A guest review from writer and Forumite Jo Zebedee:
It had been a full year since I read Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald before I finally got around to reading the sequel to it (this was largely caused by my husband nicking it to read before me, so that’s a good sign) and, with my inability to cope well with large casts of characters, I was concerned I would struggle to get into the story again.
I needn’t have worried. Within a couple of chapters I was back into things and up to speed with what was happening. That pace kept up, bar a couple of short sections, right to the end.
Luna is a project of impressive scope. A moon governed by families with links to an Earth that needs the lunar resources and will, when needed, flex its muscles. The inter-family war that erupted at the end of the book one shows no sign of letting up. Set against this, myriad relationships, friendships, partnerships and enmities that keep the wide-ranging story essentially a human one. For the tech lovers, there’s plenty to enjoy here from the well-thought out considerations of the challenges a lunar base would face, to engaging tech that feels like it could be real.
At the centre of the story are the characters, each family bringing a distinct flavour that does credit to McDonald’s wide-ranging back catalogue. The Cortas feel Brazillian, the MacKenzies have a definite Australian-pioneer feel to them, the Suns are suitably elusive. That believable flavour keeps the story fresh where it could get bogged down in politics, and engaging.
As with any book with such an array of characters, some work better than others. I found Lucas Corta to be dislikeable, as in book one, and could happily have seen much of his (central) arc culled. But there are other characters who are more deftly presented: Lucashinho Corta, playboy with little substance to him, remains likeable enough to engage with throughout; Robson MacKenzie, another Young Adult character, is plucky and active and easy to keep reading on with; Wagner Corta, the Wolf of the title, was, for me, the soul of this book. Human (especially for a man with more than a little wolf about him), dogged and sympathetic, his narrative was the one which kept me turning the pages and wanting more. The female characters in this book took less of a centre stage than in book one, but their narratives, particularly Ariel’s, remained engaging.
There were aspects of the book I didn’t find worked just as well. The focus on the sexual habits of various characters felt a little forced in places, with an authorly-voice lifting me from the narrative from time to time. Some of the descriptions of clothes and fashion, whilst extending the world building nicely, seemed just a little too frivolous within the story frame.
These are niggles, however. Wolf Moon, like New Moon, is an exciting book with a scope that carries is beyond the normal space tale into something more enduring. With the end of Book 2 presenting a little less of a cliffhanger than that of Book 1, there was still more than enough hinted at, and enough questions remaining, that I’m looking forward to Book 3 very much.
Jo Zebedee is the author of a range of sff books. She can be found on twitter @jozebwrites.
