Moon-Flash

Kyreol Duology #1

by Patricia A. McKillip

Kyreol's small world begins at the Face, a high rock cliff, and ends at FourteenFalls, a series of rapids. Each year, her people celebrate Moon-Flash-a spark of light that seems to come from and go into the moon, a symbol of life and joy. When a mysterious stranger arrives, Kyreol wants to know more about him, as well as the Moon-Flash, and soon she and her childhood friend Terje leave their home to look for answers. Those answers will pluck Kyreol from Riverworld and transform her life forever-by fast-forwarding her into a future she can barely comprehend.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction, Adventure, Novels, Speculative Fiction

150 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Patricia Anne McKillip was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. She wrote predominantly standalone fantasy novels and has been called "one of the most accomplished prose stylists in the fantasy genre". Her work won many awards, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.

Reviews

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

[9/10]

Kyreol’s eyes were so dark that if she looked at you between leaves you couldn’t see them. Her skin was the color of a shadow, and her hair was blacker than that. She was tall for her age, and lean, a great tree-climber and a magnificent storyteller. She knew all the secret places in the world – the bramble-cave in the forest, the pool beneath the falls where the great fish sunned, the hollow tree – for she had walked from the Beginning of world halfway to its End.

It’s Patricia McKillip who is the magnificent storyteller. She has a light touch that hovers like a butterfly from light to darkness, exploring mysterious new lands peopled by fantastic beasts and wandering minstrels. The story of Kyreol, a young girl from a fishing village lost in the middle of an impenetrable jungle, is one you probably heard before, but McKillip breathes new life into this mythical journey into the unknown – the one described by Joseph Campbell in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” or by Mircea Eliade in “The Myth of Eternal Retour”

Kyreol’s world is enclosed by stone walls upriver and by deadly cataracts downstream. Within these limitations, her tribe lives outside time, in an endless repetition of ritual and traditions. Children are betrothed at birth, the shaman invokes the river deities for good fortune and everybody gathers at predefined times to celebrate the Moon-Flash : a mysterious light that appears once a year and is used to mark seasons and coming-of-age ceremonies.

Kyreol is about to leave her father’s house on the night of Moon-Flash since she became a woman about to be married to her chosen partner. She is happy to be a part of her tribe, she loves telling stories to the young ones yet she cannot stifle a feeling of unease, of being boxed-in and doomed to a life of boredom and drudgery.

But her brain was always humming like a beehive with questions and possibilities, and there seemed no way to quiet it.

Together with her oldest friend, a young man named Terje who is also forced into an arranged marriage, Kyreol flees downriver in a stolen boat, just like her mother inexplicably did many years before.

And so it starts – childhood’s end, the breaking of chains and the adventure of a lifetime. Kyreol and Terje brave together the dangerous river, wild animals and savage tribes to escape into a world incredibly larger than their tiny village universe. And a childhood friendship that was as pure and as natural as breathing becomes another sort of journey - into romance.

Sometimes – sometimes I think if you looked enough and talked enough, you’d turn the world into a different shape, a shape I’ve never seen before.

I will leave out all the marvellous details of the journey the two young people take downriver, as well as the science-fiction nature of the revelations about the wider world laid down before their eyes – Patricia McKillip does it so much better than I ever could.
[as a sidenote, the plot is similar in many ways to Arthur C Clarke’s The City and the Stars , but I read his so many years ago that I need a refresher course before becoming more specific.]

My only complaint so far is that the book is too short, but I already have the sequel [the duology is usually bundled together in ebooks] and I can’t wait to go back and discover what new stories Kyreol can spin.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently Moon-Flash actually has a sequel, but I’m not that interested in it. It’s interesting — probably a novella in length, and written with McKillip’s usual lyricism and style — but I felt it was whole enough in itself, and I’m not interested enough in the world or characters to keep following it. Their trip down the river leads to an almost inevitable conclusion, but the story manages to say something about myth and belief, about the way different cultures interpret things, about relationships between cultures. It’s a little Ursula Le Guin-ish, in that sense, now that I think about it: I could picture her writing a very similar story.

It’s actually not as fantastical as the other works by McKillip I’ve read before, so that makes it interesting too in comparison to the magic of her other work. At the same time, that’s here too, under the surface, in the myth-making.

Originally posted here.

[Phoenixfalls · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Patricia McKillips' fantasy for some years now. It is always moving and lyrical, and she captures the feel of old fairy tales better than any other author I know of. I have slowly been acquiring all of her books, and so in the course of my collecting I happened upon Moon-Flash in an out-of-print mass market edition. I immediately liked the cover art, for the alien animals and because Kyreol was a woman of color -- something still FAR too rare on the SF and Fantasy shelves. Something about the cover, too, reminded me of Island of the Blue Dolphins, though I can not tell you what it was.

I finally got around to reading Moon-Flash because I was falling behind in my SF Challenge and it was very short. I read it in a morning's sitting, falling easily into McKillip's more toned-down style (at least, compared to her fantasy; there's still plenty of symbolism and metaphor compared to most SF out there) and into Kyreol's child-like perspective. This is definitely a book suitable for a fairly young audience -- I would say it's suitable for even precocious 9-year olds -- but it is one of those rare books that despite that still holds riches for mature audiences. Children will immediately be able to relate to Kyreol's vast curiosity and fear; adults will be able to understand better the parts of the world that Kyreol can not -- its simplicities and its strangenesses, its tragedies, its hard choices.

It is a coming-of-age tale, a romance, a meditation on the power of dreams. It is a traveler's tale, and a tale of first contact. It is also a delicately beautiful exploration of the ethics of Star Trek's Prime Directive: an exploration, I say, because McKillip gives us no easy answers. But ultimately, it is a moving book about love, in all its forms: romantic love, the love between parents and children, and the abstract love of entire peoples, which can build monuments and change worlds.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

What stories, what mysteries, do people need? What is lost when all phenomena, especially those with high socal/spiritual importance, have mundane explanation? Can there be spiritual meaning in events that have no mystery?

The story waits to the last minute before saying anything directly, approaching its theme and the tale of young Kyreol and Terje with infinite serenity and delicacy. It's not one that I connected to as well as others by McKillip.

There's a sequel. I can't imagine what it could possibly add.

[Goran Lowie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember I first discovered Patricia McKillip when looking for writers similar to Ursula K. Le Guin. Though she quickly became one of my favorite authors, just like Le Guin, I never really saw the connection. Yes-- they both have amazing (lyrical) prose, engaging stories, well-rounded characters... but in terms of themes and content, the comparison always felt superficial.

Moon-Flash, on the other hand, seems like it could be straight out of the Hainish cycle, reminiscent of PLANET OF EXILE and the like. This book has one of my favorite tropes in SFF-- a "primitive" native from some random planet comes into contact with someone who we, the readers, realize to be some kind of extra-terrestrial. Moon-Flash is a story about a girl who asked a little too many questions and found out her world wasn't entirely what she thought it was. Distinctly anthropological and the least McKillip-feeling book of hers I've ever read. Not as lyrical, not as magical, not as complex-- a simple, classic story told well.

[Rylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science fiction and mysticism rolled in to one book, for me, what's not to love?
For others, the world building might not be up to par. This is a bit of a short book, so maybe the story won't be as flushed out as it could be.
But, for me it was perfect. I loved how there were parts of the story that just couldn't be explained away by science or technology. There was a dreamy, mystical, lyrical quality to this book, along with the presence of a way of life that could literally take away all spiritual connection to the world, if one allows for it.
I don't want to spoil anything, but the melding of past and future, of science and spirituality, it was just so lovely to me.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

3.5/5 (Good)
"As Patricia A. McKillip (1948-2022) recently passed away (obituary), I decided to pick up one of her few science fiction novels. And I’m glad I did! Channeling (and reworking) the conceptual breakthrough-style premise of Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night (serialized 1948) and countless generation ship novels, Moon-Flash (1984) is an achingly beautiful coming-of-age story of a young woman [...]"

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very much reminded me of an Andre Norton-type book, with its young protagonists going on a voyage of discovery and finding a sci-fi world at the end. The river journey also put me in mind of The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones

[Althea Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the sequel to this book (The Moon and the Face) in June - and wow, this book is just so much better. Even if I had read them in the proper order, I'm pretty sure my opinion would be the same.
'Moon-Flash' is a simple, short book, but carefully crafted, emotionally touching, and with subtle social commentary.
Kyreol is a young woman of a primitive society. Her people live along the banks of a river, their world circumscribed by a cliff face upstream and a waterfall downstream. No one has ever ventured beyond these limits. Time is measured by the Moon-Flash, an event given religious significance - a time for betrothals and ritual.
However, Kyreol has always been more curious than others of her tribe - and when she meets a strange Hunter in the woods, she sets out, with her childhood friend, Terje, leaving her betrothed behind, to see what might lie beyond the boundaries of her world... and to try to discover what might have happened to her mother, long-since-disappeared.

What Kyreol finds is that her people have been living 'protected' by a high-technology society - almost like an ethnological museum exhibit. Even the most sacred event of her people is simply a technological phenomenon of the wider world.

It's an interesting discussion - although McKillip doesn't romanticize the 'simple life' of the primitive people too much - and neither does she paint them as wide-eyed innocents (they are intelligent, resourceful, and quickly adaptable) - she does make the point that in a more sophisticated society, something may be lost. In this case, she hints, it may be the precognitive(?) dreams of the people of the Riverworld. But even so, does any society have the right to hide things from another, denying them knowledge, and therefore, choice?

[Edie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly fine story, in the best of story-telling that I've read in a long time. I shouldn't be surprised as Patricia McKillip's work is so very good. What I liked best about this was that I felt I could feel and see and hear Riverworld. And that I could listen to and understand Kyreol's questions and puzzles and wonders.

[Lorelei · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far I have really liked everything that I have read from Patricia McKillip. I wanted something that wasn't way too long, that wasn't going to be too hard to plough through, and this hit the spot. A delightful story. Two 'children,' who come from the River-World, discover there is so much more - to the river and to the world, then they'd thought.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Cool, but a little simple. Fair for the size of the book.

[Jeannie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m really getting tired of Goodreads’ iPad app. This is probably the 5th time I have written an entire review in the small box they bring up for you to write it in, only to have my pinky finger brush some other part of the screen which instantly closes the review text box and there’s no way to get it back. 0 stars for you goodreads, this app is pretty rubbish.

I had written about 4 paragraphs already and i don’t really feel like doing it over.

Basically, this book had a good idea, was written well, but ultimately fell flat. I think it would have worked better as much longer book with multiple viewpoints and a lot more conflict. The seed was there.

[Adobe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kyreol abandons her betrothed husband and paddles down a world-spanning river as she searches for an enigmatic stranger. Moon-Flash is an interesting experiment in genre science-fiction that consciously avoids European paradigms (the characters are non-white; the mythology is non-Western), but it feels slight and underdeveloped. The best part of the novel is the Hunter Orcrow, who is patiently bemused by the two adolescents dogging his trail.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely first-contact/coming-of-age story, near perfectly balanced between lyricism and sfnal realism. It's short and much more of a travelogue than a conflict-driven plot (a fact noted several times, disbelieving, in-story by one character) but it's very nice. McKillip has an amazing felicity with language, even when she reduces her vocabulary to fit into the circumscribed life of the Riverworld.

Highly recommended. 4 stars!

[Abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely a different kind of story than many of the other books that I have read by McKillip. It was a sci-fi but still very distinctively her writing style. I just am not sure if it fits in sci-fi. I am curious to see how she answers the questions she has raised.

[Kellean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise and a soft plot twist midway but I didn't connect to the characters or even the world. A quick read that could have used more development of the characters and their relationships to each other.

[Suzanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather disappointed. It wasn't a lyrical and elegantly told story that I have come to expect from McKillip.

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Days after I finished this, I found myself trying to explain to a friend how utterly charming it was.

A young girl who has always asked questions, wants to know where the river goes. And why her tribal story-teller father insists her mother is not dead, but where is she?

Kyreol convinces her friend Terje to go with her on the journey.

HUGE spoiler: the tribe and the river and the primitive people that live along it, are preserved in a giant high tech bubble. Each tribe stays in their own area. But the pair break all the rules and having left their area, and come into contact with society outside, they can never return. The moon flash was the deceleration of a supply ship reaching a moon colony, centuries ago and every group of people under the dome use the flash in a different way; it has a different meaning, it is a sign, or a religious thing, or their rituals and calendars are built around it. And knowing this, the modern people still send a supply ship, delivering nothing, to make the moon flash they know the others rely on and look for.

For some reason that really struck me.

Leaving aside if it is the right thing to do; to preserve them like some kind of zoo exhibit. I don’t know.

Much to think about here.

4 stars

[Belinda Mellor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly delightful.
The second Patricia McKillip I've read in a row, and very very different. A much simpler story than Fool's Run yet every bit as good. This story tackles the question of whether humanity was better or worse in a more simplistic time - before we knew too much, about everything. There are no answers, of course, and yet the question is so valid. Impossible to know, just as it was impossible for Kyreol to 'unknow' all the things she learnt as she hunted for the end of the world, and found something quite different.

[Jael Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good! I am kicking myself for leaving the sequel at home! It doesn't end on a cliff hanger, but I still need to know more about this world! It is so fascinating and Kyreol is such a lovely, curious character! I understand her need to explore and know more and I love it! I can't wait to see where her story goes!

[Kristyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like the river Kyreol and Terje follow, full of a quiet yearning toward something farther on.

I first read this book decades ago, then re-discovered it on my brother's shelf. Every time I read a book by Patricia McKillip, I am enchanted.

[Carola Garza A · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not completely sure how I feel about this book. The story is charming but predictable, and it only managed to surprise me in the last 30 pages or so. It's well written, and I found it's pacing soothing, like listening to an ancient story. So I think overall I liked it? I'm not quite sure...

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this novel (novella?) lacks the sophistication of McKillip's later works, there is an almost poetic quality to its comparatively simplistic narrative. Holding off from a more detailed review until I've read the sequel--this was obviously meant to be 'Part 1' of a larger story.

[Srishti · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
It felt a little underdeveloped maybe? And I don't think i exactly gel with McKillip's style, not at the moment at least. It was more lyrical (for lack of a better word) and inward-looking than I would have ideally liked my initial forays into fantasy after such a long break to be.

[Dave Osmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good little YA science fiction novel. Enjoyable charatchers with depth and a storyline that moves right along and tells a pretty interesting story. I'll forgive the couple of small plot holes because the concept was well-handled, and fun to read

[Etola · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely and unexpected story, deftly and poetically told. So glad I came across this book!

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking forward to the second one.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful interstellar fantasy. Awesome characters, great world building and totally unexpected ending. Really enjoyed this one.

[Mejse Thomsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5 eller 4
En ret magisk fortælling, science fiction, som er så lidt science fictiony som det kan blive. Nogle sjove og interessante tanker om drømme og mødet med en anden verden.