Blog Tour - Rabbit in the Moon by Fiona Moore
When worlds collide, only courage can bridge the divide.
Fiona Moore's critically acclaimed sci-fi journey, Rabbit in the Moon, is now available! Step into a gripping tale where reality frays at the edges, secrets lurk around every corner, and two unlikely heroes hold the key to saving not just one world, but two, and we have a special sneak peek!
Check out an excerpt from Rabbit in the Moon!
Ken had recorded so many interviews with Seaboard soldiers that once-thrilling tales of hand-to-hand combat in the eerie jungles of Illinois, stories of battles in the open desert south of Detroit with ageing kerosene-powered tanks, had lost their glamour and so, his mind drifting, he almost missed the crucial detail.
“Hang on,” he said. “A weird bony thing?”
The Marine paused, frowned. “Fuck it, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“No, no, I do,” Ken said hastily. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Well,” the Marine continued, brows beetling further into her scarred face, “it was the strangest thing. Skinny, like a skeleton, only not quite, you know? Like a famine kid, but huge, seven feet tall in this funny mask, kind of beaky, and this outfit like feathery rags. Don’t know where it came from, one minute we’re shooting at each other over a rise, and the next minute it’s standing in the middle of the firing.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, we kept shooting, obviously,” the Marine said. “And this creature, this thing, just raised its arms and—blam. Next thing I knew the two grunts beside me were crispy fried, and same with the Reds on the other side, once I got a look at them. Don’t know what saved me, maybe it was ’cause I was sunk behind the ridge, reloading. The thing was gone, and there’s no proof it was ever there. Captain says it’s PTSD, and you know, I kind of wonder if he’s right.”
Ken watched the movements of the creature. He found himself remembering the rabbit, desperate, driven along by the ravens. Unable to understand, to see the bigger picture. The birds now hopping in front, guiding it, now flapping behind it in a burst of wings, chasing it, carefully keeping it in line.
“It’s either following us or—”
“Or?” Manders looked up from the fieldpad.
“—it’s herding us.”
* * *
The man outside Ken’s studio apartment was polite, probably sixty-something, with thinning short hair and a pleasant smile over a sharp black suit. He introduced himself as Hase, an officer in the Seaboard Intelligence Corps, glancing briefly at the spare white walls with their studentish collection of 1970s movie posters, the Swedish knockoff flatpack furniture, the half-packed rucksack and bedroll.
“I understand you’ve been asking a lot of soldiers questions about some… thing they see on the battlefield,” he said.
“Yes,” Ken said. “It’s my job. This is my press pass.” Hiding the memory of stories the other war correspondents told, of people who asked the wrong questions disappearing, maybe turning up later in conveniently untraceable pieces in the war zone. He’d had his share of spat insults, demands to know when Nunavut would stop pretending to be neutral and recognise the Red menace for what it was, barely polite refusals to his requests for an embedded post, all par for the course for any of the foreigners in Seaboard territory. He told himself this visit was no different, just more official intimidation. Hoped he looked brave.
Hase sat down heavily. “Maybe twenty-five years ago, I wouldn’t be here, telling you this,” he said, without the slightest humour in his voice, “but the war’s changed a lot of things. I don’t work for the FBI anymore, hell, there is no FBI anymore—” Ken began to speak, but Hase gestured impatiently, “—the Reds may call their intelligence corps the FBI, but it’s sure as hell not the one I knew, and the Seaboarders aren’t quite that deluded—so the information I have from back then is mine to keep or give away as I see fit.” He activated his pad, showed Ken the files. Ken noted with slight envy that the pad was a relatively new Korean import.
“Bunnygirl.rtf?”
“It’s what some of the soldiers call it, the Bunny Girl. Or them. Could be there’s more than one; if there’s only one, it sure moves around. I first heard about it from soldiers coming back from war zones. This bony scavenger-bird thing, appearing in the middle of skirmishes, or ghosting along with patrols. Some of ’em think it’s Death. They got songs about it.”
“And you?”
“Whatever it is, it’s not too bright. That’s why they call it the Bunny Girl; it seems to just dumbly follow the troops around, like some gal who doesn’t know better. But it’s pretty deadly if you get it on the wrong day, and not in the way you expect.”
* * *
“Can you get me closer to it?” Ken asked Al.
Al glanced at Manders for affirmation, and the captain looked at Ken. “You got an idea, Usagi, I’d like you to run it past me.”
“It’s just…” Ken struggled for the right words, awkward under the military glare. “I think we should call its bluff,” he said. “If it’s herding us, then the last thing to do is let it.”
Manders nodded at Al. “Take us into shore, private,” he said.
Epic worlds collide in a race against time in this thrilling sci-fi novel from critically acclaimed author Fiona Moore!
Ken Usagi, a daring young journalist from the icy wilderness of Nunavut, is thrust into a perilous journey through the war-ravaged remnants of the former United States. Haunted by a chilling encounter with a mysterious biotechnical machine—a relic from his troubled childhood—he becomes convinced it holds the key to ending the devastating conflict tearing the world apart.
Far to the south, Totchli, a brilliant young biotechnician from a Mesoamerican society pummeled by catastrophic climate change, receives a desperate order. He must venture north to uncover the fate of a critical colonial expedition, a mission that once carried the last hopes of his people’s survival. Communication channels with the expedition have fallen eerily silent.
As Ken and Totchli embark on their separate quests, the very fabric of reality begins to unravel. Their paths converge, leading to a fateful encounter where the boundaries of their worlds blur and shatter.
In a race against time, with the fate of two worlds hanging in the balance, Ken and Totchli must navigate a web of secrets, dangers, and cosmic forces that threaten to consume everything they hold dear. Can they unite to save their shattered worlds, or will they be forced to watch as everything they know and love is destroyed?
Grab this epic sci-fi read today!
About Fiona Moore
Fiona Moore is a Professor of Business Anthropology at Royal Holloway, University of London, known for immersive studies of German banks, British retail chains, BMW MINI, and Taiwanese self-initiated expatriate networks.
She is a BSFA Award winner and and World Fantasy Award finalist who writes guidebooks to SF television series, plays, audio dramas, novels and stories. In all forms, she writes about gender and ethnic identity, globalisation and nationalism, networking, and how people deal with the changing working world.
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