'Moongazer' by Marianne Mancusi

ISBN: 0505527251
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 355pp
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: July 2007
Price: $6.99

I have to admit that I picked up Moongazer on it’s cover alone. Thanks to an anime addicted husband I watch a ton of it and the idea of a romance novel with that kind of twist appealed to me. Moongazer is part of Shomi, Dorchester’s line of romance novels that launched last July, and are written and marketed with anime feel.

Skye Brown is a computer game designer working on the release of a new game that is supposed to be even bigger than World of Warcraft. (insert gasp here) Skye is dedicated to her work and loves her job but lately she just can’t seem to get any sleep. Whenever she does finally fall asleep she has these horrible nightmares in which she is someone else.

When Skye’s world finally falls apart around her and she wakes up in a post apocalyptic world she can’t decide if she is dreaming. But she does the only thing she can do, she calls a number written on the palm of her hand. Dawn, a handsome man who seems to know her, comes to her rescue. Skye learns in the process that everyone believes she is Mariah Quinn, a women who fought against something known as Moongazing. Mariah was a revolutionary who lead a group of people called the Eclipsers and Dawn just happened to be her right hand man.

100 years in the Earth’s future the super powers of the world have destroyed everything with a nuclear war. People are now living underground and depending on their station in life and wealth they live in a richer or poorer level. Moongazing was developed by the government because the underground cities were becoming crowded. Moongazing puts your body in a kind of hibernation while your brain goes to live somewhere else, in this case an Earth before it was destroyed. Moongazing however isn’t all it’s cracked up to be since it is addictive and can eventually kill you.

While Skye believes she is not this Mariah woman they all think she is the bad guys are going to try to kill her anyway. Duske a handsome though pervy guy ends up kidnapping her right out from under Dawn. Eventually though she is rescued and starts to realize that maybe there is some truth to all these wild claims that she is Mariah.

Even though the idea is a bit clichéd I loved that the good guy’s name was Dawn and the villain’s was Duske; it brought into play that whole dark vs. light thing. The name Dawn however kept invoking a picture of a girl I went to school with when I was in elementary instead of the big hulking beautiful man that the character was described as.

Skye/ Mariah’s internal dialogue was repetitive and after awhile became annoying. The constant questions, the statements that were repeated made me wonder if the book hadn’t been through the editing process a final time. I guess it just must be the author’s style and after looking at the reviews on Amazon it must work for some people, it just didn’t work for me.

Over all Moongazer was fair. The idea is a good one but it felt as if it hadn’t been fully realized or that too much of it was based off something else. The Matrix kept coming to mind as I read and I couldn’t help but feel that they had done it better. But I’m not going to give up on Shomi, with a new line up of titles set to be released in 2008 and two more that were released a few months ago, I’m sure I will find something to love.