Red Moon Rising

by K. A. Holt

Overview

Space-farmer Rae Darling is kidnapped and trained to become a warrior against her own people in this adventurous middle grade space western.

Rae Darling and her family are colonists on a moon so obscure it doesn’t merit a name. Life is hard, water is scarce, and the farm work she does is grueling. But Rae and her sister Temple are faced with an added complication—being girls is a serious liability in their strict society. Even worse, the Cheese—the colonists’ name for the native people on the moon—sometimes kidnap girls from the human colony. And when Rae’s impetuous actions disrupt the fragile peace, the Cheese come for her and Temple.

Though Rae and Temple are captives in the Cheese society, they are shocked to discover a community full of kindness and acceptance. Where the human colonists subjugated women, the Cheese train the girls to become fierce warriors. Over time, Temple forgets her past and becomes one of the Cheese, but Rae continues to wonder where her loyalties truly lie. When her training is up, will she really be able to raid her former colony? Can she kidnap other girls, even if she might be recruiting them to a better life?

When a Cheese raid goes wrong and the humans retaliate, Rae’s loyalty is put to the ultimate test. Can Rae find a way to restore peace—and preserve both sides of herself?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481436267
Publisher:	Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication date:	02/23/2016
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)
Lexile:	760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Kari Anne Holt is the author of Gnome-a-geddon, which received a starred review from Booklist, and Red Moon Rising, which Booklist said “will lasso readers and have them hoping for a sequel.” She has also written several middle grade novels in verse including Rhyme Schemer and Brains for Lunch, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was highlighted on the Texas Library Association’s Annotated Lone Star Reading List, and Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel, a nominee for the Connecticut Library Association Nutmeg Book Award and the Maud Hart Lovelace Award. Kari has recently contributed to the anthology, Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters To Their Teen Selves. Learn more about her at KAHolt.com.

Editorial Reviews

11/23/2015
A teenager begins to question everything she thought she knew after she and her sister are kidnapped. The abductors: creatures native to the tiny, inhospitable moon on which 13-year-old Rae Darling’s colony has struggled to survive for decades. Impulsive, strong-minded Rae chafes at the religious doctrines that restrict opportunities for girls in her culture, and she’s both delighted and terrified to learn that women are prized as warriors and leaders by the so-called Cheese (real name Kihuut). Though Rae yearns to go home, she starts to enjoy her newfound acceptance, responsibility, and martial training among the Kihuut. When long-standing tensions erupt into all-out conflict, Rae has to choose which side she’s on. Holt (House Arrest) makes it easy to sympathize with Rae’s new clan, less so with the close-minded and reactionary humans from whom she was stolen. While this leads to a certain element of predictability, Holt still delivers an entertaining tale that presents some thought-provoking ethical dilemmas, while also making points about colonialism and respect for native cultures. Ages 10–14. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Nonstop action, a spunky and thoughtful heroine, and the foreign but believable setting will lasso readers and have them hoping for a sequel."

Booklist

"Nonstop action, a spunky and thoughtful heroine, and the foreign but believable setting will lasso readers and have them hoping for a sequel."

Booklist

05/01/2016
Gr 4–6—As a young colonist on a nameless moon, Rae has been taught to fear and despise the Kihuut natives, who are called Cheese due to mishandling of their original name. Although efforts between her father and A'alanatka, a leader in the Kihuut community, have been ongoing, Rae and her sister are captured during an attack. Despite the trauma of being kidnapped, Rae and Temple adapt quickly to Kihuut culture and appreciate the greater freedom enjoyed by Kihuut women, although Rae often thinks of her family left behind. During her captivity, Rae learns that she was taught an incorrect version of an infamous massacre that took place between the Kihuut and the human colonists, including that the Kihuut inflicted germ warfare on the community. When the humans invade the Kihuut in revenge for the kidnappings, many Kihuut are killed or sentenced to hanging. Rae must decide whether to join her aunt as a physician's apprentice and endure the patriarchy of her settlement, or return to the Kihuuts. The action begins immediately and remains fast-paced, at the expense of character development. Rae is an appealing and spirited protagonist who clearly struggles with her dilemma. While the theme of forced colonialism provides opportunity for discussion and is obviously based on the tragic history of white homesteaders and Native Americans, some readers may look askance at the mimicry of Native American names and mythology. VERDICT A strictly additional purchase if demand for dystopian novels is insatiable.—Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier County Public Library, Warrenton, VA

School Library Journal

2015-12-08
A space Western stars a frustrated would-be girl engineer taken by native raiders. Rae Darling, 13, and her blonde, blue-eyed kid sister, Temple, live on a moon too small to have a name, where a spaceship packed with colonists crashed 30 years ago. All existence is hardscrabble on the punishingly hot, arid rock, and it's worse for girls. Among the religious prairie homesteaders, there's no room for a girl gadget-maker who's prone to creating a ruckus. Rae's troubles are put into perspective when she and Temple are captured in a raid by the Cheese, the scaled indigenous humanoids, whose warriors are "painted and shining, ready for raiding." The longer Rae is a captive, the more she grows to love these heathens for "their strength, their brutality, their fierce devotion." Rae (now She Who Cry the Most) is trained by One Who Talk Too Many Word and Strength of the Suns to become a warrior; soon she's donning war paint and wearing her long, dreadlocked hair in a raider's horsetail just like her black-eyed, bronze-scaled captors. Can impulsive, angry Rae have a life among people who "take pride in their viciousness" and slice the ears off attacked settlers? An ostensible moral about the evils of colonialism merely romanticizes the brutality of the superstitious local primitives. Satisfying if tropetastic coming-of-age, utterly spoiled by the appalling "noble savage" narrative. (Science fiction. 11-14)

Kirkus Reviews

Read More