The Moonlit Earth (by Christopher Rice): Blah, Blah, and Blah.
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Author: Christopher Rice
Title: The Moonlit Earth Genre: thriller Christopher Rice is already a well-established writer. At thirty-two, he has published five novels, having started his literary career at the age of twenty-two (A Density of Souls, 2002). Most fans deny that their fondness for the young man's work has anything to do with the fact that he's the son of vampire-erotic-southern gothic darling turned angel-writer Anne Rice (author of a bazillion or so books), although all of them seem painfully aware of it. So does literary talent breed true? After struggling through the younger Rice's fifth novel, The Moonlit Earth, I'd have to say, "No": it definitely looks like a textbook example of literary nepotism, right up there with Tabitha King. Cameron Reynolds' face was broadcast across the world twice. An advertising campaign made the handsome flight attendant one of the faces of Peninsula Airlines, his visage on billboards around the Pacific. But when his hotel in Hong Kong exploded in a whirlwind of carnage, the same face was caught on videotape fleeing the blast with a "Middle Eastern Man." Hong Kong police took his failure to reappear to mean that he was responsible for the bomb that killed sixty-six people. Forty-eight hours later, his big sister Meagan has followed a trail of breadcrumbs, cryptic text messages from Cameron's phone, to the Pearl of the Orient. Convinced that her brother is being held by billionaire Zach Holder (owner of the boutique airline where Cameron works), Meagan rushes headlong into the unknown. Instead of her brother she finds death and destruction; a barely-legal, gay Saudi Prince; and a trail of deception and misdirection as tangled as a basket of yarn in a roomful of kittens. Meagan will probably never figure it all out - mostly because Christopher Rice will probably never figure it all out. Although ostensibly a thriller, The Moonlit Earth turned out no more thrilling than the average bird-watching guide. The action moves at a snail's pace, and vast stretches of the book are given over to meaningful glances and averted gazes among the few characters. At one point, Rice unexpectedly drops in an extended chapter or three of back-story, interrupting what little flow the narrative has. What started out as a combination mystery-thriller segues into a mishmash of confusing plot threads with double- and triple-crosses worthy of a Ludlum novel with a set of characters who come off as dull-witted and trite. The comparison to Ludlum is deliberate - like the late thriller author, young Rice also insists on italicizing random words in almost every sentence. Rice's insistence on stirring a bit of Reynolds family history into the plot does little than further muddy the waters. Given his southern roots, however, one could assume that he thinks all novels require a exposure of the closet-dwelling skeleton of the hero's family. This one is nastier than most, and at its core about as unbelievable as anything I've come across in the last decade. It helps little that Rice reduces the teeming city of Hong Kong to a couple of boat rides and a visit to an almost unpopulated island. Apparently he didn't take very good notes on the research trip he wrote off on his taxes... Rice's characterization of the young Saudi princeis rather troubling, given that Rice is himself gay. The young man is presented as a swishy, foot-stamping naïf who might have been lifted straight (I use the term loosely) from a character in "Will & Grace." Cameron, also gay; is drawn less as a stereotype. Like his sister, however, he is clearly of just average intelligence - how else would he get himself mixed up in such a mess? Come to think of it, the entire Reynolds family - brother, sister, absent father, golddigger mother, filthy-rich cousin - are all a bit deficient in smarts. If you have the smarts the Reynolds family seems to lack, you'll pass on The Moonlit Earth. all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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