Red Moon: A NovelBenjamin Percy
Grand Central Publishing, May 2013
ISBN: 978-1455501663
Award-winning author Benjamin Percy presents an explosive and deeply layered literary thriller set in the American West.
In Red Moon, the world is very similar to ours except for one key difference. The national threat is not terrorists but rather something a bit closer to home. Lycans, or werewolves, have long been protesting their treatment at the hands of the government, and their more radical elements are done with polite protesting. With anti-lycan sentiment at an all-time high, those infected with the disease find themselves facing all new threats.
Percy's world-building is a creative masterpiece. By substituting the lycans for every other real-world, modern-day national threat, he establishes a world that is surprisingly realistic. He also minimizes the fantasy element by building a world in which the major, historically relevant, and well-known revolts and protests still happened but with different culprits. It is a brilliant piece of alternative history that does much to lend credence to the entire story. The action is at times brutal, but Percy never crosses over into the macabre or uses gore for sensationalism. Every act of torture or scene of violence serves a purpose, one that creates the emotional connection necessary to understand the characters and their motivations. He also uses such scenes to highlight the huge swath of gray that covers such polarizing ideologies.
Red Moon is a fast-paced, no-holds-barred thriller. The characters are wonderfully complex and very real, but it is Percy's beautiful writing that steals the show. His stark words paint a clear and realistic picture of this multi-layered, highly symbolic story about intolerance and the depths to which people will go in order to protect their rights.
BENJAMIN PERCY was born in the high desert of Central Oregon. He is the author of two novels, Red Moon and The Wilding (Graywolf Press, 2010), as well as two books of stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf Press, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Grand Central/Hachette 2013; Carnegie Mellon, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction have been published by Esquire (where he is a contributing editor), GQ, Time, Men's Journal, Outside, the Wall Street Journal, the Paris Review, Tin House, Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, and many other magazines and journals. His honors include an NEA fellowship, the Whiting Writers' Award, the Plimpton Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics. He is currently at work on the adaptation of The Wilding with filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga (Babel, 21 Grams). And in 2014, Grand Central/Hachette will publish his third novel, The Dead Lands, a post-apocalyptic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark passage.
ISBN: 978-1455501663; ISBN10: 1455501662; Imprint: Grand Central Publishing; On Sale: 5/7/2013; Format: Hardcover; Pages: 544; $25.99
