Moon of the Crusted Snow is the first book in the Moon Duology by Waubgeshig Rice. Evan is a young man living on an isolated Anishinaabe reservation up north when the community goes entirely dark. Since the reliable power is still a relatively new thing for the reservation, none of them are overly worried at first. At least not until it stays off and other unusual things follow such as no deliveries for the store or the diesel storage. With winter coming in quickly the people living on the reservation now have to find ways to come together and keep each other warm and fed through the coming cold. Something potentially made harder when two young men return to the reservation with news that this is also occurring to the outside world as well. Followed by others, in this case outsiders, who are seeking a remote place to try and survive, the situation quickly starts deteriorating as people descend into panic. Now they must also face growing divides in the community as they face worsening conditions and potential illness the longer it continues. Evan is rapidly faced with trying to figure out what to do if the power never returns.
This was a decent book and it did a good job of exploring its subject matter which was how a remote population deals with something like the power permanently going out. My main issue with the book was how short it was and how this impacted the story overall. I don’t typically mind shorter works provided that they still provide the right amount of depth for the story in question. This type of story was the story that to me just needed the emotional depth to really help convey what was happening to the community and for whatever reason it just did not feel like it had that. The story seemed to skim the surface of emotions that were present and as such it felt like things were undeveloped or overlooked in that regard. As I said before, the story was good but it had a shallow feeling to it because of this lack. Let’s move on from that though and look at some other things. I enjoyed how the story handled and dealt with the issues surrounding their heritage and general lack of knowledge for their culture and language. This aspect felt honest and open and did a good job of explaining how and why these things were issues for these people. When this does show up in books it is rarely handled as well as this book did it. The story was fairly predictable though even with the somewhat novel elements introduced by the setting. I am giving this book 3.5 out of 5 stars.
This would probably be considered contemporary fiction or dystopian fiction depending on how you look at so if you enjoy either of those you might consider trying it. I highly doubt that it will hold much appeal for readers who don’t enjoy those genres though. Technically speaking this book does contain a lot of potential content triggers but most of them are vague references or are not graphically depicted. They are mostly only hinted at or talked around but not directly discussed. While you might be careful when reading this I also highly doubt it would actually be a problem for most readers. This book is aimed at adult readers but I could easily see it being read by older teens and young adults though probably only those older than about fifteen. It was an interesting read though so if it sounds interesting you might consider trying it. As always feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you do.