by Hai Shunxi

Created on: May 29, 2010

At just thirty Christopher Rice is already a well-established writer. Since his literary debut at twenty-two (A Density of Souls, 2002), he’s published four more novels. Most of his fans deny that their fondness for his work has anything to do with the fact that he's the son of vampire-erotic-southern gothic darling turned angel-writer Anne Rice (author of a bazillion books), although most seem painfully aware of it.

So does literary talent breed true? After struggling through the younger Rice's fifth novel, The Moonlit Earth, I'd have to say, "No": it definitely looks like a textbook case of literary nepotism, not much different from Tabitha King.

Cameron Reynolds' face was broadcast across the world twice. An advertising campaign made the handsome flight attendant one of the faces of Peninsula Airlines, his smile plastered on billboards around the Pacific. But when his hotel in Hong Kong exploded in a whirlwind of carnage, the same face was caught on videotape as he fled the blast with a "Middle Eastern Man." The Hong Kong police took his failure to reappear to mean that he had set the bomb that killed sixty-six people.

Forty-eight hours later, his big sister Meagan found herself in the Pearl of the Orient after following a trail of cryptic text messages from Cameron's phone. Certain her brother is being held by billionaire Zach Holder (owner of the boutique airline where he works), Meagan rushed headlong into the unknown. Instead of her brother she found death and destruction; a barely-legal, gay Saudi Prince; and a trail of deception and misdirection as tangled as a basket of yarn in a roomful of kittens.

Meagan will probably never figure it all out - mostly because Christopher Rice will probably never figure it all out.

Although labeled a thriller, The Moonlit Earth turned out no more thrilling than your average plumbing guide. The action moves at a snail's pace, and page after page is given over to meaningful glances and averted gazes among the few characters. At one point, Rice unexpectedly drops in an extended chapter or three of back-story, interrupting what little flow the narrative had built.

What starts out as a combination mystery-thriller segues into a mishmash of confusing plot threads with double- and triple-crosses worthy of a Ludlum novel with a set of characters who come off as dull-witted and trite. The comparison to Ludlum is deliberate - like the late thriller author, young Rice also insists on italicizing random words in almost

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