ussnimitz1968
Wish I wasn't a big giant boat.
Preface and Background: The Shade of the Moon is the fourth and last book in Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It/Moon Crash/Last Survivors series (yes the fandom and publication sites can't decide what to call the frickin' series which I find superbly annoying). The first book, Life As We Knew It (publication year 2005), was regarded as a compelling young adult take on post-apocalyptic survival genre before that genre became mostly marked for dystopian societal elements (which we'll get to later). The plot of the first book follows a teenage girl chronicling her family surviving tidal shifts as the moon is knocked into a much closer element, enough to disrupt society to a pre-industrial age and result in millions of casualties instantly. The follow-up book, The Dead and the Gone (2008), follows parallel events during the same time frame from a different family's perspective. The third book, This World We Live In (2010), features these two families meeting each other - and this is where it starts to get off the rails as its clear the author is incorporating at best and merely following at worst the young adult trends of the day, namely having the plot focus on a rather Twilight-like "our worlds mean we must remain separated" love story.
Unfortunately, for review/IWIR purposes there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS from here on out for both This World We Live In and The Shade of the Moon (though I suspect this is outside of SV's typical reading tastes anyway, but I would like to offer it as an example of a author following market forces and genre trends excessively to the point of derailing a series into complete garbage worthy of a dumpster fire).
This World We Live In for the most part follows up preceding entrants and could've been as great as those entries, but it stumbles majorly in a number of key areas. Namely with the inclusion of a character named Sylvia who quite literally appears out of nowhere - there are hints that she comes from a very compelling and mysterious backstory, that she has covered up her past and she performs various actions that sabotage the two families (such as usurping their mom's authority, re-delegating survival tasks and killing the family cat which...I really did not like) but within the final quarter of the book any interest in her backstory, motivations and questionable behavior is immediately dropped and forgotten by both the characters and the author. And oh yeah, the teenage girl that the series had been following as the main protagonist/viewpoint character up to this point flat-up murders her brother's girlfriend. Said murdered girlfriend also had a sister whose death was a major emotional and plot point in The Dead and the Gone, but she is never mentioned in This World We Live In so it's nice to know that death had such a lasting effect on these characters' memories.
Of course those points can be regarded as relatively minor nitpicks, or at least not really worthy of a IWIR thread, compared to the utter dumpster fire and series betrayal that is The Shade of the Moon. With this book, the series becomes a full-circle Hunger Games clone with all the previous events including the "moon crash" incident becoming practically invisible as the book is much more interested in setting up the protagonist (the teenage girl's brother, Jon, the same one who was the boyfriend of that other teenage girl sh flat-up murdered) as a stock pop-culture YA anti-hero going up against ebil controlling forces and people who have taken advantage of the disaster to carve out their own little enclaves - which is what the book actually calls them BTW. In The Shade of the Moon we find out our hero has done a number of brave, heroic things to try to defy the evil despotic local government such as:
- attempt to rape his girlfriend (before, you know, she got flat-up murdered)
- attempt to rape another woman
- protect another woman from rape - and then immediately threaten to kill her
- threaten to kill a number of high school students, and then act surprised when he is regarded a primary suspect when those students are murdered
- hire his own sister as an indentured servant, and then become obsessed with avenging his girlfriend by plotting to murder his own sister and going so far as to consider traveling to Texas to consult with a relative on how to contract a killer-for-hire
We also learn a lot about how society has been affected with the shift in tidal forces, such as:
- how high school soccer has become literally the most important thing in the world and quite literally a game of life and death
- that people are stratified and put in a caste system based on abilities and intelligence - such that women with PhDs are assigned to be maids and sexual servants to teen boys who are average at best high school students but happen to be really good at soccer.
- people who are really good at growing things and really skilled at genetics are put to good use as bus drivers, cleaning crew and, as mentioned, if they happen to be women, have their knowledge be put to really good use as sexual slaves to idiots who happen to be really good at soccer (yeah I can't emphasize how derped up this is enough).
- Educators and education in particular are so highly regarded that children of privileged families are all but outright exempt from education, and teachers are free to be used as living target practice for security forces (and sex slaves)
- Said security forces are literally paid with sex slaves and opportunities to use students and teachers as live target practice
- I can go on like this, to the point where you wonder if the author even is a woman, let alone the same one who had authored the previous three installments.
But to make this a true IWIR thread we need some excerpts and examples:
Chapter 1 page 9:
"But work was work, and Jon didn't need to hear from some new kid who thought she knew it all that what he did wasn't necessary. All the clavers knew someday the White Birch grubs would try something,and when they did, the clavers would be outnumbered. That's why the enclave was so heavily guarded. That's why on Saturday afternoons all the students spent their afterschools in judo and rifle practice.
The idea was to hold off that someday for as long as possible. Civilization depended on it. The grubs outnumbered the clavers throughout America, but they had no idea how to grow crops in a cold and sunless world. They had no idea how to treat illnesses with limited amounts of medicine. They had no idea how to run a government, a school system, a city, an army."
Who are the grubs? As the reader discovers later, farmers, doctors, teachers, former government officials and workers. Yes, exactly the type of people who don't know how to do the things just described.
Page 11 on how soccer is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD:
"During halftime the Sexton team went back to their bus, drank juice, and sucked oxygen while listening to Coach yell at them. Everything was fine. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as it was.
But this time instead of winning 10-1, they won 8-2. And that was enough to put Coach in a rage.
He started the bus ride by screaming at Mike Daley, the college student who was the team's top goalie. He should never had allowed that second goal.
It didn't mater to coach that the score was 7-1, with only ten minutes to play. Coach would have liked shutouts every game, except he'd been instructed to let the other team score at least once. Let them have their moment.
So Coach let the other team score, but one point was enough. Two was a show of weakness, and Daley had no business letting it happen."
...ugh, actually, this is a pretty lousy idea because it's too much of a chore going through passages of this book to cite evidence of how much it sucks. Just...trust me on this. I'm just going to post what I have but, yeah. IWIR is hard.
Unfortunately, for review/IWIR purposes there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS from here on out for both This World We Live In and The Shade of the Moon (though I suspect this is outside of SV's typical reading tastes anyway, but I would like to offer it as an example of a author following market forces and genre trends excessively to the point of derailing a series into complete garbage worthy of a dumpster fire).
This World We Live In for the most part follows up preceding entrants and could've been as great as those entries, but it stumbles majorly in a number of key areas. Namely with the inclusion of a character named Sylvia who quite literally appears out of nowhere - there are hints that she comes from a very compelling and mysterious backstory, that she has covered up her past and she performs various actions that sabotage the two families (such as usurping their mom's authority, re-delegating survival tasks and killing the family cat which...I really did not like) but within the final quarter of the book any interest in her backstory, motivations and questionable behavior is immediately dropped and forgotten by both the characters and the author. And oh yeah, the teenage girl that the series had been following as the main protagonist/viewpoint character up to this point flat-up murders her brother's girlfriend. Said murdered girlfriend also had a sister whose death was a major emotional and plot point in The Dead and the Gone, but she is never mentioned in This World We Live In so it's nice to know that death had such a lasting effect on these characters' memories.
Of course those points can be regarded as relatively minor nitpicks, or at least not really worthy of a IWIR thread, compared to the utter dumpster fire and series betrayal that is The Shade of the Moon. With this book, the series becomes a full-circle Hunger Games clone with all the previous events including the "moon crash" incident becoming practically invisible as the book is much more interested in setting up the protagonist (the teenage girl's brother, Jon, the same one who was the boyfriend of that other teenage girl sh flat-up murdered) as a stock pop-culture YA anti-hero going up against ebil controlling forces and people who have taken advantage of the disaster to carve out their own little enclaves - which is what the book actually calls them BTW. In The Shade of the Moon we find out our hero has done a number of brave, heroic things to try to defy the evil despotic local government such as:
- attempt to rape his girlfriend (before, you know, she got flat-up murdered)
- attempt to rape another woman
- protect another woman from rape - and then immediately threaten to kill her
- threaten to kill a number of high school students, and then act surprised when he is regarded a primary suspect when those students are murdered
- hire his own sister as an indentured servant, and then become obsessed with avenging his girlfriend by plotting to murder his own sister and going so far as to consider traveling to Texas to consult with a relative on how to contract a killer-for-hire
We also learn a lot about how society has been affected with the shift in tidal forces, such as:
- how high school soccer has become literally the most important thing in the world and quite literally a game of life and death
- that people are stratified and put in a caste system based on abilities and intelligence - such that women with PhDs are assigned to be maids and sexual servants to teen boys who are average at best high school students but happen to be really good at soccer.
- people who are really good at growing things and really skilled at genetics are put to good use as bus drivers, cleaning crew and, as mentioned, if they happen to be women, have their knowledge be put to really good use as sexual slaves to idiots who happen to be really good at soccer (yeah I can't emphasize how derped up this is enough).
- Educators and education in particular are so highly regarded that children of privileged families are all but outright exempt from education, and teachers are free to be used as living target practice for security forces (and sex slaves)
- Said security forces are literally paid with sex slaves and opportunities to use students and teachers as live target practice
- I can go on like this, to the point where you wonder if the author even is a woman, let alone the same one who had authored the previous three installments.
But to make this a true IWIR thread we need some excerpts and examples:
Chapter 1 page 9:
"But work was work, and Jon didn't need to hear from some new kid who thought she knew it all that what he did wasn't necessary. All the clavers knew someday the White Birch grubs would try something,and when they did, the clavers would be outnumbered. That's why the enclave was so heavily guarded. That's why on Saturday afternoons all the students spent their afterschools in judo and rifle practice.
The idea was to hold off that someday for as long as possible. Civilization depended on it. The grubs outnumbered the clavers throughout America, but they had no idea how to grow crops in a cold and sunless world. They had no idea how to treat illnesses with limited amounts of medicine. They had no idea how to run a government, a school system, a city, an army."
Who are the grubs? As the reader discovers later, farmers, doctors, teachers, former government officials and workers. Yes, exactly the type of people who don't know how to do the things just described.
Page 11 on how soccer is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD:
"During halftime the Sexton team went back to their bus, drank juice, and sucked oxygen while listening to Coach yell at them. Everything was fine. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as it was.
But this time instead of winning 10-1, they won 8-2. And that was enough to put Coach in a rage.
He started the bus ride by screaming at Mike Daley, the college student who was the team's top goalie. He should never had allowed that second goal.
It didn't mater to coach that the score was 7-1, with only ten minutes to play. Coach would have liked shutouts every game, except he'd been instructed to let the other team score at least once. Let them have their moment.
So Coach let the other team score, but one point was enough. Two was a show of weakness, and Daley had no business letting it happen."
...ugh, actually, this is a pretty lousy idea because it's too much of a chore going through passages of this book to cite evidence of how much it sucks. Just...trust me on this. I'm just going to post what I have but, yeah. IWIR is hard.