Passion Moon Rising by Rebecca Brandewyne – A Guest Review from Nancy

Earlier this month, Francesca solved Nancy’s HaBO, wherein she was looking for a fantasy romance featuring a heroine with silver hair. She was most thankful, and ordered it right away.

The book turned out to be Passion Moon Rising by Rebecca Brandewyne, and after Nancy found a copy and re-read it, she wanted to share her review with y’all.

We are even MORE thankful!

So please welcome Nancy, and Passion Moon Rising.

Sidenote: I think I might end up using Passion Moon Rising in random sentences all day today.

They don’t make romance novels like 1988’s Passion Moon Rising anymore, and for good reason: We can’t handle books like this. They’re like the sun – stare too long, and you’ll go blind. Or that Monty Python sketch about the funniest joke in the world, the one that’s so funny you laugh until you die. Like Zeus revealing himself to the mortal Semele in all his glory, “Passion Moon Rising” might burn you with its magnificence.

Penned by prolific old-school romance author Rebecca Brandewyne, Passion Moon Rising is the kind of book that has maps. Lots of ‘em. World maps, insets, topographical – maps. A “cast of characters” at the front of the novel. Not one but two prologues. Every chapter starts with a quotation from an ersatz memoir or book of prophecy. The words “molten ore” are used in at least two separate sex scenes. Frilly northern characters ride unicorns or – I’m sorry – winged “alaecorns,” while hardy southerners travel atop the mighty “faesthors.” Characters say “ye” instead of you. The back of the novel looks like this:

Mind blown, right?

Set in the fantasy world of Tintagel (the name of King Arthur’s legendary Cornish birthplace), Passion Moon Rising is the putative story of Cain and Ileana (pictured above). Per the blurb on the back, these two must defeat the “blackest of nights” with “the gleaming sword of love.” This, it turns out, is only kind of a metaphor.

On Tintagel, priests and priestesses have magical powers, but folks also drink espresso. Which turns out not to be incongruous, because – twist! – Tintagel is a former space colony, founded, apparently, by Earth people.

After an apocalyptic upheaval in the distant past that destroyed most planetary civilizations, technology’s been deemed blasphemous, along with most religions and systems of government, some folks have grown magic, and everyone’s regressed to medieval/feudal governance.

Monarchs are chosen in a series of contests, both physical and intellectual (the latter apparently means “solving riddles”). This seems like it should be important, because early in the book, Cain becomes Tintagel’s High Prince. However, since this happens off-screen … it’s not.

That’s the kind of complicated, rich, completely useless detail Passion Moon Rising has in spades – like a long diatribe, mid-book, about how folks from the time before raped the earth with awful mining practices and pollution, fanaticism and divisive political polarization.  Backstory: Passion Moon Rising has it.

But back to Ileana and Cain. She’s a “Druswid” priestess (yes, I know) with waist-length, silver hair and violet eyes, natch, conceived via magic to balance the dark spirit in her once and future soulmate Cain. He’s also a priest, but the kind with manly arms and brooding eyes; he, too, was conjured up by Druswids to attack the darkness, specifically an uber-evil called “The Foul Enslaver.” Only our hero and heroine (plus that gleaming sword) can save the world.

As a child, Ileana’s nascent power is tested by an older priestess, who says she must conquer her fear to pass. If this sounds wretchedly similar to Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune, that’s because this scene is almost exactly like a passage from Dune in which young hero Paul Atriedes faces a priestess and conquers his fear.

Ileana passes, and is spirited away to a mist-cloaked island accessible only by a magically summoned barge, where she’s taught by an all-lady order of priestesses to perform a slew of poorly enumerated magical feats. (Don’t expect internal magical consistency in Passion Moon Rising; Ileana and Cain are capable of using magic to defeat entire armies, but in a lot of situations where a little magic would go a long way, she’s useless. Useless!)

Once she’s made the grade, the priestesses turn Ileana loose on shore to summon the barge solo; she does the thing, and gets a crescent-moon forehead tattoo. If this sounds wretchedly similar to The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s woman-centered retelling of Arthurian myth … that’s because it is.

Though Ileana and Cain share a love that spans time and space, etc., etc., they can’t just hook it up, because they might have to destroy each other down the road, and that’d be awkward if they had feelings. So when they first get together at a harvest festival (shades of Mists of Avalon ahead) Ileana’s been roofied by her priestess-mentor so she’d be amenable to, but also traumatized by, Cain’s rough-but-tender lovemaking. One tends to forget that the ‘80s were a dark time for romance novels. To Cain’s credit, he wasn’t in the loop on the drugging. Despite this, er, complicated beginning, they end up married. It’s a little awkward, but the bedroom action (cue molten ore) seems to make it all worthwhile.

Speaking of, the doing it is relatively standard, for an ‘80s-era romance novel. Basic repertoire: Ileana swoons in Cain’s arms, lots of vague fire and cloud imagery. But there’s so much more going on here.

Roughly halfway through, Passion Moon Rising abruptly switches course. Faced with mounting evidence that the prophesied evil things are happening, Ileana and Cain volunteer to lead a mission across the ocean to make contact with Tintagel tribes lost since the cataclysm.

There’s a whole digression about ships, what kind of ship might suffice for the ocean voyage, and a side-tangent about a lady shipbuilder who finds an old ship in a bottle and copies the design (dicey on account of old tech being banned) all of which is totally irrelevant because the ship sinks halfway across the ocean.

I’ll repeat that, in case you didn’t get it: There are at least 10 pages about this whole ship situation, and the. ship. sinks. Oh, Rebecca Brandewyne – this kind of nonsense is what makes you great.

Anywho, Cain and Ileana eventually land on the far continent, and encounter a number of folk (including a city of elves, who are all named after herbs and spices like “Neroli,” “Cardamom” and “Dill”) who are ready to help them fight an army of “saurians,” or humans turned into reptilian monsters by the aforementioned Foul Enslaver.

If this whole premise – Arthurian-inspired medieval warriors on a post-post-apocalyptic world, crossing a sea to reconnect with lost tribes in the face of a looming evil menace – sounds wretchedly similar to Robert Jordan’s blockbuster fantasy series The Wheel of Time, well … it’s not. Passion Moon Rising predates Jordan’s series by two years. Score one for Brandewyne.

The book, er, climaxes with an epic battle, a lot of magic-bolt throwing, and (spoiler) love saving the day.

What I’m getting at here is that Passion Moon Rising is a hell of a read. Derivative, cliché, over the top, yet also painfully earnest – perfectly so.

This isn’t the greatest book of all time. It’s not even the greatest romance novel of all time. But it’s schlockily satisfying, filled with all kinds of meticulously chronicled, superfluous detail that creates a surprisingly rich world cobbled together from so many other sources that it feels like a wacky but familiar dream.

Yet to think of Passion Moon Rising as a mishmash of other, better books really does the thing a disservice, and completely undermines the batshit insanity, not to mention the extremely attentive completism, with which all these pieces are melded together.

It’s a bit of a bear to track down – out of print, but available through online used booksellers for less than $5 – but trust me. Make the effort.

The gleaming sword of love is worth it.