The Seventh Moon [Paperback]

Marius Gabriel (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Bantam (January 1, 2001)
• ASIN: B002CLGJHI
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never read anything like this before!, December 1, 1999

By 

Anne de Ridder (Belgium) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seventh Moon (Hardcover)

This was a very unusual book. I've never read anything quite so intense. I was completely swept away by the story, which covers the most exotic locations and events imaginable. But basically, the main issue is, what happens to a little girl abandoned in the middle of a raging war? Does she survive, and go on to become something her mother could never dream of? Or is that impossible?

This is the question Francine has to answer when, almost thirty years after the end of the war, a strange young woman comes along claiming to be her long-lost daughter. And Sakura is a wonderful character, whether you love her or hate her (I started out hating her and ended up loving her) The two characters are so very different you think they are going to tear each other apart, and the climax is just mind-blowing. It had me crying, and I NEVER cry over books or movies. I highly recommend this book if you're tired of reading the same old tired story every time!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written and heart-rending, December 14, 1999

By 

Ona - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seventh Moon (Hardcover)

Two things struck me about this novel. One was the quality of the writing, which is very high, and the other was the amount of passion put into it by the author.

I had never heard of Marius Gabriel before. I purchased this book on the strength of an extract which I read here at Amazon, and I was delighted with my "discovery." He writes in a lucid, vivid style that makes reading a pleasure (I am very fussy) and with a depth of feeling that makes it hard to believe he is a man (no offense, but it is VERY rare to find a male author who can get so completely under the skin of his female characters). Reading THE SEVENTH MOON was like having a very sane friend tell you about a very insane world.

My only complaint is that the story was heart-rending. I won't give the ending away here, but all the characters have their lives turned inside-out by the time the last hair-raising page is turned. I was going to take off a star for all the tears I shed, but found it hard to punish this author.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written and engrossing, July 8, 2001

By 

Tracy Rowan "dargelos" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Seventh Moon (Mass Market Paperback)

Not entirely a romance, not wholly a thriller or a mystery, THE SEVENTH MOON is a gripping mixture of all three that takes us from Singapore on the eve of the Japanese invasion to New York, Hong Kong and Laos in the early 70s in a tale about a woman's attempts to deal with the fate of her only child.

Early in World War II, as the Japanese overrun Malaysia, Francine Lawrence flees Singapore with her lover and her young daughter, Ruth. But Ruth is too sick to finish the dangerous journey, and Francine is forced to leave her with strangers for her own sake. After the war, Francine returns to find the child, but Ruth has vanished and the tribe she was with has been slaughtered by the Japanese. Thirty years later, the appearance of a young woman who may or may not be Ruth reopens all the old wounds. Sakura Ueda has secrets so dark and horrifying Francine can barely imagine them, and every reason to lie about who she is. Yet in the wasteland that has become Francine's heart, something is touched by the presence of Sakura, and Francine finds herself compelled to make one last, fearful journey in the hope of finding the truth and reclaiming her family.

THE SEVENTH MOON is a wonderfully well-crafted book, the sort that makes the actual physical act of reading a pleasure. It caught me almost from the first, and carried me straight through 300-odd pages without a hitch or a slow-down anywhere. The theme is universal: the love of a mother for her child, played out not once but twice, and framed by a pair of love affairs born out of need, and a hunger for some human warmth in a cold world. Gabriel, skillfully balancing these parallel histories, keeps his narrative tight, tense and involving straight through to the end. I never quite knew where he was going to go with this story, a quality which always makes me want to shout "halleluiah!" since so many genres have become numbingly predictable. If occasionally I found certain characters a little over-done, or perhaps a bit redundant in some situations, the problems were minor by comparison to the richness these characters brought to the narrative as a whole. Compelling in their weakness as well as their strength, they are entirely human and it's easy to identify with them. Their histories inform their characters, and exotic as they are, those histories feel genuine. There are few false steps here, and the ones I found seem unimportant by comparison to the vividness of the narrative.

Gabriel has the gift of telling a story of love and loss without resorting to pathos, the ability to describe terror without resorting to gore, and the knack for eroticism without vulgarity. THE SEVENTH MOON is a hard-to-put-down novel I would recommend to almost anyone who is looking for something more than just a little mind-candy.