Blog Tour Review - Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson

 Blog Tour Review - Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson

It's the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with her Aunt Heidi and Uncle Duane after a tragedy. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi's love and patience, the three of them are building a family.

Then Minor crosses the wrong man: John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia shot through with rage. The two of them are left united by only one thing: the desire for vengeance.

As their quest brings them into the dark orbit of immortal, undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men drawn to Varley's ferocity, Minor and Julia follow his path of destruction from the gritty alleyways of 1970s Portland to the desolate highways of the Northwest and the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota - only to have him turn his vicious power back on them. Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?

There's an old saying, possibly from Confucius, that says ""Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." Well, two graves isn't nearly enough for the journey of revenge Julia and Duane embark on in Coffin Moon!

Coffin Moon is a blood soaked, gore fest of a book, as John Varley leaves a trail of dismembered corpses and repaints ceilings and floors alike in blood, and the hunters going after him leave their own humanity behind in the hunt. It's thrilling, often scary, always dark, but it's also a book that's throbbing with emotion. It's not just some slash-fest with death for the hell of it. Each death in this story, from main characters we grow to love (or hate) to random passers by who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, has meaning. They're all shown to us as people, fully rounded, and their deaths matter. Some of them have incredible meaning, not just driving the revenge novel but really impacting on both characters and readers alike. Some are anticipated, some are shocking in their suddenness and leaving behind them a wake of grief and suffering.

Coffin Moon deals a lot in grief and the trauma left behind by death. There's a lot to unpick here about the feelings of guilt that can be left when someone dies, however culpable you may actually have been. We see it in nightmares, and in waking actions, and more often than not we see characters really struggling to process it. For a novel so infused with death, the characters all seem to have a really hard time coping with it. That really left an impression on me as a reader, and make the book resonate in different ways.

There's a lot I loved in Coffin Moon. The plot is exciting and compelling. The characters all feel very real, vibrant, and both heroes and villains felt really well realised. But the best thing about this novel is its gorgeous language. There's a real poetry to it, phrases seem to sing off the page, but it's a hard, spare poetry, nothing overly fancy or whimsical but brutal and effective and capturing and it beautifully portrays the hardness of the American west in the mid-70s and the hardness of the characters.

Coffin Moon is a gorgeous, powerful vampire novel about revenge, that works its magic with a poetic touch and leaves devastation in its wake.

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Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson is published by Black Crow Books and is out now.

I was given a review copy in exchange for an honest review and participation in this Black Crow PR Blog Tour.

Be sure to check out the rest of the tour!