Bad Moon Rising (edition 2008)

In Maberry’s fictional novel, Pine Deep hosts an annual Halloween Festival that draws celebrities and tourists alike from all over. The Festival helps the locals in the Pennsylvania town survive an evil that lurks among them. Death is the only way to hold the evil at bay.

If you dare read it, prepare yourself to be scared! ( )

This is indeed book three of a trilogy. Don't expect to enjoy it as much or understand the characters as well without starting from book one. I found the characters quite three dimensional but my cliche comments from book one still resonate (could Val be any more of a "strong independent woman" without dressing like Wonder Woman?).

Maberry makes an effort to allow new readers to not get lost but he tries too hard. I had to wade through pages and pages of rehash and summary from the earlier books at the start. This may be a market necessity but still worth me bitching about.

This book was more entertaining than book two, getting back into the swing I felt in book one. There is a nice payoff to all the windup and the "red wave" was worth the wait. The sense is of a roller coaster that cranks slowly up the hill and this book is when it lets go on the other side.

I have one major gripe and that was the Jonatha character. She should have been introduced in book two, at the latest. Her influence on the plot felt overly compressed, coming all in book three. It just did not feel necessary to parachute her only into book three. I'm smelling a rewrite where Maberry wrote book three without her then didn't like his plotting (how the bad guys are dealt with) without her. Maybe I'm wrong but it feels that way.

Maberry gets on the hairy edge of having too many simultaneous scene shifts at the start of the red wave. This gives us a great scope of the mayhem (heh, even using the literal definition). But there were also too many one-shot characters we don't really care about that were introduced at this point, the two girls and their dog hiding as an example. I liked how he got through BK and the other martial artist surviving their first supernatural encounters. It made just enough sense to swallow.

In the same way, the ending took too long to wrap up but there was no easy way to play out all the threads. So I accept it. More than accepting that, the very end scene was satisfying. The trilogy was worth reading.

Funny, in the showdown with the ultimate bad guy I saw many ways to resolve it with what Maberry gave us. Kudos to Maberry for at least taking an oblique angle on the climax.

My foreshadowing complaint about book two ran a lot smoother in this book. I didn't feel quite as beaten over the head by a dime nor did I feel the action was too cheap or completely unforeseen. Black after red was foretold, lol. Maberry also handled Terry and Mike well. Mike was more passive than I expected. Terry was a clear wildcard. Crow was, perhaps, too straight ahead or unblinking but the plot had to swirl around someone. I just figured it'd be more around Mike.

I have that classic horror movie complaint, "don't go in that haunted house!" I didn't sense Maberry gave me enough reason to walk into that house ("nuke it from orbit, that's the only way to be sure!") but c'est la vie.

And am I the only reader who figured blues music would play a larger role in the plot? Bit of a red herring but it didn't hurt.

Almost forgot something! Maberry used a variety of pop culture references. Some of them made me smile but it is certain to date this series. I don't know if book three had more of them or if I just noticed more of them, along with "real" people like Joe Bob Briggs. These references range from obvious commercial jingles to fairly subtle placements. Might make a fun literary treasure hunt for someone.

Smooth ride, Mr. Maberry. I'll certainly recommend the trilogy to others. Makes me want to check out his monster non-fiction as well. ( )

I have not finished this book yet, but so far I don't care for it much. The writing seems awkward to me, the things that should inspire horror fall flat as a result and the character themselves are so one-dimensional that I am having a difficult time caring what happens to them at all.

The lack of character development may be because this is part of a trilogy and I have not read the other works, but I still think it's a sloppy way to tell a story.

My wait ended last week when I was finally able to start reading the 3rd book of the Pine Deep Trilogy - and the wait was worth it. The last(?) book contains loads of backstory and folklore that's far more interesting than your garden variety vampires and werewolves from horror movies. My only wish is that the Jonatha character had been introduced near the end of Book 2, to allow for even more folklore and to sperad it out a little. I loved the references to current horror writers, directors, effects etc.(maybe simply because I felt cool for knowing who they all were). I highly recommend others to read the books either in a row or close to it, the impact will be greater that way. ( )