''Waking The Moon'' is a 1994

dark fantasy Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror or has a gloomy dark tone or a sense of horror and dr ...

novel by American writer

Elizabeth Hand Elizabeth Hand (born March 29, 1957) is an American writer. Life and career Hand grew up in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York. She studied drama and anthropology at The Catholic University of America. Since 1988, Hand has lived in coastal Maine ...

. It was the winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and the 1996

Mythopoeic Award The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Awar ...

for Adult Literature. It is set mainly in the "University of the Archangels and St. John The Divine", a fictional University inspired by

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private university, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution ...

, mentioned in a few of Hand's novels. About 100 pages were cut from the US edition.

Plot summary

Sweeney Cassidy starts out as a freshman at University, where she meets the mysterious Angelica and falls in love with the strange and beautiful Oliver. She gets tangled up in sinister, supernatural events involving the awakening of an ancient, malevolent goddess. According to the afterword for the short story "The Bacchae", found in the collection ''Last Summer At Mars Hill'', it is another trope on ancient Greek myth that prefigures ''Waking the Moon''. They both involve murderous cults of women. Elizabeth Hand has said that she wanted to show that ancient goddess cultures were not all as peaceful and idyllic as we tend to think.

Reception

Terri Windling Terri Windling (born December 3, 1958 in Fort Dix, New Jersey) is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. She has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoke ...

selected ''Waking the Moon'' as one of the best fantasy books of 1994, praising it as "a suspenseful, panoramic story of murder, conspiracy, and ancient secret societies.""Summation 1994: Fantasy," ''

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror ''Year's Best Fantasy and Horror'' was a reprint anthology published annually by St. Martin's Press from 1987 to 2008. In addition to the short stories, supplemented by a list of honorable mentions, each edition included a number of retrospective e ...

: Eighth Annual Collection'', p.xvii

Footnotes

References

* {{James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners 1994 American novels American fantasy novels Novels by Elizabeth Hand James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning works HarperCollins books