Red Moon

When I first picked up this book, I thought “Awesome! The Passage for werewolves!” So maybe I overhyped this book for myself, or maybe it just didn't live up to its own potential. The characters are very interesting. The premise has a lot of promise. But in the end, I feel like the author relied to heavily on American history for his plot–it was like he did a search and replace for any cultural upheaval and crammed it all into the story. Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War protests, War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street–all there, but replace African Americans, Muslims, hippies, occupiers with lycans.

Also, the ending was a bit of a letdown and left several main characters stranded. About 60 pages from the end, I kept thinking, there's no way he can wrap this up, there must be a sequel planned. But wrap it up he did (though there could still be room for a sequel–I mean, what happens to Miriam? Chase? Augustus? Max?), in a way that made me re-read the last chapter 3 times. The solution just didn't feel right to me. If that was what the Resistance was cooking up all along, why the previous carnage? They could have done that quietly at any time, without any need for a large resistance movement. And what was the Tall Man really after? He seemed to have a bigger agenda than just personal revenge, but we never see it fully played out. And what is the deal with Augustus, anyway?

The more I write about it, the more I'm talking myself down to a 2 or 2.5-star rating. . . .