Black Moon

“Black Moon” follows three main character groups through a crisis that leaves the people of their world incapable of sleeping. Matt Biggs and his wife Carolyn, who have not yet succeeded in having a child, are introduced first. Biggs is leaving his career in advertisement, which he can’t stand. Carolyn makes stop-motion films, and is totally into her work. Before this all started, Carolyn had had trouble sleeping, normal insomnia. Next are Chase, who has ED and makes a painful attempt to overcompensate, and his friend Jordan, who has a bad eye. We learn of Chase’s ex-girlfriend Felicia, who comes to more prominence midway through the book. Last, there is Lila, a teenager whose parents, like almost everyone else, failed against insomnia. Her father is paranoid about what is causing this whole situation; paranoia also appearing to be a symptom of the epidemic.

The chapters start in action, rewind a few times, then come up to speed before jumping to the next subplot. The action is kept in suspense until the end. What will become of the characters? Will they find each other? It was a little confusing keeping track of the couples, Biggs and Carolyn, and Chase and Felicia – not much description is provided of their physical appearances, for example. The roving setting is not exactly clear, though takes place mostly in deserts of Southern California, outside Los Angeles, where the Santa Ana winds blow things further apart. There is a detour to Idaho, too, where sheep are more valuable than money. The author gives very peripheral allusions to current events and issues, though they don’t play much part in this story. This isn’t a post-apocalypse, this is the apocalypse itself, and humanity is going down the tubes real fast.

I don’t even want to imagine not sleeping for a few days and trying to read this book – or do anything else. Not that this is a boring read; the writing almost reflects the chaotic struggle of this plagued population just to put words together. One gets a feeling of sleep deprivation, the physical pain and exhaustion, making the reader appreciate early on the importance of sleeping and dreaming. I thought it could maybe use more dialogue, but, that shows the isolation, confusion, and fear that arise from this state. The words that are spoken are slurred or nonsensical. In place of dreaming, they hallucinate, or their imaginations distort what they see into chimaeric fantasies. The sleepless turn into violent monsters, and quickly begin to just seem like zombies: harmless if you’re one of them, but if they realize you aren’t, they will try to kill you. Are people’s instincts really that bad? I sure hope not. And would so many people revert to being naked, kicking trash around outside? You could imagine the conspiracy theories that might arise, but people aren’t even lucid enough for that. Some of the characters realize the strangeness of given mundane facts taken for granted, but that seems to be the upper limit of their critical thinking. People are incapable of running or maintaining anything anymore; everything shuts down and there is no way to get information even if you could make sense of it. Total anarchy results, and nowhere is safe.

Things get really weird when a baby starts telling stories. This whole book reads like a really bad dream, twisted and disturbing. The attempted dream interpretation within the book seemed inconclusive, too. This is science fiction, with some arguable gaps in the science, but forgivable for being fiction. Overall, I thought the writing style was good, making for a different and weird read, but that the book was too ambitious, and tried to fit too much in. A little disappointing, but I’m glad I read it to find out.

Note: I received a free copy of this title through BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review.