Rating: 
Summary: Deeply talented author-- shallow plot
Review: The only thing that kept me reading "Blue Light" until the end was Mosley's general skill as a writer. His style reminded me of two SF greats-- Octavia E. Butler and Tad Willams. Hardly faint praise.But Mosley forgot to include the one thing these two luminaries always have in their books in abundance and that is scope. The events of the book don't really seem to change anything; they only concern a handful of characters. Certainly the reader doesn't feel, as with Butler, that the fabric of society, even the nature of humanity, will be changed by the blue light. Outside the concerns of the main characters, it is business as usual for Planet Earth. While it is irkome to think of what this book could have been with a plot constructin equal to Mosley's writing talents, I have to applaud him for making the foray into science fiction. The genre definitely needs more ethnic diversity in its authors. I hope Mr. Mosley will try again-- this time with a better plot!
Rating: 
Summary: Can't believe no-one else liked this book!
Review: I started reading Mosley years (and years) ago, and wondered for a second when I saw Blue Light on the shelves if it was really by the same author. There is a great science fiction/fantasy story in here (if you hate sf viscerally, maybe you shouldn't read it: if you have an open mind and can risk it, you should) and what seemed to me a delightful wistful remembrance of times past in a hippy-freak california you'd have trouble finding these days... I get one of my favourite emotions from this novel: nostalgia for the future (the future the blue light heralds). Where did it go?
I hope another story in this sequence appears almost as much as I'd like another Socrates Fortlow book.
Rating:
Summary: Blue Light
Review: Walter Mosley is normally a detective writer, known for his Easy Rawlins stories. Blue Light is a diversion into a genre that would fall somewhere between science fiction and new age. Various people in northern California are zapped with a blue light that makes them weird. According to the book's cover flap, the light brings out the potential of any person it strikes. However in the book it simply magnifies their existing personality. A smart girl becomes really smart, a young girl with quick reflexes becomes something of a ninja, and a promiscuous wife becomes a sex goddess. Mr Mosley is a talented writer. His prose and some of his action sequences makes this book readable. Unfortunately there's little balance between good and evil, which is problematic since the whole second half of the book is one long buildup of suspense towards a final apocalyptic encounter. Even more unfortunate is the fact the long awaited encounter is tedious and uninteresting. There's a few great and captivating scenes in this book, but otherwise extremely little to recommend itself.
Rating: 
Summary: God Aweful
Review: Simply, a terribly written book. It has a shallow plot, flat characters and no style. His descriptions of people are often late, and tend to consist of someone's skin colour. And that's all. The story moves ok at first but degrades into the most uninteresting chase/camping trip in the history of the world. The ideas presented are soft, touchy feely sort of "the soul is love" type crap. Seems like it's a rip off of The Celestine Prophecy, which isn't something anyone should want to rip off in the first place.
Rating: 
Summary: nice try, but incomplete
Review: It is very hard for an author to leave one genre which they are very good at and try another. Walter Mosley has done just that with Blue Light. It his attempt to write science fiction. As a whole, it is not a bad job. However, he does not finish what he starts. The concept is that a group on Northern Californians have their lives changed when an extra-terrestrial blue light touches them. Even people that have not had been touched by the blue light are also changed. The narrarator is not touched by the light, but is transformed through a blood transfusion. Mosley spends a great deal of time building his characters and the story line. His antagonist is also changed by the blue light, but not in a good way. He spends his time killing the transformed blues. Mosley mentions him, but does not flesh him out where he probally should have. Mosley writes a good and evil story, except that he does not do enough with the evil. His story builds to a climax that is very anticlimatic. What I found very frustrating was that his book ended very abruptly where he could have added 50 pages to flesh out the ending and bring in a more satisfying finish. The book is an easy read that is a fast page turner. It will be interesting to see if he stays with the science fiction or goes back to his mysteries.
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