Book Review: Moondust: Falling From Grace by Ton Inktale
Book: Moondust: Falling From Grace
Author: Ton Inktale
Pages: 380
Hard Core Scale: 2/4
Normal Scale: 7/10
Publish Date: 2015
About: In the far future, animal hybrids
will fight the wars of their far extinct human masters. Imogene, a Caribou, has
joined the ranks of the lunar commandos. However, as new war erupts she finds
she just wants to survive while friend and foe become blurred in the madness of
erupting combat.
Review: Long overdue. I read and helped the author write this and never sucked
my beatstick into the final form in a full on ordered review. I feel terrible;
it was done seven years ago. Both of us wiser authors now. The writing chops
are mostly there. A few rough transitions and a few royal you moments in the
beginning needing cut out. What hurts it the plot movements. Most of the
summary happening in the last 100 pages or so. Anthropomorphism when present is
very strong, but waxes and wanes (lol). Life is incredibly cheap. One can argue
about the horrors and randomness of war, but when 90% of the cast are taken out
by a random meteor shower it really ruins any short built relationships. A lot of the characters lack depth or time to
care. Base archetypes in character relationship move things along. The Scoobey
doo running across the moon also a killing point. It’s quite a depressive spree and the result
answers to what? It just still sort of ends after twisting that ending in that
original draft. Too much horror at stake for an audience to palate with “it
will be better.” A epilogue really could have saved things. The only actual
respite I had was with Jack’s quote before his death much like Red’s quote in
Stalker. Despite it all “The stars are still shining.” The heat death says
otherwise, but that is a slower pessimistic sight. There just is too much
bleakness and shock in concern things the audience cares about that just does
not settle with me. The human history is
cool and all and the more interesting tidbit in the work. Actually, what really
excels is the hard imaginative science. The research and thought shows and does
grasp the imagination. Next time we’ll shoot to Mars or maybe Alpha Centauri.
MoonDust Cover: 2015 by Katrin Buttrig
