Moving right along with my pile of books! Today I’m reviewing The Moonlight Lies!
Fourteen-year-old Cassiopeia Brown has never belonged. Ridiculed, detested, and powerless, she’s an outcast even among her own kind — a goblin cursed with fiery red hair.
So when the prophesied hero refuses to face the coming Moonfall — a magical cataclysm that will destroy the world — Cassie decides she’ll stop it herself, even if it means stealing his identity. Even if it kills her.
With the eccentric elder Gaffer at her side, Cassie’s unlikely party grows to include Roland, a stone giant next in line for a crown he doesn’t want, and Elidi, a salamander girl hiding a secret of her own. Believing they’re aiding the child of the prophecy, the group hunts down five legendary moonlight artefacts.
However, as the stakes rise, so too do the lies — and the resentful Cassie begins to fear the disaster might be her doing. With those fears, secrets long buried by the centuries surface, and a far darker truth becomes clear: not everyone wants the world to be saved.
The Moonlight Lies is the story of Cassiopeia (Cassie) Brown. Cassie is a Goblin, which is the name of her race of humans, more than her being an actual… you know… goblin. Her people are mostly powerless, and… kind of boring… in a world where the moons give each race special magical powers. There are 6 races but only 5 moons… and Goblins are the exception, so they don’t have a power all their own.
When one of the moons is prophesized to fall and cause a cataclysm, and the prophesized hero refuses to help, Cassie takes it upon herself to help, powerless as she is, and she starts a journey with her friend Gaffer to collect all of the things she will need to save the day, picking up some friends along the way – a Stone Giant named Roland, with the power to move earth, and a Salamander named Elidi, who has power over fire. They journey around the world looking for five special artefacts that will hopefully help Cassie save the world, or at least… won’t give away her secret – she’s not the Child of the Prophecy after all.
This story is told from Cassie’s point of view in the first person, and she can be funny at times. I thought that the story was engaging and well written. I cared about what happened to the characters, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a bit of tarot theme enter in there as well.
This story had a nice sort of ‘found family’ trope, and I love a good found family dynamic. Elidi, Roland, and Cassie became close friends over the course of their adventures and I loved seeing the underdog character find her people.
There were things I was not expecting to happen, and I am not very easily taken by surprise, so it was a nice feeling to be a bit blindsided by a twist. I really enjoyed myself with it….
…right up until the end. And I do mean ‘end’ like the last few pages of this book were among the most disappointing endings that I can recall reading. I mean like… this book lost one entire star from me about the last few pages of it, and this isn’t me saying that ‘I didn’t like what happened at the end’ and going down a rating as much as it is a ‘this story seemed to end in the middle of something and it was egregious enough that I looked to make sure this wasn’t a formatting issue‘ situation. Don’t get me wrong, the major plot of this story concluded. This was just… a pretty significant piece of information thrown out there and then right into acknowledgments without seeing how (or if?) that information was received and the implications of it.
Okay Star, that’s called a cliffhanger. Those are pretty normal.
Sure, but if a film leads up to someone dropping a bomb, you usually at least see it blowing up before the credits roll, even if you don’t know exactly what kind of damage it did. This doesn’t even do that, and that was my issue. This wasn’t a cliffhanger so much as the story just… I don’t know… stopped?
It’s whatever. The author can end their book however they want but this seemed like a weird choice to make and it instantaneously soured an otherwise enjoyable story for me. It felt like a great book that just abruptly stopped, more or less nullifying a significant amount of the reason I was enjoying the book the most.
So… I had 6.5/10 stars of fun with The Moonlight Lies – I think people who are into the Prophesized Hero story that has been shaken up a bit and made just a bit queer, and just a bit about finding out who you really are when it really counts may just enjoy this one (with a caveat – kind of a big one).
superstardrifter 
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