Book Review: Chocolate Chocolate Moons

 As we have a bit of a break before our next big candy holiday, Easter that is where I live, let's take a break from chocolate food and drink all together and look at a book that involves chocolate. Chocolate Chocolate Moons by Jackie Kingon is a comedic science fiction tale about weight, space travel, and the love of chocolate.

Comedic fiction is a genre entirely of its own. To judge it you really have to ask yourself: Did this make you laugh. The short answer for me was YES! A lot of chuckles escaped me while I was reading this book.

 Let me give you some basic background without spoiling anything. Our main character is Molly Marbles, a college student at the start of the book, who wins the chance to study on the moon where her weight isn't going to be as much of a problem as it is on Earth. This problem is never shown to be medical or physical but more emotional because even this story is set far in the future overweight people are still deeply frowned upon. Molly's favorite candy is called chocolate moons but she loves them so much that she likes to double the chocolate in the name. These treats show up time and again in the story as we follow Molly through school into her life as mother and wife and then further as our everyday heroine must become a detective to save the solar system from corporate greed.

The book is promoted in part as a mystery but the amount of mystery in this story is a bit difficult to grasp if you not used to reading funny fiction because the viewpoint and narrative elements are confused, I believe on purpose.  Frankly I found that I enjoyed it far more by not trying to figure out what was going on and just flowing with the amusing names of people and places as I followed Molly through her world that stretches well beyond the Earth and moon out into the rest of the colonized solar system.

Some folks might find the characters complete confusion over history unbelievable but I think that's the point.  I have a great difficulty grasping how my own college level history students can say and write some of the things they do at times but they do have strange ideas about the past especially anything more than two decades in the past.

In a way this novel is also about serious current issues of health, body image, social pressure, reliance on corporate produced food, and the need for the average person to stand up for what is right. But unless you are a fan of the comedic genre you may find yourself overwhelmed and thinking too much space travel, history, and agriculture. Just let it go and enough the ride to paraphrase Mystery Science Theater 3000. To get your own copies and check out other opinions use the links in this article.