MOON DANCE

by S.P. Somtow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 1989

The new year's first major body-ripper gross-out, from the author of the Bronze Age slaughter-fest The Shattered Horse (1986): howls and growls and flying fur all the way, as not one but two sets of werewolves snarl and snap over an ideal 1880's Dakota breeding ground and the fate of their boy/wolf messiah. In the winter of 1963, young writer Carrie Dupr‚ drives to Dakota to gather information on a sensational mutilator/mass-murderer of bygone days. Our mutilator, however, is no ordinary being: he's afflicted with multiple personalities. . .and one of them is a werewolf! It's back to 1880, then, to find Carrie's ancestor Speranza looking after innocent young Johnny Kindred for his aristocratic father, the Count, who's also a werewolf. Whenever the Count grows wolfish, mild Johnny vanishes and vicious, depraved Jonas Kay comes forth. The Count will lead his decadent people to America in search of a better life-style. But what the Count doesn't know is that the local Indians, the Shungmanitou, are also werewolves; the tribe's shaman has learned that Johnny is their messiah: if he successfully performs the Moon Dance, the whites will be expelled and the world changed. What with bloodthirsty white soldiers, sundry slaughters, and two sets of slavering werewolves, the violence is relentless--and Somtow leaves no detail, no matter how unpleasant, to the imagination. A yarn devoid of narrative tension, with unscary and unmagical doings, noisome and gory details. One for fans who want their bodies dismembered, not just dead.

Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Tor--dist. by St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1989

Categories: FICTION