Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand

Black Moon Black Moon
by Kenneth Calhoun
Hogarth

Supplied for review by Random HouseNew Zealand

Reviewed By: Jacqui Smith

The scenario is an intriguing one. People stop being able to sleep, which brings about an apocalypse full of madness, as insomnia erodes their sanity. Calhoun writes cleverly enough with his lucid descriptions and dreamy philosophical musings, but ultimately the novel failed me for two reasons.

Firstly his characters although theoretically well-developed simply failed to gain my interest. And secondly, although I persisted right to the end (thankfully it’s a short book) there was no real resolution, and no satisfying explanation for the cause of the plague of sleeplessness. So, it’s very much a case of a potentially excellent premise that simply goes nowhere in particular. Maybe if I happened to suffer from insomnia, this book might have worked better for me, but I don’t…

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