Book Review: A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn

A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

Genre: Fantasy and Young Adult

Release Date: May 6, 2014

Pages: 224 (Hardcover)

As the only heir to the throne, Marni should have been surrounded by wealth and privilege, not living in exile-but now the time has come when she must choose between claiming her birthright as princess of a realm whose king wants her dead, and life with the father she has never known: a wild dragon who is sending his magical woods to capture her.

A Creature of Moonlight is 2% dialogue, 3% interesting stories about the woods, and 95% boredom which is just Marni talking to herself using beautiful prose and similes. Honestly, let’s put aside the fact that many adults read young adult novels and stick to the fact that this book is for young people. Slim, very slim are the chances that teenagers want to read a boring story that’s lyrically enchanting than anything else. Teenagers want action! Betrayal! and unfortunately sometimes, romance! We don’t want to read something that will almost instantly put us to sleep. If I wanted to sleep I would ask my mom to tell me about school when she was growing up. Somehow, I managed to finish this one but I fell asleep at least ten times along the way.

I can see why some people love the writing style, you really need to be interested in it to actually enjoy it though. However, for others (like myself) the writing is too formal and long. There’s an endless line of similes and metaphors and other crap to make the writing pretty pretty but also very boring. I couldn’t help but smack myself once I started the second chapter. The writing makes everything so long and pointless and awkward, the story feels far less like a story and more like an essay about some pointless crap no one actually cares about. I also had a problem with the plot itself, it’s also pointless and typical. Girl has nothing left, wants happiness, meets her father, blah blah blah, realizes crap and runs, blah blah blah, finds true home. That’s the whole story, nothing interesting, I promise. The characters are worse than wet cement, they barely do anything, there’s close to no dialogue, and when things are just starting to get good because of an almost-romance, it’s taken away and readers are left with boring shit again.

Nonetheless, I did like the stories about the woods. These small stories are well done and will instantly captivate readers which is good but also bad because they are spread out and have tons of boring stuff in between them all.

This book is just bad. I think I knew I was in for something horrible the second I read the second line, but I kept going forward because I was hoping that the writing would get better or at least I would like the main character. I didn’t. I barely liked anything about the book and I don’t recommend it to anyone. It’s tedious, typical, and annoying. I’m tempted to put a hiatus on dragon books for the time being since everyone that I’ve read has been absolute crap.