Stars: 4

Author: Billie Sue Mosiman

Title: Malachi's Moon

Publisher: DAW

Year: 2002

ISBN: 0-7564-0048-1

Distribution: MMPB

Pages: 352

Notes: Sequel to Red Moon Rising

Despite being a vampire herself, Dell (nee Cambian) has a happy marriage to a human, even bearing him a child. As a dhampir, however, young Malachi not only bears the burden of being different from other children in general; an old vampire is convinced that Malachi is the dhampir who is prophesied to destroy the vampire-kind, and neither Dell's nor Malachi's protests fully convince him to the contrary. And as vampire leader Mentor reflects, just one person's believing a prophecy can make it come true.

Even as Balthazar sends emissaries to ensure that Malachi won't survive to lead anti-vampire forces, another member of the vampire- kind initiates his own campaign of death. Imprisoned in a monastery in Thailand, former billionaire industrialist Charles Upton cultivates his abilities despite an utter lack of tutelage or encouragement. The proverbial one false move by one of his keepers gives him the chance to escape that he's been seeking for over a decade. Playing on the frustrated ambitions of other outcast loners, he begins building an army -- a vampire army that will start by destroying the men who locked him away, and will end by making vampires rulers of the world, and him the ruler of them all.

As in the previous book, Red Moon Rising, the powerful vampires Mentor and Ross continue in their uneven partnership to look over the vampire-kind at large. Gentle Mentor seems further from omniscient here, but he still has a longing for peace that leads him to out-of-the-way places and philosophical reflections. Although Ross is a classical hard-driving businessman, in Malachi's Moon he is a more well-rounded character, with a reflective side and even a touch of vulnerability. Paranoid Balthazar, motherhood-obsessed Sereny, and young Predator Jeremy are more than just figures moving across the screen -- they have their frustrations and motivations as much as the book's movers and shakers.

Although Malachi's Moon ought to be Malachi's book, I never found him particularly well integrated with either plot line -- Balthazar's determination to avert the prophesy, or Charles Upton's campaign to take over the world. The predicament that overtakes him in the last pages seemed to have been tacked on at the last minute, as if some editor had said, "Yipes! This has been building up to a Malachi-centered crisis! Quick, get one written!" And so it was.

But I don't want to disparage the entire book just because the last forty pages read like a condensed version of a separate work. Upton's plotting, Mentor's search for peace, and Malachi's adventures as he tries to make a life for himself give the parts a richness and fullness that compensate for the fragmentary quality of the somewhat episodic narrative. Like Red Moon Rising, Malachi's Moon takes the reader on a journey into its universe through the separate journeys of its inhabitants, and being there is what makes it worth the trip.

Reviewed by Catherine B. Krusberg