Review: Moongazer

Title: Moongazer
Author: Marianne Mancusi
Publisher: Love Spell/Shomi
Original Date of Publication: 2007
Genre/Sub-genre: Action/Sci-fi romance
Part of a Series? God, I hope not

Moongazer is flat and dull and a painfully blatant rip-off of The Matrix. That isn't all I could say about this novel, but it's really all I want to say. It's not even that I feel angry or particularly disappointed about it -- I simply feel so indifferent to it that I can barely muster the energy to review it properly. Still, I'll give it a shot.

I was really excited about the possibilities of this novel -- the post-apocalyptic world! The dark angst-ridden love interest! The manga-esque cover! I was really hoping it would turn out to be like a grown-up version of L.J. Smith's The Chosen and/or Huntress with some cyberpunk thrown in.

However, the post-apocalyptic world turned out to be embarrassingly stereotypical and flat -- the mutated working class living sadly underground, their extra arms waving helplessly, as the evvvvvvil upper class takes advantage of them from their glitzy upper (but still underground) world. Earth as it once was is laid as virtual reality over the destroyed world, people tricked into the program by the upper class, eventually unaware of the real conditions of existence (sound familiar, Matrix viewers?). The revolutionary ideas would have been very interesting if only they had truly been examined, instead of used as a shallow plot device. The characters are cardboard cut-outs ("selfless revolutionary", "lower-class victim", "evil upper-class person"); even Skye, who has the benefit of essentially playing the role of two different people for most of the novel, and who is supposedly struggling to confront her two different sides, is a clear character type (the "real" person). Dawn, the hero, is sensitive, shy, and apparently stupid, rehashing the same issues over and over again (namely, "you're just a shell of the woman I once loved!"), and he doesn't even bother to use new dialogue when he does it. As for the eroticism in Moongazer, I will only say that this is the first book that I have EVER laid down in the middle of a sex scene (I went to sleep).

I think I could go on, but I don't feel like it. To quote Dawn, this book is an "empty shell" of what it could have been.