Waking the Moon in The Alternative Worlds

Jul 17, 2020 Michelle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: urban_fantasy, horror, feminism, award_winner, ebook, myths-fables, witches_wizards, lendable-ebook, local-color-baltimore-dc, gods

Once upon a time in college, this book was recommended as something I'd be into. It was the 90s, and we were all striding through a world so feminist that we weren't expected to become homemakers, we were taking sips of non-christian religious ideas from buddhism to wicca, and flannel and combat boots and clove cigarettes were had by all. I didn't read this book then, when I was young and forming my ideas of how the world and I fit together. 20 something years after Waking the Moon was a cult cl Once upon a time in college, this book was recommended as something I'd be into. It was the 90s, and we were all striding through a world so feminist that we weren't expected to become homemakers, we were taking sips of non-christian religious ideas from buddhism to wicca, and flannel and combat boots and clove cigarettes were had by all. I didn't read this book then, when I was young and forming my ideas of how the world and I fit together. 20 something years after Waking the Moon was a cult classic, we were properly introduced, and I'm swamped with a wave of nostalgia for both who I was and who the world was.

The first half of the book is set in the 70s, when a teenage Sweeney leaves the bland comfort of childhood for college in the big city. There's a stately old gothic dorm, cocktail hour parties, eccentric professors, an ancient secret society of magicians, and the need to clean up after blood sacrifice all presented as rather matter-of-fact because JFC that's what college was like, the first hint that the world was a hell of a lot bigger than what you were raised to know, and when deeply weird shit went down you just had to roll with it because you were in way over your head. Flash forward to 20 years later, and Ms Cassidy lives the bland comfort of a middle-management position 9-to-5. A Sedona crystals & goddess empowerment guru is on the TV, acid rain is a problem, and there's mentions of the plague that's killed some friends (AIDS isn't mentioned by name, but in 1995 it certainly wouldn't have to be). While it's been easy to sink into the good-enough of this version of herself, when the magic of old friends & lovers kicks the door wide open, her soul is more than ready to sing (and, y'know, confront eternal evil).

Waking the Moon tells a beautifully dreamy and lushly written story liberally splashed with gore (remembering how the Dell/Abyss horror novels of the 90s went, this too is a hallmark of the era), and oh wow is it a time machine. I probably would have devoured this as a jaded 90s 20-something know-it-all, but wouldn't really have understood the dying-by-degrees older version of the protagonist. With her age on me now, I can feel both the youthful naivete that swept her up in circumstance, as well as the compromises she's made to come out generally ok (even when shit gets deeply weird again). There's rough edges and startlingly uncomfortable choices on display in these pages, and in my experience things so firmly a product of their time never age well, but this is magically richer than it would have been in my youth. ...more

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