A Dragon is dead.
Corta Helio, one of the five family corporations that rule the Moon, has fallen. Its riches are divided up among its many enemies, its survivors scattered. Eighteen months have passed.
The remaining Helio children, Lucasinho and Luna, are under the protection of the powerful Asamoahs, while Robson, still reeling from witnessing his parent's violent deaths, is now a ward—virtually a hostage—of Mackenzie Metals. And the last appointed heir, Lucas, has vanished of the surface of the moon.
Only Lady Sun, dowager of Taiyang, suspects that Lucas Corta is not dead, and more to the point—that he is still a major player in the game. After all, Lucas always was the Schemer, and even in death, he would go to any lengths to take back everything and build a new Corta Helio, more powerful than before. But Corta Helio needs allies, and to find them, the fleeing son undertakes an audacious, impossible journey—to Earth.
In an unstable lunar environment, the shifting loyalties and political machinations of each family reach the zenith of their most fertile plots as outright war erupts.
***
It says a lot that I look back on Luna: New Moon lovingly rather than remembering how maddening and demanding a novel it was. Outside of his exemplary young adult efforts, Ian McDonald has rarely been easy to read, but I found the first stretch of said text tremendously testing. Yet for every ounce of effort I expended, Luna: New Moon repaid in spades, much as the Mackenzies do with their debts.
The Mackenzies are but one of the five faithless families at the heart of the second part of McDonald's narrative: a surprisingly accessible successor assuming you've finished the book it builds on. And build it does, on much of the hard work of the first: on the harsh mistress of the moon that is its desperate setting, and on the very much in motion story, which focuses on the clashing clans whose mandate is to somehow succeed on that satellite.
One thing Luna: Wolf Moon doesn't share with McDonald's last is its massive cast. It can't, considering the catastrophic fall of the Cortas—though to call what befell them a fall isn't quite right. The Cortas, "the lucky, flashy Cortas," were decimated, deliberately and decisively. Like the Starks of A Song of Ice and Fire, which fantasy saga this complex and often shocking science fiction series is obviously modelled on, they had their head literally lopped off.
And they didn't just lose their leader: they also lost their source of income, their sense of security and their seat of power. But though the Cortas are definitely down, they're not out. The better to recover some measure of strength, the survivors of the disaster at Joao de Deus have scattered.
Like Arya, little Luna looks too young to represent any kind of threat, but she'll come into her own quickly. Robson is stronger than Luna as of the offing, but having been adopted—or taken hostage—by the Mackenzies, he's something of a pawn, and thus this saga's Sansa. Lucasinho of the "good sex and better baked goods" can be Bran, because his part in the plot hasn't really been revealed; legal eagle Ariel is reminiscent of Robb Stark in that she still holds some sway over the system that underpins everything; whilst Wagner, the wolf who has channeled his bipolar disorder into a powerful pack mentality, is, of course, the Jon Snow of McDonald's story.
Some of these similarities are slight, sure, but some are so on the nose that they must be by design, and I struggle to begrudge that, given the incredible recognition George R. R. Martin has received in recent years. As an author, Ian McDonald is from my perspective no less deserving, and if he has to follow in a footstep or two to achieve even a measure of the success Martin has, then I say okay. The Cortas aren't carbon copies in any case; it's only their respective roles in the whole that have me meandering about in memory lane. Well, it's that, and a line that goes something like this: if you play the game of Luna, "you either live or the moon kills you."
The Mackenzies are but one of the five faithless families at the heart of the second part of McDonald's narrative: a surprisingly accessible successor assuming you've finished the book it builds on. And build it does, on much of the hard work of the first: on the harsh mistress of the moon that is its desperate setting, and on the very much in motion story, which focuses on the clashing clans whose mandate is to somehow succeed on that satellite.
One thing Luna: Wolf Moon doesn't share with McDonald's last is its massive cast. It can't, considering the catastrophic fall of the Cortas—though to call what befell them a fall isn't quite right. The Cortas, "the lucky, flashy Cortas," were decimated, deliberately and decisively. Like the Starks of A Song of Ice and Fire, which fantasy saga this complex and often shocking science fiction series is obviously modelled on, they had their head literally lopped off.
And they didn't just lose their leader: they also lost their source of income, their sense of security and their seat of power. But though the Cortas are definitely down, they're not out. The better to recover some measure of strength, the survivors of the disaster at Joao de Deus have scattered.
Like Arya, little Luna looks too young to represent any kind of threat, but she'll come into her own quickly. Robson is stronger than Luna as of the offing, but having been adopted—or taken hostage—by the Mackenzies, he's something of a pawn, and thus this saga's Sansa. Lucasinho of the "good sex and better baked goods" can be Bran, because his part in the plot hasn't really been revealed; legal eagle Ariel is reminiscent of Robb Stark in that she still holds some sway over the system that underpins everything; whilst Wagner, the wolf who has channeled his bipolar disorder into a powerful pack mentality, is, of course, the Jon Snow of McDonald's story.
Some of these similarities are slight, sure, but some are so on the nose that they must be by design, and I struggle to begrudge that, given the incredible recognition George R. R. Martin has received in recent years. As an author, Ian McDonald is from my perspective no less deserving, and if he has to follow in a footstep or two to achieve even a measure of the success Martin has, then I say okay. The Cortas aren't carbon copies in any case; it's only their respective roles in the whole that have me meandering about in memory lane. Well, it's that, and a line that goes something like this: if you play the game of Luna, "you either live or the moon kills you."
