Shadow of the Red Moon by Walter Dean Myers

I discovered Walter Dean Myers later than the usual reader. He'd been writing since the early 70's but I didn't discover him until after his death in 2014 when I picked up Monster on a whim. Monster blew me away but it also made it clear to me why I missed out on him when I was younger. Myers's books tend to have male teen-aged protagonists who are often African American. In short, I wasn't in the audience he was aiming for. It's a shame really, because Myers is an excellent writer who tackles difficult subjects with great compassion and sensitivity.

I can't recommend the guys books more. Really. Go read one of his books.

However, Myers is not known as a writer of genre fiction so when I ran across what looked like a fantasy story by him, I snapped it up.

Shadow of the Red Moon is set in a fantasy world after a meteoroid hit the planet sinking it into a ice age. After the ice age abates, the remaining people are hit by a plague. The Okalians are safe behind their crystal walls until they find themselves under siege by the Fen. With things looking dire, the Okalians send out a group of teenagers to try to find the Ancient Lands that their people apparently originally came from. Jon is a member of that group.

He quickly teams up with Lin and Kyra, two siblings on the same mission and they cross territory on foot accompanied by a black unicorn they name Shadow and avoiding groups of Fen. Jon soon finds himself questioning he's peoples cherished beliefs. Are the Okalians really the heroes of their story of exodus or did they run away? Are they better or just luckier? What is it that makes them better?

So, I guess there is a reason that Myers wasn't known for fantasy. This is, by far, not his best book. It's deeply philosophic but the sparse narrative doesn't allow much time or space to really get to know the world. The characters move from one disaster to another and meet other characters that quickly pass back out of the narrative without leaving much of an impression. In general, I just didn't feel very interested or invested in the characters, including the protagonist Jon.

The questions that Jon struggles with are interesting. He's wrestling with what his people believe and discovering that his people's interpretation of events isn't the only possible one. Myths, really. What do you do if the things you believe are true, end up under suspicion?

Despite the interesting philosophic questions, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Mind you, I wouldn't try to stop someone from reading it either. I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole experience