Kelly Stewart
Staff Writer

Following the success of the Twilight series, hundreds of fantasy novels have sprung up in bookstores, leaving some students a burned out on vampires and werewolves. Peter Moore’s new book about the subject, Red Moon Rising, valiantly tries to dispel the stigma and pump some new life into the genre, but the effort falls a little too short for the book to really stand out.

In the world of Red Moon Rising, humanity has created a form of synthetic blood for vampires to drink, allowing humans, vampires and werewolves to finally live in peace. But while vampires have catapulted to the heights of society due to their high IQs, werewolves are seen as second-class citizens and live in slums.

The book’s protagonist, teenager Dante Grey, is half-werewolf and half-vampire, although he tries his best to hide his wolf part. But he has begun to notice changes happening around the full moon, which does not bode well for his future.

The book has nice depth when it comes to exploring the facets of everyday life as a vampire living in an urban setting, and I enjoyed the creative use of slang (such as “throwing a clot” when you get angry). Moore has a way of making his characters seem just like normal students – you almost forget that they are vampires. Dante even has romantic problems, and at several points in the book, worries about saying the right thing to impress his love interest.

(Yes, the book does have a romantic subplot, but it does not try to take center stage, which works in its favor.)

The racism (or ‘specism’, as it is referred to in the book) is what makes the story stand out–there are parallels between how our own society has acted in the past and the fictional world of Red Moon Rising. When the rich vampires are not looking down their noses at the werewolves, they are simply ignoring the unfairness going on around them.

But despite the many promising aspects of the story, it has a very disappointing ending. The climax is not very exciting and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Even though it does a very good job of staying away from the formula of stereotypical teen vampire novels, it still seemed like a very unremarkable book. It was nice to read, but not something I would read over and over again.

Vampires and werewolves are such a tired subject matter that it kills the book. Books about vampires are way too overdone and need to be put to rest, and even books that try to bring something new to the table like this one are not working. We just need to let the genre rest again and maybe bring it back when it can be considered a “retro thing”.

Even though the characters were interesting, I could not get into the story. From me, Red Moon Rising gets a “meh”.