Book Review – Hunters of the Red Moon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
I took a walk down memory lane, took the wayback machine to 1973. That’s when the book was written, not when I read it, I’m sure. I would have been all of seven years old, so it is unlikely that I would have read it the year this novella was published.
Bottom line: I was transported.
At only 150 pages or so, I drank it up overnight.
Not that it was good. The novel was illogical in places, not particularly well-written, and juvenile. The characters were one-dimensional. The main character was a James T. Kirk-like hero. Both women in the story bedded him, one after the other, naturally. The aliens were not particularly alien. They were just humans with one or two qualities blown up to caricature-level proportions. The fights were hard to believe. Our hero studied karate but defeating enemies with hundreds of years of experience with hand-to-hand combat with a katana. It read like a pre-cursor to the YA novels of today. Which, frankly, it was.
But I really enjoyed it. Like I said, it transported me… to a time when even a story as poorly written as this one was mysterious, and original, and fantastic. I remembered very little as I read it, but was overcome with deja vu. It was like recovered memory therapy. This was a gateway drug for me, a science fiction joint that lead me to darker and more addictive (and frankly better written) fare.
Happy I read it. Even though it really objectively pretty bad.
B.S. Donovan 
I’m pretty sure I’ve read it, though happily I’ve blotted out the details. It was bad even among Bradley’s ouvre.
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Oeuvre, I mean!
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Yes, like I said, it was objectively bad. But I really enjoyed it as a young teen.
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And re-reading it was surprisingly fun. Like deja vu for feelings and emotions back to when I was first learning about scifi.
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I’m genuinely happy for you! I have so much trouble doing this, and I wish I didn’t.
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I don’t think it is anything to be jealous of. It shows one or all the the following
1) wasn’t paying attention
2) have a bad memory
3) didn’t read it very well when I did
4) didn’t _understand_ what was written
5) didn’t have much imagination at the time
6) don’t have much imagination now
7) or I am currently suffering from dimentia
Personally, I think it is bad memory
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You think what is a bad memory?
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Maybe we crossed lines there. When you said you “have trouble doing this,” I thought you meant the “deja vu for… when I was first [reading] scifi”. So if I get deja vu then that is because I just can’t remember the story.
š
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“It’s a joke, son.”–Foghorn Leghorn
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forgetful _and_ slow š
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Nowadays I’d think the cover art was a warning not to read it. A 13-22 year old version of myself would cheerfully pick it up. (I don’t think my town library had a copy or I surely would have read it and reveled in the idea of adventure because it seized my imagination not my critical evaluation process from seeking the joy of the written word.)
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