Blue Moon
Cindy Lynn Speer
Reviewed by Terry Studer
Blue Moon by Cindy Lynn Speer is a book out of today's science and
yesterday's fantasy. What would happen should the world of magic and
the world of science collide into one true world? Would there be peace
and joy or would the force of one over the other cause mass chaos,
pain, agony and a hope that you would die quickly? Blue Moon does not
gives us much historical background on the world of
Merlin and magic but does explain the division of the worlds of science
and magic. Because society does advance, Merlin feels compelled to
create an object called the Merlin Stone in which the magic that
belongs to both worlds is torn from one and stays with the other. The
result is the making of two separate worlds.
Libby Halstead is a romance writer living the country life on her own.
Shy and very skittish she is laughed at by hired hands that come around
to help her with the up keep of her grandparents old cabin. Having been
in an abusive marriage, she is not confident in her abilities or
appearance and this is partly why the hermitage lifestyle. The most
important note about Libby is that she is the keeper of something so
rare and powerful that she is a beacon for evil. Her one and only
friend in her life is her dog Dashiel. They have such a close
relationship that you could swear that Dashiel understands every word
that Libby says.
Alex Kincaid is a man without memory. Having awoken five years prior
with no knowledge of who he was or what he was doing in the place that
he was found, he made up a new identity so that he could work, vote,
drive and all the other little luxuries that we all take for granted.
He is a quite man, good with numbers but unfortunately unemployed at
the moment. Alex's idea to try and find out who he really is, is to
travel the country on foot looking for the one place, person or thing
that could trigger a memory which could possibly trigger other memories
to give his life some perspective. If he only knew how important his
life and identity are. How important his mission in this life is and
the prospects of what would happen should he never recover his lost
self.
Sabin is evil incarnate. Son of the Queen of Darkness, his one and only
goal is to find the fabled Merlin Stone before the coming Blue Moon and
make his mother proud of him.
Zorovin is a Dragon King currently in human form looking for his son.
Kind, gentle, honorable and determined, he will not stop until his son
the prince is found and the evils of the world are again imprisoned to
prevent the possible destruction of the world as we know it. His only
hope is that he will find his heir unharmed and do the duty he was
sworn to do oh so many eons past.
As legend has it, Merlin having seen the coming of the scientific age
and the current magical age knew that the two could not coincide
together. Thus he created the Merlin Stone dividing the world of
science and the world of magic. Encasing part of the magic in the Stone
he then set the stone in a wondrous box. He entrusted the box with a
keeper for all times to come. The keepers job is to prevent the box and
the stone from evil especially on the occasion of a Blue Moon when
magic is at it's strongest. Goddess help us if the stone should fall
into the wrong hands.
A shifting of magic causes both worlds to feel the intense dread that
something extremely evil is about to come to pass. Protectors from both
worlds must unite to keep the Merlin Stone from being found and used in
such a way that chaos and death would reign supreme. They must do this
before both worlds drift back together and become one under the light
of the Blue Moon.
This novel starts out a bit slowly as the development of characters
unfold to give us an insightful background into what may come to
fruition in the latter part of the story. The main characters are a
modern human woman, a young male dragon who
assumes human form, The Queen of Darkness, and both The Lady of the
Lake and Morgan Le Fay in their current human forms. A number of
other lesser characters help pull together the need for the finding of
the Merlin Stone before the coming of the rare Blue Moon. I also found
it a bit
confusing with the going back and forth of so many characters. The
author must explain who is who and the role of each. I
think it was the
mention of Merlin and Arthur that kept me interested enough to keep
going and I'm quite happy I did.
As the characters develop and the story moves on, which is roughly half
way through the book, the novel just takes a giant leap into action.
The storyline in itself is interesting enough but it
was such an abrupt leap that it surprised me. All in all the
novel is worth the read and provides a nice take on the story of
Merlin, Arthur, Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake along with the
elves, dwarves and other denizens of the Shadow World.
The author takes us through a series of events preparing all for the
coming of something dramatic and with terrible implications. She is
quite inventive I must say in how she handles the two totally different
realities. The possibilities of such things being real would make even
the most sane of us question our sanity while donning the "Little White
Jacket". "Away, away, they're coming to take me away, I say!"
I would most certainly pick up a book by this author again as I really
feel a level of enjoyment here in this world of make believe far
exceeds the world of reality that we are currently experiencing. Kudos
to Cindy Lynn Speer on her first novel!