Should You Visit Peter Clines’ DEAD MOON? (A Review)

Dead Moon
Written by Peter Clines
Narrated by Ray Porter
Published by Audible Studios (Feb 2019)
Audible Original: 11 hours, 23 minutes
[All images and audio courtesy of Audible]

All right, let’s get the full disclosure part of our program out of the way, shall we?

I am a fan of the writing of Peter Clines, a fan of the audio performances of Ray Porter, and an Audible subscriber.

So when the fine folks over at Audible asked if we wanted to review Clines’ new Audible Original, performed by Porter, I pretty much said yes before I even registered that Dead Moon is the latest book in Clines’ Threshold series, and a sequel – of a sort – to his novels 14 and The Fold. Once I did, well…

We do need to be clear here that Dead Moon is currently only available as an audiobook from Audible. If you prefer the printed page, then you are likely looking at a couple of months or more before a physical book is available. 14 and The Fold are available in book and audiobook form, so if you haven’t picked them up, you should.

Without being too spoilery, because if you haven’t read – or in this case, listened to – 14 and The Fold, what you need to know is this: The Universe is a Very Scary Place, and Humanity is not at the top of the food chain. There are… Entities that exist on the other side of a terribly thin dimensional wall… and they are hungry.

Very, very hungry.

If that sounds a touch Lovecraftian, well, that’s because there is definitely a Lovecraftian flavor to the Threshold novels, but without the 19th Century language flourishes and the unrelenting sense of doom. Don’t misunderstand, the Threshold stories are full of threats, dangers and horrors, but Clines spent over 15 years working in Hollywood, and understands that these kinds of stories have to be adventures as well as nightmare-fuel, and there is a cinematic feel to his books that cries out for a studio to develop a trilogy or, even better, for a series on HBO, Showtime or Amazon. The current trend of anthology series with season-long stories would be a perfect place to give the Threshold books the space they would need.

That need for the space of a full season of television, or a big-budget series of films – hypothetical as they are – exists because Clines takes the time to develop characters and give them depth, which is, let us be honest, not a particular Lovecraft strength. In audiobook time, 14 clocks in at almost 13 hours, The Fold at just shy of 11 hours, Dead Moon at almost 12 hours, and by the end of each or all of those, you’ll know the characters of each story. You’ll also know the worlds they inhabit, in the detail you need to enjoy the story and to visualize that world, because again, trying to stay this side of the spoiler line, the space Clines characters inhabits… matters.

And yes, that even counts when the setting is the Moon.

If this seems like the long way around to a review of Dead Moon, well, it kind of is. This is not your typical series of books, in that the three Threshold books are more of a shared-universe rather than a linear plot-based series, or in other words, you can read each one on their own and have a complete story. Yes, the three books together tell a larger story, but if you just pick up Dead Moon – say, today – you’re not going to be lost in a continuity-heavy story, and feel like you have to read or listen to the other stories in the series. You should, of course, but you don’t have to, as each of the novels stands on their own, and reading or listening to these three parts of the Threshold story doesn’t require a specific order for you to enjoy the world Clines has built.

The largest graveyard in the solar system, it was the perfect solution to the overcrowding and environmental problems that had plagued mankind for centuries. And the perfect place for Cali Washington to run away from her past.

But when a mysterious meteor crashes into one of the Moon’s cemeteries, Cali and her fellow Caretakers find themselves surrounded by a terrifying enemy force that outnumbers them more than a thousand to one. An enemy not hindered by the lack of air or warmth or sustenance.

An enemy that is already dead.

Now Cali and her compatriots must fight to survive. Because if they don’t, everyone on the Moon may be joining the dead.

And maybe everyone on Earth, too….

If you read that and think Zombies on the Moon!, I won’t tell you you’re wrong, but that is hardly the whole story here. Yes, the Dead Rise – what else would you expect from a setting like that – but Dead Moon is as much a story of a young woman finding her place in the world, even as she faces a threat that is far worse than being overrun by the many thousands of suddenly revived corpses making their way across the lunar landscape. Cali doesn’t begin her experience on the Moon in the best of emotional places, but she’s hardly alone in that, as most of the other employees of the largest cemetery in history seem to have ended up there because there really wasn’t any other place for them anywhere else. The exception seems to be Tessa, an almost too excited and enthusiastic young woman who rode up on the rocket transport with her – and whose knowledge of the moonbases that are their new home might be a little suspicious if she wasn’t so clearly meant to be the brainy character whose knowledge of things obscure will be critical at the right time. She is more than that, of course, as is Cali’s new boss, Jake. He comes across initially as a bit of good-old-boy trope, but like all the characters here there is more to his story, and as is usual with Clines’ characters, a lot of the fun is discovering the secrets they carry, and the histories they are not always willing to initially share.

As Clines did with 14 and The Fold, the first part of the story builds the environment our heroes will operate in, and establishes the mental picture you’ll need of the series of bases and vehicles that make up what should be the places of safety for humanity on the lunar surface. The time spent here and the time spent building who Cali, Jake and the others are helps immensely when the dead rise and things go pear-shaped. Also helping and hindering is the genre-savviness on display, as no one shies away from the Z-word, but no one can initially believe that zombies are an actual real thing, because c’mon, seriously, zombies? Of course, things aren’t as simple as the undead rising, and the threat of humans being humans in terrible situations doesn’t make things any easier for our heroes as the body count starts to rise. It all adds up to a dark, chilling, effective scifi-horror adventure, and either a treat for fans of Clines’ work, or a good place to start if this is the first time you’re entering the Threshold series.

We are, of course, talking today about the Audible Studios production of Dead Moon, and when talking about audiobooks, you’re almost always talking about the performance as much as the writing. If you have ever listened to a story you loved, performed by someone whose performance you didn’t love, well, you know what I mean. Thankfully, Dead Moon and the other Threshold books are performed by Ray Porter, and Ray Porter is one of my favorite voices amongst the many great voices of the audiobook world. With over 300 audiobooks to his credit, Porter’s voice can be heard in mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and classical literature, as well as in memoirs, sports, history and much more. He’s one of those award-winning voices you follow from author to author, finding new books to listen to that you might never had discovered if you hadn’t wondered “what else has this guy done?”. Porter has a talent for establishing tension, which is critical in a tale like this, and creating voices that are varied and distinct for each character. There are a lot of characters in Dead Moon, and each of them has their own voice, and conjures a different image in your mind when you listen to them. It’s not an easy thing to do, however easy performers like Porter make it sound.

If there is a complaint I have about Dead Moon, it is the one that is built into the very idea of a series of stories that stand on their own, and yet connect in a larger world. Cal, Tessa and Jake are great Clines characters, but they aren’t the first great Cline characters. There is a time-jump here between this book and the previous Threshold books, which means we don’t get more of 14‘s Nate, Zela, and Veek, or The Fold‘s Mike and Jamie. It’s always a good thing when an author creates characters you want more time with, and it seems a little unfair to complain that we don’t get that here, but yes, I found myself wanting them to somehow make an appearance. Unfair, yes, but now I have Cali and Jake to add to that list, so I’ll just have to deal with it and take a little time and revisit them – and Ray Porter’s great voicing of them –  in their books again.

Dead Moon is currently available in audio form only, and exclusively from Audible.