REVIEW: NIGHT of the PURPLE MOON

Night of the Purple Moon
(Toucan Trilogy #1)
By Scott Cramer

Genre: Dystopian
Kindle version

 

 

A comet passes by Earth—so close that it leaves a trail of space dust in Earth’s atmosphere. The morning after the comet passes, Abby finds her Dads body outside and over the next few days, with help from new friends, learns that all adults have died. They later discover the deaths are because of bacteria the comet left that attacks the hormones humans start producing during puberty. Learning the cause of the deaths is a welcome fact – until they realize they will all have to go through puberty.  As Abby, her brother, and the kids they’ve allied with come to grips with their new survival-mode lives, each has to wrestle with the fact they will die sooner than later if an antibiotic isn’t found.

I enjoyed reading this book. The story was good and the descriptions and characters brought me into the tragedy. For me it wasn’t exactly a book I couldn’t put down, but it was one that I definitely had to keep reading. Which of the kids was going to die first? What were they going to do about food and water? And what about all the dead bodies? Oh and just how did they find out about the cause of the deaths?  All of this was answered and the explanations and answers seemed logical for the most part. I also thought the editing was good for a self-published book. I never got distracted by a misplaced comma or bad grammar…not once. For this, I say “thank you” to the author!

And now for the aspects I had a hard time with. Since this book is about pre-pubescent kids trying to survive, I thought maybe that was the target audience (pre-teen to young teen). I also thought this because the writing style seems to fit that age group as well. But there are some pretty traumatic scenes and harrowing themes in the book. Granted, the descriptions of finding bodies and how some of the kids survive and what happens to some of the kids are done in a delicate fashion, as the reader you visualize what it looked like, how they felt, what the horror must have been, etc. I wonder if some of it is a little too much for pre-teen?  There are also a few curse words. The curse words aren’t anything kids wouldn’t hear in a PG movie (no F-bombs), so it’s really not THAT bad; but if my pre-teen was going to read the book I would want to know about the swearing. So, on one hand you have the age of the characters and the style of writing. On the other hand you have some bad language and mature themes (death, tragedy, survival). So I kind of wonder what age-group this book is aimed at. Oh, and there is pre-pubescent kissing – ew.

Overall it was enjoyable and a pretty good story. And, maybe after reading it, kids will be more appreciative of their parents. That alone is definitely worth something, isn’t it?  It was also good enough to warrant reading the next book in the series. I will be looking for it (the next book) this summer.