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Luna New Moon Ian McDonald Books

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Luna New Moon Ian McDonald Books

While the premises of this world defy all credulity as far as any conceivable cultural evolution for an off-Earth colony, the story-telling within those premises is quite good. The author builds a world that feels gritty and real, he ramps up the tension effectively, he shows a knack for sound character development, and he's effective in making us feel the weight of human consequences from the actions and decisions in this lunar society. The wolf-pack concept is somewhat ludicrous, as is the notion that the head of the Corta family wouldn't use his doomsday option, but that's all well and fine.

Where this book really falls short, however, is the editing. Or, perhaps, the utter lack thereof. It is replete with grammatical errors, misspellings, continuity of detail flaws, and the full run of editing mistakes. There is at least one error per page, and that is inexcusable in a mass market work from the world's foremost publisher in the genre, Tor. It reads as though it wasn't edited at all before publication. The purpose of good editing is, first and foremost, to make the words disappear, so that the reader can be transported into this world. Any error jarringly brings the reader back into the present, makes the reader think about the form rather than the content. And that is a shame, because it detracts from the experience of the story.

Mr. McDonald, I salute your storytelling, but get a better editor.


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Luna New Moon Ian McDonald Books Reviews

This sci-fi saga follows the battle between five mega-corporation families, or dragons, for control of the moon. I struggled to keep all the balls in the air as the plot jumped from one character to the next, and in the middle of the book, my interest flagged. But I finished, and I'm glad I did. As other reviewers have said, the world creation in this book is absolutely stellar (no pun intended), as the lunar society and characters are described with perfect clarity and vision, and perfect strangeness. McDonald's world seethes with details of the aspects of life in low gravity, high cosmic and solar radiation, limitless dust, ruthless competition for resources, entertainments and amusements, all driven by the nearness of death and the certainty that, after staying a certain period on the moon, their bodies will not tolerate returning to Earth's higher gravity. This world fairly vibrates with the detail, the immediacy, the intimate connection between the characters and their world. I found the saga of lifelong schemes and ploys reminiscent of Dune, as others have noted, though I didn't find McDonald's characters as engaging as Hebert's. I look forward to more McDonald books, if only for the worlds he creates for us.
About five years ago I read the author’s River of Gods and was blown away by his depiction of a near future dystopian society. I followed up several years later with The Dervish House and found it to be somewhat difficult reading, with many unexplained foreign terms and cultural references. While this novel shares a few of those problems, it did at least contain a glossary and was much easier to interpret through context.

I’ve seen several reviews which label it a mixture of The Godfather, Game of Thrones and Dune, set on the Moon. I really can’t improve on that. Five predominant families (The Five Dragons) relentlessly compete for economic and political supremacy in habitats on and under the lunar surface. There are some good “hard” science fiction concepts related to the intricacies involved with life in space and on the Moon, but the gist of the novel deals with interpersonal and family dynamics.

The major characters are a part of the Brazilian Corta family and the novel is filled with Portuguese terms and cultural references, which is a little bit overdone and inconvenient. Also, this is the first book of a two part series, so don’t expect any resolution at the end of the novel.
In recent years, with Brasyl and Dervish House, McDonald's been doing near-future SF in exotic locals. Luna continues that trend and develops a unique culture, yet with plenty of familiar SF twists.

Large chunks of Luna reminded me, in a very good way, of the first Dune book. There is that tight our-family-vs-their-family paranoia, scheming and dynastic maneuvering. There is the evil nemesis equivalent to Baron Harkonnen. The knife duels. The lunar environment is quite as deadly as Dune deserts.

None of this should be thought of as a copy, Luna runs with its own ideas and has its own vibe. But Dune, part 1, was an amazing story of feudal dynastic warfare and Luna follows the same logic because that logic makes sense. Luna layers its own capitalistic/libertarian/Brazilian sensibilities onto it and channels 21st century cyberpunk. I especially liked the "familiars", basically a personal AI that seems to be pretty much a logical evolution of a smartphone/digital assistant.

Outside of family ninja-ing, the culture is richly developed, with POV characters a la GoT ("the McKenzies always pay back, three times"). Like GoT, characters are richly developed and not all will survive. There are lots of references to sex, with occasional slightly graphic scenes (btw, a fair bit of those references concern gay sex) .

One thing I did miss, slightly, is that the initial down-at-heels dystopian thread merges into the mainline fairly early on. There is a fascinating subtheme to Luna, that of oxygen and water being strictly on a use-if-you-can-pay basis and what happens to the poor who can't. But that fades when the action mostly shifts to the rich feudal families. Seems like it might pop back up in book 2.

Speaking of which, this is book 1 and while it stops at a good spot, it is not a standalone story. Really looking forward to book 2.

p.s. Ian McDonald is a really good longtime SF author, but relatively unknown. A bit like GRRM before GoT - people in the know mostly love him, but his are not the SF books you're gonna find at the airport bookstall. I don't want to pigeonhole him, but, at a guess, I think that his being from Belfast is one of the reasons he lavishes so much attention on cultural details in conflicts, certainly that has been a major theme in many of his books.
While the premises of this world defy all credulity as far as any conceivable cultural evolution for an off-Earth colony, the story-telling within those premises is quite good. The author builds a world that feels gritty and real, he ramps up the tension effectively, he shows a knack for sound character development, and he's effective in making us feel the weight of human consequences from the actions and decisions in this lunar society. The wolf-pack concept is somewhat ludicrous, as is the notion that the head of the Corta family wouldn't use his doomsday option, but that's all well and fine.

Where this book really falls short, however, is the editing. Or, perhaps, the utter lack thereof. It is replete with grammatical errors, misspellings, continuity of detail flaws, and the full run of editing mistakes. There is at least one error per page, and that is inexcusable in a mass market work from the world's foremost publisher in the genre, Tor. It reads as though it wasn't edited at all before publication. The purpose of good editing is, first and foremost, to make the words disappear, so that the reader can be transported into this world. Any error jarringly brings the reader back into the present, makes the reader think about the form rather than the content. And that is a shame, because it detracts from the experience of the story.

Mr. McDonald, I salute your storytelling, but get a better editor.