Rating: 
Summary: There is life off the reservation.
Review: "Moon" Mathias, midwestern journalist, receives a phone call that his brother has died in Viet Nam and left a business, a wife, and a daughter. Moon doesn't really want to leave his comfort zone with the paper to try and get them out. After all, Viet Nam's a mess--the war's winding down to a looming defeat. All of Southeast Asia's unstable. Unfortunately, others have higher regard for Moon's abilities than he does. In a short time he's drawn into an adventure with new, different friends, and a new Moon. This is one of Hillerman's rare jaunts out of his comfort zone on the reservation in New Mexico. It's a refreshing change of pace. His recent adventures of Sgt. Chee and Lt. Leaphorn have been losing the excitement and sense of locale that attracted me in "A Thief of Time." When a writer like Hillerman (or P. Cornwall, recently) recognizes the need for a change of direction in their work, and takes a detour, I'm ready to go along with them. "Finding Moon" was a fun diversion from Hillerman's formula. Is it a plausible story? Not very; but this is a novel, not an oeuvre. If I want the facts, there's always the newspaper.
Rating:
Summary: There is life off the reservation.
Review: "Moon" Mathias, midwestern journalist, receives a phone call that his brother has died in Viet Nam and left a business, a wife, and a daughter. Moon doesn't really want to leave his comfort zone with the paper to try and get them out. After all, Viet Nam's a mess--the war's winding down to a looming defeat. All of Southeast Asia's unstable. Unfortunately, others have higher regard for Moon's abilities than he does. In a short time he's drawn into an adventure with new, different friends, and a new Moon. This is one of Hillerman's rare jaunts out of his comfort zone on the reservation in New Mexico. It's a refreshing change of pace. His recent adventures of Sgt. Chee and Lt. Leaphorn have been losing the excitement and sense of locale that attracted me in "A Thief of Time." When a writer like Hillerman (or P. Cornwall, recently) recognizes the need for a change of direction in their work, and takes a detour, I'm ready to go along with them. "Finding Moon" was a fun diversion from Hillerman's formula. Is it a plausible story? Not very; but this is a novel, not an oeuvre. If I want the facts, there's always the newspaper.
Rating: 
Summary: One of TH's Best
Review: All you need to know is that it is an adventure, not a mystery. The rest is Hillerman's typical brilliant story telling. In fact in this novel Hillerman goes beyond the usual because he weaves in historic events that are usually forgotten about in today's media (ie the real ending of the Vietnam War).
Rating:
Summary: FINDING MOON
Review: Finding Moon starts a little slow, but the pace quickens. You will find yourself not being able to put it down. Not a Chee/Leaphorn story, but still the type of story we've all come to expect from Tony.
Rating:
Summary: FINDING MOON
Review: Finding Moon starts a little slow, but the pace quickens. You will find yourself not being able to put it down. Not a Chee/Leaphorn story, but still the type of story we've all come to expect from Tony.
Rating:
Summary: Hillerman is excellent even off the Reservation!
Review: Hillerman is the kind of writer who draws the reader in with his sense of place and character. I was 19 years old in 1975 and was quite unaware of the last days of Vietnam that occured in this book. A fascinating history and story. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Completely different from his usual--and yet the same.
Review: Hillerman seems to have had a deep need to write Finding Moon--the same way he seems to have HAD to write such books as Dancehall of the Dead or The Dark Wind.
And yet its neither a mystery, nor set in the Southwest, and there's not a Navajo in sight. But Hillerman seems to have dedicated it to several fellow soldiers, and says he's used some of them in the book. I think there's a story there, that he's telling somehow in the book--an utterly private story those friends can read and that the rest of us can only guess.
There's that great Hillerman ability to describe action in the outdoors (remember how Fly on the Wall came alive in the stalking sequences, outdoors?) And both major and minor characters go through changes and development.
How can something so different in setting, character, and plot be so much the same in the feeling it gives you? Because when Hillerman's got the passion, his superb craftsmanship lets it shine through.
Rating:
Summary: Not Chee and Leaphorn, but a GREAT read
Review: Hillerman takes a break from his regular series of murder mysteries on the Navajo reservation. I grew a little weary of that series (after reading more than seven of them), and this book was a great change of pace. I wish he would do more books away from home to freshen up his writing; this one ranks with his very best.
Rating:
Summary: Finding Moon
Review: I am a Hillerman fan of the first water. I loved "Finding Moon". This book is a journey away from Mr. Hillerman's Navajo southwest. The book, along with being a great story to read is also a book about growth of a character who intertesting even form the beginning. I'm not much at writing reviews, but let me just say that I really enjoyed this book. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent--A Real ChangeFrom Hillerman's Normal Ground
Review: I do like Tony Hillerman and I was initially quite surprised by Finding Moon because it is set in so different a world from the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn stories. Hillerman's Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam era is evocative and detailed--just as one feels that one has entered Indian Country, one feel that one has landed, like Moon Mathias, in a completely disorienting new place here. Moon Mathias is a character who grows up in the course of this novel. It is a wonderful, unusual coming of age novel, with a characters who doesn't trust his own resourcefulness or ability to commit to situations or people. I was very impressed, Unlike Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, who have strong internal value systems tht help them to make decisions, Moon Mathias has not been forced to think through what he really believes, and this story takes hima long way on that journey of self-discovery.
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