Customer Reviews

Snake Moon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wow. If I could give this product zero stars, I would. Pretty much every major character and event was taken straight from the film Ugetsu - Criterion Collection. I didn't know things like that could happen in this day and age. Bad writing, poorly researched. Do yourself a favor and avoid this one.

What first grabbed me was the cover, but I'm a sucker for Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame. Upon reading the jacket though, I was instantly intrigued. A Civil War era parable of Eden? Count me in. Snake Moon is adapted from a screen-play by Rick Valentine and Ray Manzarek and unfortunately, it doesn't cross over as a novel as well as it should have.

The imagery in this novel is great, though. The opening scene of Boone standing in his field in the middle of the night with the milky-white glow of the moon shining upon the land starts the story off with a mystical aura. The imagery is consistently well done throughout if not a tad repetitive at some points, especially in moments of foreshadowing, such as the "blood-red wine".

Ultimately, as you progress through the easy-to-read novel, you can see how it's the bare-bones adaptation of the screenplay. There's enough to make it a coherent story that flows fairly well, but there are several times when you just want more; more description, more dialogue, more explanation, more everything. Just when Boone and Jebber arrive at the Chickamauga River and meet the mysterious Ferryman, he's gone within the next couple of paragraphs, which is a huge disappointment because he's set up to be a great character. Each chapter is no more than five to six pages long which adds to the overall feel of its screenplay roots.

The characters of Snake Moon start out with incredible potential. Boone and Jebber are naive of the world and the foreboding Civil War conflict serves as a good trigger for character development. But the characters don't change as much as you'd think given their situation and the events they go through (especially Boone). Life in Coker Creek Hollow is virtually the same when the two adventurers return, albeit a few exceptions, which leaves the whole journey's purpose questionable.

In the end, Snake Moon is an enjoyable, quick read that may or may not leave you satisfied. It begs to be made into a movie and would serve much better on the big screen. I wish Manzarek was more practiced in writing a more fleshed-out narrative then the brief, flashy sequences we get in the story. Had the time been taken to expand the story and especially the characters, Snake Moon would've been something very, very special.

This is Ray Manzarek's first novel, he needs to continue writing. He's a very talented wordsmith, this book has an incredible sulty feel and he is so visually discriptive. The ghost story is very spooky and is well set up. My husband and I loved this book and think it needs to become a movie.

This is a novel that I found in the "New" section of the library. I was intrigued by the cover and the description on the jacket. I'm glad I took a chance with it, because I found it poignant and reasonably well written, though it has its flaws. For someone who has had only limited experience writing novels, Manzarek did pretty well here. He tells a haunting and poetic story about how war disrupts people and creates a sort of temporary madness. There were scenes that were genuinely moving and I loved the almost Shintoistic tones of the descriptions of the Tennessee countryside. Energy and light--perhaps that's all there really is. It has a fast-moving and eventful plot and only takes a few hours to read. There is a tinge of the supernatural in it, but you're never quite sure whether the characters are just delirious and dreaming some of this stuff or whether it's meant to be taken literally. I enjoyed it--too bad Cold Mountain squeezed it out and prevented the profitability of making it into a film.