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Book Reviews of The Night of the Moonbow

The Night of the Moonbow
The Night of the Moonbow
Author: Thomas Tryon
ISBN: 140951
Publication Date: 1989
Pages: 307
Rating:
  • Currently 2.3/5 Stars.
 3

2.3 stars, based on 3 ratings
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviews: Write a Review

9 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 7 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
Thomas Tryon is an excellent author. His books are subtle and creepy. He has a distinctive style all it's own.
reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 26 more book reviews
Cabin7 was supposed to be the lucky one at Camp Friend-Indeed,a bible-camp nestled in the piney woods next to Moonbow lake in rural
Conn.But it was 1938,a year notorious for cruelty,unnatural acts and terror.And one orphan boy would start the terror all over again,in
cabin7.
reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 6 more book reviews
Camp Friend-Indeed wass a Bible camp nestled in the piney woods next to Moonbow Lake in rural Connecticut. The camp motto was "Glad men from happy boys," but the new camper would bring a chilling secret to this final season...a season when the legendary moonbow would appear over the lake, when an ordierly society of boys would transform itself into something primitive and dangerous...when an evil already loose in the world would be made flesh in one summer night of murder and madness.
minimo avatar reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 57 more book reviews
Spine Chilling.
reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 8 more book reviews
Camp 7 was supposed to be the lucky one at Camp Friend-Indeed nestled in the piney woods next to Moonbow Lake in rural Conn., but one summer night turns into a night of murder and madness.
reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 10 more book reviews
Cabin 7 was supposed to be the lucky one at Camp Friend-Indeed, a Bible Camp nestled in the piney woods next to Moonbow Lake in rural CT. But it was 1938, a year notorious for cruelty, unnatural acts and terror.

Cabin 7 was chosen to get the new Camper--a mysterious orphan with a talent for music and more interest in collecting spiders than winning at baseball.

The camp motto was "Glad men from happy boys," but the new camper would bring a chilling secret to this final season...a season when the legendary moonbow would appear over the lake, when an orderly society of boys wouuld transform itself into something primitive and dangerous...when the evil already loose in the world would be made flesh in one summer night of murder and madness.
reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 91 more book reviews
Cabin 7 was supposed to be the lucky one at Camp Friend-Indeed, a Bible-camp nestled in the piney woods, next to Moonbow Lake in rural Connecticut. But it was 1938 a year notoriousfor cruelty, unnatual acts and terror.

Cabin 7 was chosen to get the new camper - a mysterious orphan with a talent for msic and more interest in collection spiders than winning at baseball.
renegadespiritcat avatar reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 198 more book reviews
A wide assortment of characters to keep track of but a well detailed story line and a heartfelt misfit who will steal your heart along with a hero friend that shapes things for the misfit during a camping stay away from the orphanage. It kept me reading into the dark hours and the ending did not disappoint. This book took me through a vast array of emotions, I hope it does the same for you.
toni avatar reviewed The Night of the Moonbow on + 351 more book reviews
From Amazon Reviewer:
In the summer of 1938, when Leo Joachim arrives at the ironically named Camp Friend-Indeed, he brings with him a set of serious problems. He is an orphan living at an orphanage, having previously been hospitalized for some sort of terrible trauma involving the deaths of his parents. Camp is supposed to provide him with some sort of respite from the terrors he has already faced in his life. Though he is a talented violinist and a naturalist with an interest in spiders, he has no interest in baseball or any other athletic contest by which the various camp units compete for the Hartsig trophy, given to the best unit at the camp.

Paired with Tiger, a sympathetic young man who appreciates Leo's talents and tries to ignore his differences from the other boys, Leo gets along pretty well, at first, though he remains somewhat apart from the other boys, preferring to ignore the special baseball practice and stay in the woods to observe an owl and practice his violin. When he violates some of the "sacred" camp traditions, Reese Hartsig, his counselor and the son of the camp's wealthy founder, worries that Leo may cost the Jeremiah unit the Hartsig trophy, and Reese becomes Leo's active enemy.

As he has done in so many other novels, Tryon builds inexorable suspense. As Reese begins to promote the "you're with me or against me" mentality among the other campers in the unit, the pressures on Leo increase cruelly, and he finds himself being shunned, mocked, cast out, and placed in increasingly dangerous situations, until he is finally summoned before a kangaroo court and tried by Reese and his camp-henchmen.

Though the characters are sometimes clichéd and the action sometimes predictable, the psychological torment of Leo is all too realistic, and most readers will recall similar nightmarish incidents from childhood. The setting in 1938 draws obvious parallels with the rise of Hitler, and Reese is clearly a "golden boy" who expects always to be part of the winning team, surrounded by yes-men. The cruel torments of Leo and his friend Fritz, the lone Jewish youth, show, within the microcosm of a boys' camp, the macrocosm of events in Europe. The climax is stunning, and while it may play on the heartstrings and be an easy way for the author to resolve the problems of Leo's torture, no reader will be disappointed by the final drama. Though this is not a psychological horror story on the level of Tryon's The Other, or even Harvest Home, it is a well-drawn novel of suspense which will appeal especially to young adults. Mary Whipple