follow Jason Blake, a poet, and Ritchie, his son. Events start with the two of them watching a meteor shower which turns into an unexpected surprise when the meteors start landing on Earth in huge numbers. Then to make the surprise worse, the meteors turn out to be pods that contain a werewolf-like beast that is intent on destroying or converting all humans with which they come in contact. Jason's wife is killed, his son is converted and he is in a fight for his life. A fight that involves multiple characters and culminates at NASA.

While I did enjoy the book and found it very entertaining, the ending was a bit too Hollywood. One of those things where the protagonist is doing things not because he has the ability or knowledge but because he is the protagonist and to have someone else do it would be "wrong". It is one of the hard things to do with end of the world books though; how do you end it without betraying the bleak mood that has been set by having an easy happy ending and without making the whole book more depressive? Sarrantonio does a good job and produces something I would recommend.

This is a great story, with an interesting, yet played out doomsday plot. The detail paints horrifying images in your head, and creates a true sense of foreboading as you read. This is a very entertaining story, that you can't seem to put down page after page. A really good book for a quick afternoon of sci-fi horror.