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A review by versmonesprit
Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
This was my first McDowell, and it certainly won’t be the last — even though Cold Moon Over Babylon did not reach the heights I so needed it to, because McDowell writes in a way that can best be described as “addictive,” it compels you to read and read and read it and do nothing else.
Part of that, I wager, is due to the compassion with which McDowell writes about the Larkin family. He cares, and that translates as an affection within the reader too.
It is this very compassion and deeply felt care that makes Cold Moon Over Babylon very difficult to get through without that nauseating knot settling in your stomach, the one that lodges itself also in the throat and somehow summons sobs. McDowell creates these heartbreaking scenes with utmost attention to the most horrifying details, and they’re just so completely sad, you feel it on a personal level.
This, of course, renders the reader incredibly invested in the characters and the promised revenge. But it is exactly because the book’s presentation insists on the revenge that I found myself as disappointed by the resolution.
It is more a murder mystery on the banality of evil than anything to do with supernatural forces and revenge. Don’t get me wrong, it works very well as this former genre, but even as someone who’s scared senseless of paranormal accounts, I needed there to be far, far more supernatural occurrences and intervention. And again, don’t get me wrong, everything that happens (that is, until the full moon) so well written that you feel there, and some are even so utterly cinematic, so amazingly beautiful, that you can’t help but crave more, more, more. But things don’t escalate, not really, they don’t culminate either. By all means, the ending is very anticlimactic when viewed in the light of the depravity that merited so, so much worse.
Part of that, I wager, is due to the compassion with which McDowell writes about the Larkin family. He cares, and that translates as an affection within the reader too.
It is this very compassion and deeply felt care that makes Cold Moon Over Babylon very difficult to get through without that nauseating knot settling in your stomach, the one that lodges itself also in the throat and somehow summons sobs. McDowell creates these heartbreaking scenes with utmost attention to the most horrifying details, and they’re just so completely sad, you feel it on a personal level.
This, of course, renders the reader incredibly invested in the characters and the promised revenge. But it is exactly because the book’s presentation insists on the revenge that I found myself as disappointed by the resolution.
It is more a murder mystery on the banality of evil than anything to do with supernatural forces and revenge. Don’t get me wrong, it works very well as this former genre, but even as someone who’s scared senseless of paranormal accounts, I needed there to be far, far more supernatural occurrences and intervention. And again, don’t get me wrong, everything that happens (that is, until the full moon) so well written that you feel there, and some are even so utterly cinematic, so amazingly beautiful, that you can’t help but crave more, more, more. But things don’t escalate, not really, they don’t culminate either. By all means, the ending is very anticlimactic when viewed in the light of the depravity that merited so, so much worse.