Moon of the Turning Leaves

De: Waubgeshig Rice

Narrado por: Billy Merasty

“Waubgeshig Rice's stories are good medicine. Moon of the Turning Leaves is a restorative balm for my spirit.”—Angeline Boulley, New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper's Daughter

In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout.

For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home in the wake of the power failure that brought about societal collapse. Since then they have survived and thrived the way their ancestors once did, but their natural food resources are dwindling, and the time has come to find a new home.

Evan Whitesky volunteers to lead a mission south to explore the possibility of moving back to their original homeland, the “land where the birch trees grow by the big water” in the Great Lakes region. Accompanied by five others, including his daughter Nangohns, an expert archer, Evan begins a journey that will take him to where the Anishinaabe were once settled, near the devastated city of Gibson, a land now being reclaimed by nature.

But it isn’t just the wilderness that poses a threat: they encounter other survivors. Those who, like the Anishinaabe, live in harmony with the land, and those who use violence.

©2024 Waubgeshig Rice (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

A Walking Sim in Post Apocolyse World

More adventure than thriller—the second entry of the Moon duology picks up over a decade after book 1. If you like games like Death Stranding you’ll like this contemplative travel novel—interrogating questions of family, duty, and finding one’s place in community.

Slow-Burn

This is one of my most anticipated novels but I feel like it didn’t deliver my lofty expectations I had from the first book. The slow-burn I didn’t care for in the first book really lasted far too long in the sequel and had me putting down the book a few times for a couple weeks. I wish we learned more about the other characters on the journey south like Tyler, Amber, and J.C. Although I am disappointed i was happy to learn about Anishinaabe cultures and traditions and hope Rice continues to write.

wonderful sequel

I've been looking forward to a sequel since I was halfway through moon of the crusted snow. I didn't know what to expect going into the story, but it was more than I could have hoped for. The further character development was amazing, and the story was so engaging that I sometimes was nervous to hear what would happen next when the scene was tense, and I did cry a bit at the ending.

Brilliant reader, epic storytelling

I can’t get enough! Best read while walking around alone in an eerily quiet place. 😇

Superb storytelling!

There is so
Much beauty in this book from the descriptions of the natural world to the language and to the special human character characters themselves. Additionally, there is tension and suspense. Excellent writing.

Beautifully told story.

Nice flow to story to keep it a “page turner”. Love the thoughtful allegory told through the lens of a family’s story.

Entertaining and Unique Story

I loved everything about this, the storyline, the characters, the narrator. I do agree with a previous reviewer that it's more adventure than thriller but I actually appreciated that. I thoroughly enjoyed this adventure!!

Excellent second story!

The narrator is so likable and sounds like any uncle or grandpa I’ve known. Wonderful story with a hopeful ending

Well Done Sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow

Moon of the Turning Leaves is the sequel to the excellent Moon of the Crusted Snow which I rated five stars back in January 2022. I thought Moon of the Turning Leaves was a little slower and situation a little less desperate for most of the book, and the first half seemed rather uneventful except for a tension-filled opening scene. The plot gradually picked up steam as the end approached though and the climax was quite good I thought. I'm giving this novel 3.5 stars.

Both novels are set in northern Ontario, the first mainly in a Anishinaabe First Nation village community. In the first novel, the village wakes up one day to find that the power is out and all methods of communication to the rest of society is cut off. Two tribe members who happened to be in a city to the south return to the tribe with tales of societal collapse. Winter is approaching and the tribe's council has to decide how to take care of its citizens and manage food reserves and fuel supplies over the impending long Canadian winter. And what happens if people arrive from the south?

The second novel is set twelve years in the future. Main character (in both books) Evan Whitesky leads a scouting party south to find a new home for their community as the lakes and land are not as bountiful as they once were and the group is curious of what became of other Anishinaabe to the south. A group of seven set off and hike through their former home land and through the ruined and ransacked city of Gibson on their way south to the area in the northern shore of Lake Huron. Nature has reclaimed much of Canada. Rice has a knack for describing nature and wonderfully paints pictures of the settings along the journey. They group avoid the roads and highways in fear of encountering other people but like any fan of dystopian / end-of the-world fiction knows there are always going to be gun-toting pumpkin-toothed yahoos roaming around stealing and pillaging. And the good guys are going to run in to some.

Rice manages to weave a lot of Anishinaabe language (Anishinaabemowin) into his story, and describes the Anishinaabe traditions as well and hunting and fishing ways which made the novel especially interesting to me.

Towards the end I was wondering if there would be a third novel but Rice added a nice epilogue set eleven years after the conclusion of the events of this novel which wrapped things up nicely.

There is a earnest five-minute heartfelt acknowledgement after the conclusion of the novel which Rice talks about how this sequel came about and describes the contributions of the many people that helped him, and he thanks them individually. He even enlisted the help of Dr. Mary Ann Corbiere from University of Sudbury to review the structure and grammar of Anishinaabemowin he wrote as he is not fully fluent and wanted to make sure it was authentic.

Like Moon of the Crusted Snow, I listened to this on Audible, and it was also narrated by Billy Merasty, an aboriginal Canadian himself. I think his voice added a lot to both of the novels.

Meh

The first book was amazing and I have been waiting for the sequel wasn't worth the wait. I was good, but I did not live up to the standard of the first one.