Customer Reviews

The Moonlit Earth

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Following her being fired from her position as head of the Siegel Foundation, a Northern California not for profit firm facing bankruptcy, due to her radical methods, thirty year old Megan Reynolds returns to her mother's home in Cathedral Beach near San Diego. Megan is disappointed as she tried to so hard to reach the homeless kids wandering the mean streets.

In Hong Kong, a terrorist attack leaves sixty dead. The FBI believes Megan's flight attendant brother Cameron in conjunction with apparently his gay lover from the middle East Majed committed the atrocities. Megan vows to prove her naive but kind-hearted sibling would never harm anyone and starts a dangerous journey to prove she is right beginning with finding Cameron who vanished without a trace.

This is an excellent thriller that plays out on two levels: the international terrorism and the personal terror. The key is Megan who has faith in her sibling that he would not do these atrocities; she holds the fast-paced complicated plot together as she searches for her brother and the truth, praying her assertion is the truth. Readers will enjoy this exhilarating tale of a good caring person traveling a part of Asia that middle class American civilians avoid.

Harriet Klausner

For the past decade Christopher Rice has grown as an author, finding his own voice and shedding any shadow of the writing of his famous parents. With The Moonlit Earth, he moves further into the realm of mysteries, this time taking the story international and weaving a story involving contemporary hot topics such as terrorism, Arab culture and the use of manipulation of the media. While on a layover in Hong Kong, flight attendant Cameron Reynolds is considered a prime suspect in a hotel bombing stemming from images conveniently leaked to the press. His sister Megan holds out belief that he is alive and innocent and she travels Hong Kong to find out the truth.

The story is fairly solid, if not a bit confusing at times with layers that don't always lead to a satisfactory resolution. A shadowy character we never meet is behind things, or is he? The sketchy cousin - is he vital to the story or a McGuffin? At heart the story is about family relations, and what makes us do what we do, and yet much of this theme gets confusing and is feels shorted in the narrative. These stories would have benefited from a greater exposition and a greater attention to detail for they are the true center of what he is trying to write about. The international intrigue is merely a means to move this story along. Our biological relationships and those relationships we choose to make is Rice's real story.

Overall the book is a good read, fast paced and enjoyable summer book. Christopher Rice continues his streak of writing interesting and unique books.

Christopher Rice's fifth novel, THE MOONLIT EARTH, is a taut thriller populated with strong characters and offering a well thought-out plot. After their father walked out on their young family, Megan and Cameron Reynolds decided that they would take care of each other. Cameron is now a flight attendant on a cushy airline and spends his free time in the gay world of West Hollywood. Megan worked for a nonprofit outfit until she was fired for doing something her superiors couldn't forgive. She moved back home to live with her mother in Cathedral Beach, where she and her brother grew up.

Their cousin Lucas, a millionaire, supports the family and is very generous to them. They in turn have become very dependent on him and lionize him. When Megan talks to him about her job, he offers her a dream career and is ready to finance it. She is thrilled and wants to share her good fortune with her brother. But, at the moment, he is on a layover in Hong Kong.

Suddenly, and without any warning, Cameron's face is splashed all over international news outlets calling him a terrorist. While in his hotel, he is visited by Mahed, a man associated with a Saudi family, whose job it is to protect the youngest son who is in love with Cameron. Mahed finds a bomb planted in Cameron's hotel room. He throws it down the laundry chute and pulls Cameron out the front door of the hotel just as it's exploding, killing more than 60 people. The media and other witnesses are ready to swear that Cameron is a terrorist.

When Cameron disappears, Megan goes to Hong Kong to find him. She has no doubt that he is not responsible in any way for the attack. Has he gone underground on his own, or are people secretly helping him? Or, worse, are people keeping him against his will? What does the Saudi family have to do with his disappearance? Whose side is Mahed really on?

Despite questioning by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies tasked with taking down terrorists, Megan manages to get a lead on her missing brother. She hops a plane to Asia and begins to follow his footsteps in an attempt to save him. But along the way, she uncovers secrets about her family and a past that turns her perspective of life upside down. She is amazed when Lucas shows up in Hong Kong and is rattled by the tragedies he triggers off. Who can she trust, if anyone? What does Lucas know about her brother's whereabouts? Exactly what does he know about the bomb?

The body count in THE MOONLIT EARTH slowly rises as fear grips players and nations. In this time of random terror and war, Christopher Rice has given readers a timely and tension-filled book. His characters are finely honed, and the dialogue is believable. Fans and new readers are sure to be seduced by the raw emotions rampant here. In an interview, Rice jokes, "This book is as close as I'll ever get to Robert Ludlum."

Is Rice his own personal anagram Eric? But apart from this enigma the book is a thriller that deals with very serious questions.

First Saudi Arabia, a dictatorial kingdom that imposes such a strict sharia within its borders that the rich are the only ones who can get out and do what is forbidden to everyone else. One of the rare countries in the world that still beheads criminals with a steel saber. This rich country attracts many greedy profiteers. It is difficult to enter the narrow circles of the dominant aristocratic families and princes of all sorts. Those who try to do it are under strict surveillance by one family to which they are associated directly. The description of these greedy wolves is not complete. The main one is never seen or met, and will not be met since he is assassinated at the end.

Then these global American entrepreneurs are ready to do anything to make money, including set up a private security firm that will provide some countries like Thailand with an anti-Islamic militia: the people recruited in this militia are essentially run-away from the Vietnam war, Iraq and Afghanistan wars who want to continue the war against communists and fundamentalist Moslems, and the Islamists in Thailand are a perfect target. These people are shown a little bit too much soaked in whisky: this is a myth in many ways. These people are professionals with a heavy past but alcohol is not their main problem, far from it. Their main and sole problem is the way they see the world cut in white and black, everything that is not on their side is black and since you don't see any shade of grey, you just use a machine gun or a nuclear device and you shoot in the black mass. I chose the color because they are the direct heirs of all the racist movements that flourished in the USA through their history. And for them black is both Moslem and Arab.

That's the main deficiency of the book: the exploration of the psyche of these Western terrorists at times used by the US government and always over-used by the CIA.

But the novel becomes fascinating when it explores the psyche of the main character, Cameron, and his sister, Megan. Megan is a fighter and that's all she is, but Cameron is gay and that's just the beginning. Being a steward in an air-travel company, on luxury planes hired by the rich, in that case Saudis, to travel at their leisure beyond the borders of Saudi Arabia, he is often solicited for special services and he has to learn how to say no without impairing his chances to get the just profit he deserves for his patience.

In this case he is twinned to a young teenager hardly a twink from one Saudi family who is gay and is favored by his own father into some luxurious exile on a yacht. The kid thinks he can buy anything and Cameron is out to teach him a friendly lesson that may cost him his own life. You don't play with these people: too young to have any sense of mature human relationships and of course mature sex. If you let yourself be dragged into their cocoon of money, luxury and perversion you will end up in small pieces. So Cameron will have to learn his lesson too.

But Rice misses something at that level. He sketches another possible dimension and yet does not explore it. Those kids are not rotten to the core. Their rot is nothing but a covering thrown over their nude suffering by their families. Their nudity is their solitude. Of course they can buy a whore in the street and have her, him or it (the object of that transaction) into slices if he wants, but deep inside it is absolute solitude. The core and the heart are shouting for love, friendship and human contact. This level is just set on the paper as a rough sketch. It could have been so much more, it should have been so much more.

A young man like that takes both time and a shock to shift from the money he was before to the heart he may become, but when he becomes that heart, and that can happen as a complete instantaneous split between A and B, he falls in love with the object who becomes the real person of this desire that has shifted from pure carnality to absolute spirituality. But what's more when this transformation happens, the person who causes it is even the first one to be transformed because then he falls in love with that miraculous epiphany. He can't avoid it, resist it. If he steps away it will be in mourning and with a tremendous sense of loss. In other words Cameron could be so much better.

The final point will be about the storytelling technique. A person telling a story of what happened to him or her in the third person without a first person is surprising and bizarre. The first tale that seems to be from the point of view of Majed is artificial when it comes since the main observer, Megan, has not even yet met Majed. The story from the young Prince, Aabid, is in many ways artificial because of that third person storyteller and because the feelings and the emotions of that young man who is telling the story are hardly really described in the total rift they bring in his life: for the first time he discovers love as separated from sex, a revolution for that young man who had a pile of greenbacks in place of the heart. He discovers love and finally feels his heart beating.

But the thriller per se is quite easy to read and enjoy.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Christopher Rice has long-since emerged from the shadow of his mother, Anne. Now that Anne is no longer writing dark fiction, Christopher has picked up the mantle and has continously created stories of dark and conflicted characters, both natural and supernatural.

"The Moonlit Earth" is a dreamy novel written in the guise of a psychological thriller. Megan Reynolds fights to defend her brother, Cameron's honor when he is accused of being involved in a terrorist act that results in the death of 60 people. Delving into the dark family history of the Reynold's is not easy for Megan --- but she learns that family ties are stronger than any other that she has and chooses to do whatever it takes to see that her brother and family's name are both vindicated.

Well paced and always interesting, Christopher Rice has produced another page-turner with characters you really care about.

Christopher Rice is the son of famous author Anne Rice and has grown up before our eyes. This is his fifth novel and a far cry from his early works of gothic mystery and sexual awakening. I am a huge reader and my genre of choice is psychological suspense thrillers. I am not a regular reader of stories evolving around national intrigue. They tend to not hold my interest. Well that has changed here. THE MOONLIT EARTH presents a more mature and insightful Christopher Rice with his best work to date and a suspenseful, totally involving tale of national intrigue.

From the first page I was mezmerized. Megan Reynolds, at age 30, after a career downfall, returns to her mother's house in Cathedral Beach, CA. Her brother Cameron with whom she shares a deep bond is introduced very briefly at the beginning. He is a flight attendant on international flights and as the story unfolds there is a terrorist bombing at a hotel in Hong Kong. Cameron and an unknown male, who we know to be middle easterner Majed, are caught on some video outside the hotel before the bomb goes off. Both men disappear and the family hears nothing. Cameron is believed to be alive and the FBI calls him a person of interest and believes him to be involved in the bombing. Megan flies to Hong Kong and goes on a journey to find her brother, clear his me and in the process walks through all her fears and emotions.

Christopher Rice provides here a novel that not only tells a spellbinding story with a very believable and surprising ending but he also creates characters that are multi-dimensional and very realistic. No one dimensional stock figures here. The characters jum from the page. Megan, Cameron, Majed, Amy and Lucas all are deep characterizations that will have you turning page after page. As I said, novels of international intrigue are not the norm for me but the story created by Christopher Rice here is of the highest caliber and induces the genre with originality, intelligence, compassion and true believable characters. It is a masterful piece of mystery and suspense told with immense human emotion. Based on this novel I can't wait to see what Mr. Rice comes up with next. Highly recommended.

Megan Reynolds returned to her hometown after issues at her job led to her termination. Somewhat lost, she accepted help from her cousin Lucas, whose father helped raise Megan and her brother, Cameron.

Cameron, meanwhile, was a flight attendant who planned to talk to his sister after his next international flight was completed. Before he got the chance to tell his sister what was so important, he wound up caught in a hotel bombing. Seen leaving the hotel with a Saudi Arabian, Cameron went from victim to assumed terrorist, via CNN and right before Megan's eyes.

Amidst weird text messages and overly generous offers from Lucas, Megan needed to go to Hong Kong to find her brother and to help clear her brother's name. Add a young, gay Saudi Prince to the mix and you'd expect a rambling mess. Christopher Rice manages to keep the book from being confusing, and keeps it entertaining enough for the reader to hang on to every word.

The Moonlit Earth is a wonderfully sensitive page-turner that would be a great asset to any library or suspense fan's collection.

An aside: Author Christopher Rice is the son of author Anne Rice. They write in entirely different styles. Buy Christopher Rice's book on its own merit; it deserves it.

After losing her job with a San Francisco nonprofit, Megan Reynolds moves south to her divorced mother's home in Cathedral Beach, an affluent community to which they only belong due to the generosity of a rich and controlling cousin. She also looks forward to spending more time with her gay, younger brother, Cameron - a flight attendant on long haul Asian flights - whom she was very close to when they were kids. Following a somewhat-strained brief reunion with Cameron, at an ill-conceived surprise birthday party thrown by her mother, Megan next hears of him on the network news, when video footage seems to indict him as having a role in a terrorist bombing in a Hong Kong hotel. Out of communication with his family since that day, Megan sets out to find him and clear his name, despite the seeming reluctance of his mother and their cousin to believe he is alive and innocent of the crimes suggested by the media coverage.

Having had four best seller novels since 2000, starting when he was just 21, Mr. Rice is certain to keep that streak going with his very well-written, suspenseful and extremely engaging story, which explores the danger of family secrets and prejudices, as well as corporate greed and America's post-9/11 focus on terrorism. This is the first of his books to focus on a female primary character, with the diverse mix of vivid and relatable secondary players. Beyond a doubt, my favorite of his books thus far, I give it five bright, shining stars (out of five) in a clear, moonlit sky!

- Bob Lind, Echo Magazine

I was surprised at how much I liked this novel. It was not what I was expecting and I'm quite impressed. It's a thriller and a mystery. Christopher Rice does an excellent job of evoking the places he takes his characters and does a great job with characterization. The plot of full of unexpected twists and turns. I really enjoyed the novel and (as I received it through the Vine Program,) I'm inspired to go back and read his other works. Highly recommend it as fun, intriguing, but light reading.

Another great novel by Mr. Rice. It was extremely easy to read and he made the characters loveable and relatable. Can't wait to see what he has planned for his next novel.