Dark Side of the Moon by Barbara Custer
ISBN: 978-1-60168-141-6
I was given this book to review.
An alien species has landed on our planet, but do to a bloody miss understanding instead of trying to befriend us, they’ve built a city under Philadelphia and now they prey on us, their killings surfacing on our streets as a serial killer working in one small area.
Now that the matriarch of a local family has died her secrets are coming to light, the least of which is that one of her children is a half breed (and telekinetic), her father being one of the people eating aliens.
The aliens look like humans, except for having pointed teeth and red eyes. Furthermore, they’re targeting one small area (and have been since 1960) because they’re trying to punish the people who accidentally killed one of their own, and they routinely kidnap people and keep them in a slaughterhouse of sorts, taking a piece of them at a time for food. And yet in almost 50 years no one has found their underground city, and the police haven’t solved the “serial killer” cases in the tiny area (even though a person at the local university later mentions they have samples of the killer’s blood).
If you can embrace this flawed logic, you’ll find Dark Side of the Moon to be readable and nicely paced. However you’ll also find a cast of characters who are strangely stupid (one keeps close track of her periods, but doesn’t realize she’s pregnant until the reanimated corpse of her mother tells her so despite being 3 months late), absolutely trusting (when the blood doesn’t match any know humans the people immediately assume that means it’s alien), and apparently all involved in a who-can-be-the-biggest-asshole contest. Almost everyone in this book is mean to each other, showing no restraint.
The writing is not bad, but the storytelling leaves the reader with no characters to connect with, many moments of confusion because of logic leaps (like the humans and aliens cross breeding with no apparent problems, and the humans assuming “alien” in the first place) and a lack of any conflict other than; blood thirsty aliens kill and eat the humans, humans fear the unknown and kill the aliens (also, the aliens are much more advanced than us and though they can clone organs, they eat humans out of vengeance).
In the end the family is called to work together instead of continuing to fight each other, and after some tragic events there’s a moral-infused ending encouraging others to always give second (or third, or whatever) chances and everything can end for the better. Except this is a horror novel. So tacked onto the happy ending is a horror ending that mirrors the opening of the book, bringing Custer’s world full circle.
If you love B-style monster or alien stories you’ll probably like Dark Side of the Moon. If wishy-washy science and almost universally mean characters both you, best to skip this one.