Finding Moon

Rating:
Summary: FINDING MOON
Review: Finding Moon starts a little slow, but the pace quickens. You will find yourself not being able to put it down. Not a Chee/Leaphorn story, but still the type of story we've all come to expect from Tony.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent--A Real ChangeFrom Hillerman's Normal Ground
Review: I do like Tony Hillerman and I was initially quite surprised by Finding Moon because it is set in so different a world from the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn stories. Hillerman's Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam era is evocative and detailed--just as one feels that one has entered Indian Country, one feel that one has landed, like Moon Mathias, in a completely disorienting new place here.

Moon Mathias is a character who grows up in the course of this novel. It is a wonderful, unusual coming of age novel, with a characters who doesn't trust his own resourcefulness or ability to commit to situations or people. I was very impressed, Unlike Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, who have strong internal value systems tht help them to make decisions, Moon Mathias has not been forced to think through what he really believes, and this story takes hima long way on that journey of self-discovery.

Rating:
Summary: One of TH's Best
Review: I have been looking at reviews of different books to find if other readers are in synch with my views. This is definitely where I differ.

It has been probably a year since I read this book,and I don't remember all the specifics, but I can tell you the thing that I do remember is that it stunk.

Hillerman is one of my favorite authors and I have either really liked or liked his other books, but I found this one nearly unbearable. It has nothing to do with the fact that Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee were not in the book at all. I can appreciate plenty of authors who don't constantly use the same characters.

My opinion is if you really love the Chee & Leaphorn mysteries stay far away.

Rating:
Summary: Not one of his best
Review: I just started reading Tony Hillerman and was really enjoying his Indian characters. When I saw a different venue it was exciting, and I couldn't wait to read it.
Well, it was interesting but not up to what I was used to from this author. The Story was good but not deep enough, you are always waitng for something to happen. No excitment. Moon was a boring character and could have been written with a little more depth.
Please stick with the characters you work with best.

Rating:
Summary: Jungle, not desert
Review: If you've read Hillerman, you probably think of his US desert Southwest mysteries. This one's set in SEAsia at the end of the Viet Nam war, and is more militarily-oriented. Less appealing to me than his usual style/genre, but still a good (and very quick) read.

Rating:
Summary: Hillerman out of his element
Review: Malcolm Thomas Mathias (Moon) finds out that his brother who died in a plane crash left behind a child in the Cambodia- Vietnam region toward the end of the war. The story is about the struggle in the retrieval of the child.

This book has all the Hillerman attributes with the exception of location and culture. There is probably a different reader target that can relate to this book. Once again George Guidall makes a good reader. The problem comes with expectations more than content. The characters are different and the environment is different. The writing style is the same familiar style.

Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age Issues Revisited
Review: Moon Mathias's younger brother died in South Vietnam in a helicopter crash. It seemed that his brother Ricky had a daughter. Arrangements were made to send the child from Vietnam to the Philippines. Moon's mother has traveled from Florida to California enroute to the Philippines when she has a heart attack at the airport. Moon is a journalist, the managing editor of a newspaper in Colorado, and as Ricky's only sibling he is called upon to journey in his mother's stead to the Far East.

Arriving in Manila Moon learns that the child has not arrived and that things are heating up in Vietnam and Cambodia. In his meeting with the lawyer little is gained. In Manila a woman with a Dutch name finds him. She seeks him out under the impression that he plans to take over his brother's business and would be in a position to help her find her brother, a Lutheran missionary. Eventually Moon, the woman, and a Chinese man seeking the ashes of an ancestor travel to the vicinity of the child's mother's village and amazingly find the child and learn in convincing fashion of the death of the brother. Moon then decides to travel with the child to the United States and to return to Manila in order to be with the woman and to run his brother's business.

What has been created in this excellent work is a sort of coming of age story of a middle-aged person. The past has been put to rest and the future beckons. The adventure aspects of the tale are very exciting.