SHADOW OF THE RED MOON

In a lackluster fantasy set generations after a meteorite's fall, Jon, Lin, and Kyra escape a besieged city and hope for a fresh start in their Ancient Land. Avoiding packs of savage dogs and the descendants of plague survivors known as Fen, the threesome retrace the path their ancestors took long ago. Few of their encounters advance the plot or make a point, except, perhaps, on some vague symbolic level; the same could be said of the black-and- white illustrations, although these are evocative unto themselves. Myers (The Story of the Three Kingdoms, p. 540, etc.) is unusually careless with details: The refugees don't need much food beyond the narcotic sorpos fruit; Jon risks his life to steal a healing herb when Lin falls ill, but no mention is made of administering it; a dog killed on one page is only injured on the next. Kyra runs off to kill Fen while Jon and Lin try to befriend two of them, but since Fen characters and society haven't been developed, this intimacy is a surprise. Other fantasies in which verisimilitude is a low priority, such as Lois Lowry's The Giver (1993) or Gregory Maguire's I Feel Like The Morning Star (1989), compensate with passionate messages; here the lessons are buried beneath indifferent storytelling. (Fiction. 10-14)