Without the Moon

We were really fortunate to win a set of Without the Moon for our group as part of Serpent's Tail's 30th birthday celebrations - complete with party kit which we made full use of!

We had a party to hand out the books and, as it was a club member's birthday around the right time, we had a party to discuss the book as well.

Much quaffing was indulged in, but (unlike some books we've read in the past), we did not need that influence to make the book enjoyable. In fact, for one of our members this was the first book for many months that he actually like and did not find a chore to finish.

The setting was evocative and lent itself well to the tension of the plot, and the characters were nicely rounded - although some of our members felt there were a few too many, making it hard to keep up. The line between reality and fiction was nicely blurred, being essentially seamless. For me, it was listening to an old "Hancock's Half Hour" which mentioned Hannen Swaffer while I was reading that gave me my first indicator that this was based in fact.

While interesting, many of us did struggle to see why the psychic subplot had such prominence as we felt it had no palpable bearing on the case and at times felt a bit intrusive.

Overall, the book was a real hit and we are looking forward to reading more of both Unsworth's and Serpent's Tail's output in the future.