Hunters of the Red Moon

Thi book is known to change - not much but a bit - a person's life. A very importan bit. My younger son JF read this book at a very young age I believe he had 9 or 10). He fell in love with the book and read it so many times the pages are lose. His favourite character is the big lizzard Aratak. It's still his internet nick, used and reused many times(he's 19 years old know). The fact that his favourite character is a cool philosopher and poet (and a terror with a bat in his hands) says much about my son's personality. I recomend his book for space travelers of all ages.

Paul Edwin Zimmer, Bradley's brother, was initially an uncredited co-author. The lack of recognition wasn't Bradley's idea, and Zimmer was credited from the first on their sequel, THE SURVIVORS. The protagonist, Dane Marsh, is a lone wolf heroic type Zimmer wrote very well, along the lines of his character Roger Hogg in "The Hand of Tyr" (see GREYHAVEN). Marsh is a romantic born between romantic ages; he wants adventures, but in the late twentieth century, the world's fresh out. Every place has been explored, and somebody else has already been first to do anything worth doing. He saves his envy for whoever'll be first to hike around the Moon on foot, though, and gets on with his life - sailing around the world alone, even though it's been done. At that point, a flying saucer kidnaps him right off his boat, and he learns that there may be a few more adventures left, after all. :) The proto-feline Mekhar are notorious for their slave-raids, having refused Unity membership several times rather than repudiate the practice. Slaves being luxury goods, it pays to avoid damaging the merchandise, and even to install translator disks in their captives - although the Mekhar leave Dane's fellow prisoners to explain the situation. (Interestingly enough, proto-simians - humanlike beings - far from being lords of creation, are looked down upon, being perpetually "in season" and thus slaves of their sexual appetites. Superiority lies elsewhere: the proto-felines invented interstellar travel, and the proto-saurians generally look down on *everybody*. Aratak, the follower of the Divine Egg who befriends Dane, is an exception to this last.) Dane's the only prisoner from Earth; the others figure somebody's being chewed out for grabbing a boat carrying less than a dozen people. Rianna's archeological team, for example, lost their gamble that the Mekhar wouldn't hit the otherwise deserted satellite they were working on. Until Dane's arrival, nobody tried to escape more than once; not only are all the odds on the guards' side, but severe injuries may be a death sentence. Most of the prisoners have a fatalistic attitude that Dane violently disagrees with; he alone, for instance, interferes with the decision of the only captive from Spica IV, the empath Dallith, to refuse food and let herself die. (Oddly enough, while Aratak, the giant proto-saurian philosopher, remains silent, the vibrant Rianna protests Dane's interference, for reasons he comes to understand only much later.) Dane is the one who, spotting a security hole, masterminds an escape attempt - only to learn that it was just what the Mekhar were waiting for. The final part of the Mekhar's standard operating procedure is to skim off the ringleaders in their escape-attempt test on each raid, and to sell them to the species known as the Hunters of the Red Moon for the role of Sacred Prey. The Hunters' only interest in life is to hunt the Most Dangerous Game: intelligent quarry, who can give them a challenge.

I read this book about 10 years ago and went searching for it so I could read it again. Too bad it's out of print. This book is very entertaining. It's a worthwhile read. I couldn't put it down.

This is a fast paced and interesting novel that is hard to put down. It is an excellent book for people who are not familar with sci-fi books and will hook almost anyone to the wonderful realm of science fiction. Looking deeper into the book, it holds many interesting and thought provoking messages about life on other planets and the nature of speciation. Excellent read!

Hunters of the Red Moon is a great work of science fiction. It is also one of my favorite novels. I first read it when I was ten years old and have been reading it just about every year since (I am 28).The story involves Dane Marsh, an existential drifter who is abducted from Earth and put aboard a slave ship containing beings from all over the galaxy.The creatures who kidnapped him are called Mekhars, cat-like beings who sell the more fractious of their cargo to the Hunters, creatures which no one has ever seen.Dane and his friends, a lizardman named Aratak, a renegade Mekhar named Cliff-Climber and two women---one a gentle empath and another a hardboiled scientist---are taken to the Hunter's World.There they are allowed time to train for combat on the Hunter's moon. They each select a weapon of choice and try to find out who these mysterious hunters are and what will happen when they are taken to the red moon.What they are is prey. Left on the red moon, Dane and his friends are stalked for the length of the moon's cycle. It becomes a furious race to survive as the hunters (who are shape-changers) pick off the lone prey. The book is fraught with tension and suspense as well as great characterization. And the mystery of the Hunters' identity keeps the reader guessing till the very end.Marion Zimmer Bradley shows herself thoroughly capable of tackling interstellar action---a far cry from her quasi-medieval Darkover series.Seldom have I read science fiction where the characters are more compelling. Following them through the hunt is a harrowing experience. At the conclusion you wish there were more adventures to come.In fact, there are. The author wrote The Survivors as a sequel to this book. I recommend both to anyone who loves great science fiction. This is the way it should be done.