Shaykitteh's World of Books

This book is full of contradictions: First, the description on Amazon states "Parental discretion advised for readers 13 and under" but the book is written in a style that would appeal to younger readers... the sentences are short, there is hardly any back-story at all, and the vocabulary is at a middle school level. As an adult who normally enjoys reading Young Adult fiction, I found this difficult to get into as the character development was shallow and it was difficult to relate to any of the characters.

The idea is one that I've seen before, but it's a good start. The Earth will be passing through a comet's tale, and because of pollution and other damage to the ozone layer, the dust from the comet will actually be settling into the Earth's atmosphere. The morning after the comet, the majority of the adults and younger teens are dead around the world, with the exception of a few elderly people and some quarantined scientists who work for the CDC. Children have to work together (or not) to survive.

The main problem is that after everyone dies and people get over the initial "shock", the book just starts dragging. Until the CDC finally comes up with a cure toward the end of Book 1, to save those children entering puberty, there isn't a lot of action and most of the story just gives you a feeling of hopelessness. I love a good dystopian novel, but there has to be some glimmer of hope to keep you wanting to read it... this book lacks it, and even when the cure if handed out at the end it just seems anticlimactic. I ended up skimming through the last third of this novel, after the depressive tone of the story just wore me down.

Night of the Purple Moon is one of the dystopian stories found in the Shattered Worlds collection... so far, I've been very disappointed in this collection, with only one out of the first four stories something that enjoyed and wanted to finish. With two more stories left in the collection, I can only hope for the best!

(No stars given)