Audiobook Review: Red Moon, by Benjamin Percy

This review originally ran in the Tuesday, July 2nd issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. If you don't already subscribe, sign up here to receive a bi-weekly dose of readerly goodness in your inbox.

The world of Benjamin Percy's Red Moon is eminently recognizable as our own and yet entirely another, resulting in a story that succeeds as a work of science fiction, a thriller and a political allegory all at once. Percy (Wilding) reimagines the world as steeped in werewolf, or "lycan," mythology. The United States is still conducting a war on terror--except it is a war on lycans, a population that has been colonized, subjected to mandatory medication that prevents their transformation and required to register with the government. While this may seem too much to pack into one novel, Percy pulls it off--and his own gravelly narration of the audiobook makes his story all the more chilling as it unfolds.

Red Moon weaves together the stories of Patrick, the only survivor of a lycan attack on a passenger jet, Claire, a lycan on the run after her parents are brutally murdered by government officials, and Chase, a politician who has sworn to defeat the lycan "threat," giving listeners a diverse set of perspectives from which to take in this complex alternate reality. Percy's narration is slow and steady, offsetting the fast-paced plotlines in such a way that listeners can practically feel the charge in the atmosphere Percy has created, bound to explode with the strike of a match. Explode it does, pulling these three key characters together before sending them out to fight in battles, aid in revolutions and change the world they know--for better or for worse.

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Red Moon | Benjamin Percy, nar. Benjamin Percy | Grand Central | Unabridged Audio | 18 discs, 22 hours | Buy from an independent near you