Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Moon of the Crusted Snow
by Waubgeshig Rice
Dystopian | Horror | Fiction
218 Pages
Released June 2018
Moon Series #1
Rating: ★★★★
Goodreads
Content Warnings
After struggling to find a book that aligned with my reading mood, I finally came across one that piqued my interest. If you know me, you know that this book was right up my alley: short, tense, and haunting.
This story mainly follows Evan, a member of the Anishinaabe community which resides on a reservation in frigid northern Canada far away from the rest of society. When a power-outage strikes the community one afternoon, Evan and his community aren’t particularly worried about it - power-outages aren’t uncommon since they are so far removed from other towns. But when things start deteriorating, the town slowly realizes that something more sinister may be happening. And then, an unwanted stranger shows up.
This book was deliciously atmospheric. Rice’s prose is very straightforward, which I appreciated in this story. A lot of horror tends to favor the surreal or embellished, sometimes making it difficult to follow what is happening but Moon of the Crusted Snow is more of a to-the-point horror: it tells it like it is. I also really enjoyed an indigenous perspective of a dystopian trope, it’s something I haven’t seen very often and I really liked how Rice highlights the resiliency of a people that have already had to learn how to survive in the face of adversity.
Even more exciting, the book ends a bit of an ambiguous ending but Rice has announced a sequel called Moon of the Turning Leaves (Goodreads page here) — though I’m not quite sure of the release date. Goodreads says Fall of 2023 and Amazon says Winter of 2024.
If you’re a dystopian or horror fan, I recommend giving this fresh perspective a try.