Carnivorous Lunar Activities by Max Booth III
Cinestate/Fangoria (February 2019)
380 pages; $12.86 paperback
Reviewed by Anton Cancre
I’ve dug a few things Max Booth III has put out, especially The Nightly Disease, and am not immune to the warm nostalgia of Fangoria‘s return. Also, werewolves are pretty gosh-darned rad. I guess it isn’t particularly surprising that I was excited about Carnivorous Lunar Activities.
With that in mind, imagine you are Ted. Stuck in a rather messy breakup. Mentally ragged and roughed up. Then, you get a rather insistent call from an old high school friend that you lost touch with. He needs your help. Right now. To shoot him in the heart, with a silver bullet, because he is a werewolf.
That’s where we start.
Largely, Carnivorous Lunar Activities is a night-long conversation between two buddies who lost touch, arguing and bonding and drinking and being horrid to each other. Sure, that might sound boring, but Max builds such engaging and enjoyable characters in Ted and Justin that the pages fly by. Besides, it only seems that way until it isn’t. Then, it blows right up and gets more than slightly insane.
If you want a comparison, I was reminded more than a bit of the quiet, introspective, but more than slightly messed up approach of my first experience of Fangoria -produced fiction: I, Zombie. This is about the personal experience of becoming a monster as well as about the regret, anger and disappointment that often follow us into middle age. And a bit about the chunky bits of humans left in the way of our rage and mistakes.
Just as important, it’s a fun time.
