Customer Reviews

Walking the Moon

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Leaving her protective parents to go away to college, Sweeney Cassidy goes wild. She skips classes, stays out all night, and basically spends her first semester constantly drunk. Into this haze come the ethereal Oliver and the seductive Angelica, who become her best friends, and with both of whom Sweeney falls in love. The only trouble is, the school is controlled by an Illuminati-esque secret society; Angelica is a chosen avatar of a vengeful goddess; and Oliver is marked as her first sacrifice. This situation plays out tragically, and a shaken Sweeney transfers to another school, where she gets her degree and settles into "normal" life. Then, eighteen years later, her college ghosts come back to haunt her, as old friends come out of the woodwork, and Angelica prepares for the final denouement with the secret society. Sweeney is suddenly back in the mysterious world she glimpsed as a teenager.

Mixed in with this hypnotically written story is a political battle between the Matriarchy (represented by Angelica) and the Patriarchy (the secret society); between the Goddess and the world that has ignored her for millennia. One of the best touches of Hand's book is that she doesn't really take sides, except maybe to hint that the fault of both philosophies is the extremes they go to. Even when Sweeney makes her decision at the end, she makes it for personal reasons and not because she agrees with either side. This was the book that got me investigating Goddess mythology several years ago, and it's also a fever-dream of a story, with a sympathetic heroine and a unique style. I've read it a gazillion times.

The awakening of an ancient, fiendish goddess in a new age is witnessed by a young college freshman named Sweeney Cassidy. As if an ancient, fiendish goddess awakening weren't bad enough, Sweeney's two best friends happen to be predestined pawns in the plans of the goddess and the Benandanti, a pseudo-religious sect of protectors. In fact, Sweeney's best friend, Angelica, becomes a sort of avatar for this goddess. The book spans Sweeney's 20 year ordeal to stop her best friend from unleashing a power bent on controlling the world.

This is the first book I've read by the author and I found the writing to be ornate; it bombards the reader's senses with rich descriptions of people, places, and things. Some readers are turned off by this type of writing (my wife says she just skims that stuff) but I find that sensory prose illuminates the story and Elizabeth Hand does this flourishingly. There are also a handful of very tasty surprises that continued to prod me curiously and expectantly forward.

My major complaints about the book include the mixture of first-person and third-person perspectives. Certainly, this is not a fundamental no-no that writers must avoid at all costs. However, by the end of the book I found Sweeney's narrative to be the only thing I really cared to hear about. The secondary characters, though interesting, simply didn't hold up against the profoundly mundane Sweeney struggling to cope with a twenty-year-old legacy of the bizarre, and her lover Dylan who is inextricably woven into it all. Sweeney's scenes were just so much more emotionally genuine that the others were buried by her. I would've enjoyed the book even more if it had been written entirely in first-person. In addition, I found the dialogue stilted in some spots, with a great number of "Hmms..." and "Well, thens..." And finally, Sweeney's affair with Dylan never seems to falter. Dylan is THE perfect man and he and Sweeney have THE perfect relationship. Given Dylan's heritage and age, I doubt their interactions could have been so sugary.

Ultimately, this is a good book and a fun read. I'd recommend it on the basis of the writing and the rather jarring surprises.

Despite a few clumsy transitions from description to action here and there, and despite an awkward timesharing between super-magical and super-real, this book is excellent. The characters are vivid, real enough to touch. The historical magic is handled intelligently and with a sense of high drama (if even well-done melodrama turns you off, beware). The book has style and strength. The prose is evocative, richly texturely, deeply involving. The topics range from practical love and human conflict to cultural issues spanning time and country. There's enough romance - of people, of place - to fill your head until you're breathless. I highly recommend it. Highly.

Is there any middle ground with this book? The reviews here seem to stake out extreme positions, but is a more nuanced review possible?

Hand is a fine writer. The writing flows smoothly and easily. At times the pace slowed a bit leaving me reluctant to pick the book up at times, but these periods alternated with ones when I could not put it down. Hand uses the sense of smell well to mark characters and events. She was evocative in this use and it worked well. A few other hints were a bit more heavy handed, but not unbearably so.

Yet, when all is said and done, the book is frustrating. If the solution to overcoming Othiym is so simple, why not do it earlier? If the Benandanti have been protecting the world from Othiym's return for thousands of years, what were they doing the past 18 as Othiym returned? It seems as if they were only watching their own members get killed off. Sweeney, our heroine, goes wild her first semester, then after mid-semester trauma flat-lines into Plain Jane for the next 20 years.

The incongruities here make it difficult to take the story seriously. In the end, as good as the writing is, one leaves feeling empty and wondering why you pushed through nearly 500 pages of text for a bland outcome.

Convincing characters, original use of old horror themes, sharp social commentary and the smooth integration of research makes Elizabeth Hand's "Waking the Moon" a novel worth any reader's time. Hand makes the characters practically live and breathe on the page; readers will relate to main character Sweeney's longing for the "Beautiful Ones," and cheer on her unlikely May-December romance with Dylan. Hand avoids making anyone in the novel the "bad guy," as so many horror novels do. Even as the reader is terrified of Angelica, they can empathize with her sadness over killing those she loves. Also, Hand rises above the cliched horror plot of friends reunited to confront an evil from their past, by making each friend unique. The novel enthralls as well as educates the reader. It's well-researched, and Hand skillfully mixes this information in along with the plot. Lastly, with Angelica's cult, Hand comments on today's society and women's role in it, and takes today's "goddess" movements one horrifying step further. A wonderful novel in every way

I admit, I loved the first half of the novel. My first year in college was the slightest bit like Sweeney's, and I related to the overall bizarre new life she stumbled across. The characters in college are vivid and (almost) real but dissipate in the second half, as adults.

Ms. Hand did a good deal of research, but she bases her goddess-centered world primarily on what Camille Paglia has said on the subject (so "chthonic"). Taking Paglia too seriously dooms a novel that could have been pretty good. The novel did re-awaken my interest in Minoan art and civilization. The merits outweigh the flaws, and it's a good, fast read. Go for it.

All things considered, this was one of the best books I have ever read. Sure, the writing was awkward at points, and the narrative could be confusing, but the plot, the imagery, the characters and the obviously extensive research more than made up for any shortcomings. Waking the Moon tells of Sweeney Cassidy, a college student caught up in a battle between a patriarchal order of scholar/magicians and a reawakened Indo-European goddess. When Sweeney's best friend unwittingly inheirits an artifact of the goddess's original cult and becomes possessed by the ancient deity, Sweeney spends the next twenty years protecting those she loves and, in the end, all of humanity, from the goddess's power. Anyone interested in archeology, feminism, fantasy or simply a good read should definitely pick up this book!

As an avid reader, I was really looking forward to a good, long read when I picked up this book. Well, I was half right. At this point, I am determined to finish this book only because I've wasted so much time thus far and would like to see for myself that it does indeed end.

I believe Ms. Hand enjoys reading her own writing as much as some people enjoy hearing themselves talk. Other readers have found sections so meaningful that they have read them over and over. I, too, have read sections repeatedly. I finally learned to omit about every other word and found that the sentences made much more sense.

Then there are the little things that really seem silly considering how much research supposedly went into the book. When does this book take place? If Sweeney was at the Divine twenty years ago, she would have been there in the seventies, right? Where'd Angelica find those tinted lenses? She didn't seem to know she was a goddess at that point, so I guess she didn't conjure them up.

Actually, I have been known to give up on a book. I'm just disappointed that this one didn't deliver when it had so much potential.

I had great expectations for this book, as there are so many good reviews out on it. I found it to be very disappointing. The plot was very imaginative and could have been exciting. But the writing was overly verbose without being engaging. I never felt for any of the characters despite the author's obvious attempt to make things feel real. I also was discouraged by some big problems with the narrative - the ending was dramatic, but the consequences of both sides were not explored. In the end, the narrative has convinced the reader that matriarchal-based religion is seductive but evil, but she never explores the consequences or goals of the patriarchal religion and society that the Benandanti defend. By not addressing the world that the Benandanti stand for and by lumping all ancient goddess-based religions into one homogenous blood-hungry cult, the author's epic starts to seem more simplistic than it should, like a soap-opera.

I'm serious. If anyone asks me what my favorite book is, this has consistantly been my answer for the past four years. My own copy is so dog-eared and underlined and filled with scraps of relevant matierial....I refer to it as the "annotated copy." Reading it was a startling look into my own past...not that I frequently summon goddessy powers, but the interaction between Sweeney and Angelica and Oliver reminds me so much of my own friends when I was younger. And the end? With the taxi? Tears *everywhere*. Dylan's a great guy, but he ain't Oliver. That always kills me.

This is my one item on a desert island. This is what I first grab when my house is on fire. This is my forever favorite. This is what I do if the planet explodes tomarrow.

I love this book.