Rating: 
Summary: A skull cracker
Review: The story gets intensely wrapped up in its explanation of the universe, much to the detriment of what is really interesting. At times I was reminded of reading Frank Herbert's "Destination Void" where long passages are devoted to jargon filled essays. The problem in this type of work is that the characters are flattened to two dimensions under the weighty arguments, and the plot becomes nothing more than functional. The way that Hendirx jumps back and forth over a period of 30 years doesn't help. It puts quite a demand of concentration on the reader (not necessarily a bad thing). I can't blame him for trying; anyone who loves science and the truly exciting things happening currently in biology and cosmology will appreciate this book. In spite of the recent (2001) copyright he seems to be a few years out of date with regard to the latest of string theory, but that doesn't matter. Any library of current SF should have this book.
Rating:
Summary: A skull cracker
Review: The story gets intensely wrapped up in its explanation of the universe, much to the detriment of what is really interesting. At times I was reminded of reading Frank Herbert's "Destination Void" where long passages are devoted to jargon filled essays. The problem in this type of work is that the characters are flattened to two dimensions under the weighty arguments, and the plot becomes nothing more than functional. The way that Hendirx jumps back and forth over a period of 30 years doesn't help. It puts quite a demand of concentration on the reader (not necessarily a bad thing). I can't blame him for trying; anyone who loves science and the truly exciting things happening currently in biology and cosmology will appreciate this book. In spite of the recent (2001) copyright he seems to be a few years out of date with regard to the latest of string theory, but that doesn't matter. Any library of current SF should have this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Read
Review: This story drifts along at a leisurely pace, never quite getting exciting, never quite getting mysterious. If it pleases you to be able to relax with a book where you never wonder what is going to happen next, I highly recommend this book. Actually, I would also recommend this book to anyone who is used to reading good science fiction / near future apocalypse type material. This book will remind you how good other books were and can be. If this is the kind of story you're interested in, but you want more exciting writing pick up William Gibson or better yet almost anything by Neal Stephenson.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the story?
Review: Writ large, Empty Cities of the Full Moon is a very standard, no-surprises story of people wandering around the United States following an apocalypse caused by altered prions which send most people on a course of shamanic-derived behaviors leading to their death. There are a few minor variations - the shapeshifting Werfolk who survive the pandemic, and a man from an alternate universe - but otherwise its plot doesn't really provide any excitement or stimulation. Similarly, the characters are very one-dimensional. There are the naive young lovers; the scientist; the engineer; the mystic; the fanatic (several of those, actually), and so forth. None of them really have a "story arc" through which they clearly grow or evolve. They're acted on, they're not really the driving forces in the story. Midway through the novel it hit me: Empty Cities does little more than demonstrate that Hendrix has carefully researched a wide variety of topics, presenting them all in great (sometimes excruciating) detail and in round-robin fashion. This leads to numerous, lengthy expository passages which, frankly, bored me and often had me skipping ahead by several sentences to see if there was any good stuff coming. As far as I could tell, there wasn't, really. To the extent that Empty Cities tries to distinguish itself, it attempts this by trying to merge science, metaphysics and spirituality: To provide a scientific explanation for the outre behavior of the Werfolk and the mystical phenomena of the last days and the days after. I just didn't buy any of it, since it seemed like Hendrix was just handwaving as fast as he could, and his explanations were about as dull as I could possibly imagine them. Any effort to suspend my disbelief was just not "sold" at all well. I would have found the novel more plausible had it been presented as straight fantasy rather than as SF. The novel is a letdown in other ways, too. the alternate universe angle is basically a red herring (though I found this traveller John Drinan's story - such as it was - more interesting than anyone else's). Alternating chapters occur in 2232-2233 and 2265-2266, thus robbing the collapse of civilization of any tension it might have had. Much of it occurs off-stage, anyway. The plots and plans of the purported "heavy" seem too abstract to have much emotional weight, and his downfall occurs (of course) because he deliberately puts himself in harm's way (though the convenient presence of omniscient and omnipresent forces help push things along). Plus, our heroes are constantly meeting people whom they know or have heard of, most of whom conveniently survived the pandemic; it exceeded credibility. Empty Cities of the Full Moon is one to avoid, as it fails to be either fun or exciting, and undercuts its potential to be thought-provoking (what might have been its saving grace) by being long-winded and pedantic at every turn. Aargh.
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