Author: Vickie Mason Randalls
Title: Red Moon Rising.
Out of the Barren Ground Volume 1.
(The series is also called the "Earth Family Trilogy." at
one point)
Cedar Fort Incorporated/Bonneville Books, 2001.
Paperback, 202 pages, $12.95
(Reviewed by Andrew Hall for AML-list, May 21, 2002)
It's a stinker. Pass, move on, buy something else. Don't
even bother reading my review, I wasted my time reading the
book, don’t waste your time reading the review. Delete and
move on.
You still here? All right, I'll say a few things about it. As
you can probably guess, I'm somewhat bitter towards this book,
as I signed up to review it, and so felt duty-bound to read the
whole thing, when normally I would have chucked it after a few
pages.
It is a "last days" novel, sketching out a possible scenario
for a Mormon end-of-days. The point of the whole thing,
explained in the final sermons, appears to be to encourage
members to stock up on their food supply and get a big truck
loaded with gasoline ready for the trip to Missouri. The story
covers a period when the Saints have largely gathered to
Jackson County, and are living in scattered self-sustaining
villages for a few years before Christ returns to the Earth.
The prime factor in social decline is environmental, rather
then a nuclear war as in many other apocalyptic novels.
Somehow the environment went from its present state to
completely degraded in a few short years, and all the available
water and food supplies are poisoned. The government and
social order have broken down, and the populace lives in either
walled-off Christian villages, or as bands of scavengers. The
action revolves around the association of a Mormon village, led
by the Rock family, and a scavenger band led by the young
Rachael. The village is shocked by the band's depraved
condition, and Rachael is put-off by the apparent smugness and superiority
of the village. But circumstances continue to
throw them together, and the village members become indebted to
the band for their assistance, and the band becomes converted
to the village's faith.
Randalls drops the reader in the middle of a last-days
scenario. Except for the final chapters, where we are presented
with sermons on food storage and the sequence of events in the
last days, the novel focuses on the romance between members of
the two groups and some periodic adventure, rather then how
society got into its mess.
Yeah, yeah, anyway. The writing is fair to poor. The POV jumps
in and out of characters' heads without warning, and often there
are time and scene changes without any warning. The dialogue is
often stilted, especially when things turn romantic. The romance
was unconvincing. Randalls does a fair job describing the
thoughts in people's heads, as long as things don't turn
romantic. The "good" Rock family members are bland and
indistinct. There is no sense of place. She describes the way
the village functions in some detail, but she never gives the
reader a feel for the terrain or climate. It may have something
to do with her choice to hide the exact locale of the village as
being in Jackson County until near the end, but if so it wasn't
worth it. The final sermons, presented in stilted, bad-1970s-
Christian TV channel-drama style ("Why you're right, Timmy,
Jesus does love the little children."), are probably the most
interesting parts of the book. She at least got me thinking
about food storage and preparedness.
Several aspects of the "last days" were unbelievable to me.
For example, missionaries are sent from the villages to the
outside world, but are utterly rejected, until missionary work
is finally suspended. But the villages are shown as islands of
plenty in a sea of despair and death. A depraved lifestyle is
lots of fun when you can live it up, while the righteous live comparatively
aesthetically, but here the general population
was starving, while the righteous lived relatively well in their villages.
It seems like in a situation like that, people would
be applying to join up in droves. The Church has problems with
people joining up for its welfare program today as it is, surely
it would be a huge problem in this scenario. But no, here the population is
not only wicked, but also really, really dumb.
Secondly, the women of the village are portrayed as being kept
largely unaware of the state of affairs outside the villages. I
think that in a return to pioneer conditions, we would trust
women to be a bit more involved and aware then that. Also, I
need to be more convinced how the atmosphere and ground could
become so poisoned in such a short span of time.
In an apparent bid to make the book inviting to as wide an
audience as possible, the name of the Church these people belong
to is never mentioned. As a reviewer said of The Other Side of Heaven,
“Mormonism is the religion that dares not speak its
name." Even at the end, where she is talking about Jackson
County and prophets, she doesn't tip her hand. C'mon, we all
know what you're talking about here.
In conclusion . . . Ah, forget it.
Andrew Hall
Fukuoka, Japan
