The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell
Flame Tree Press (April 2019)
368 pages; $18.19 hardcover; $10.37 paperback; $6.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington
It had to happen sooner or later. I found a Ramsey Campbell book I actually liked.
Mostly.
Nick Reid is attempting to get back to Moonwell—the place where all that religious hysteria has been going on. The place where he met Diana Kramer. Problem is, no one has ever heard of Moonwell and it doesn’t appear on any maps of the area.
Meanwhile, we learn that all the trouble in Moonwell began with the arrival of Godwin Mann, a religious extremist from California who planned to put an end to what he sees as a pagan ritual celebrating a deep, dark, and mysterious cave out by the moors.
Did somebody say moors? I’ve always had a fascination with the moors, ever since I saw An American Werewolf In London. Give me more moors.
There’s so much story in The Hungry Moon. Admittedly, it’s all a bit helter-skelter as Ramsey does bounce around between several storylines, with Mann drumming up religious fervor to a fever pitch; those not desiring to fall in line attempting and failing to get out of town; book burnings; a postal worker who attempts to moonlight as a stand up comic…but somehow this all comes together.
Reverend Mann: “I mean to take God down into the cave …whatever is in the cave is no match for God.“
Prepare for Cosmic Horror.
The Hungry Moon does not have a happy ending but what it does have is a story of intolerance which took my breath away. The similarities between the way the druids worshiped and the way Godwin Mann’s followers chose to worship him are much the same. It’s as if they were guilty of the very thing Mann claimed he came to put an end to.
Recommended.
