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"The Moon wants to kill you. Whether it's being unable to pay your per diem for your allotted food, water, and air, or you just get caught up in a fight between the Moon's ruling corporations, the Five Dragons. You must fight for every inch you want to gain in the Moon's near feudal society. And that is just what Adriana Corta did. As the leader of the Moon's newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn show more her family's new status. Now, at the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation, Corta Helio, surrounded by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies... and each other"-- show lessTags
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Welcome to the colonized Moon. Once upon a time there were 4 big families that started their empires on the Moon and coexisted semi-peacefully for a while. Then a 5th emerge. When the novel starts the 5 dragons on the Moon live in semi-peace; heralded by the Eagle of the Moon - the man that is the president of the Lunar Development Corporation - the corporation that started it all and is still in command. Until an assassin goes after one of the Corta siblings (the fifth of the dragons) and the peace is shattered. The families start blaming each other and the things get a bit complicated. More attempts follow, people die, we even have a wedding and by the end of the novel, one of the families is almost destroyed. And of course the show more culprit comes as a surprise.
But it is not just the story of that final conflict - we get the amazing backstory of Cortas - from the sands of Brazil to the dust of the Moon; from having nothing to having everything. And the Moon is not just a copy of the Earth - all 5 families had built their own worlds using their different cultural heritages and built something that feels familiar but is so very different. It's a story of youth and love and hope; it is a story of death and broken dreams. One warning - there are quite explicit sex scenes - which are worked out into the story in a way that did not feel as if McDonald was just making sure they had it.
It is a fascinating world and one of the best built Moon worlds I had seen in a while. Between the story of the dynasties and the corporations, it is a scary world - in a place where you need money to breath, life means almost nothing. And because of that it means everything.
A great start of the story and I want to see where it will go in the next novel - and to see who actually survived at the end. show less
But it is not just the story of that final conflict - we get the amazing backstory of Cortas - from the sands of Brazil to the dust of the Moon; from having nothing to having everything. And the Moon is not just a copy of the Earth - all 5 families had built their own worlds using their different cultural heritages and built something that feels familiar but is so very different. It's a story of youth and love and hope; it is a story of death and broken dreams. One warning - there are quite explicit sex scenes - which are worked out into the story in a way that did not feel as if McDonald was just making sure they had it.
It is a fascinating world and one of the best built Moon worlds I had seen in a while. Between the story of the dynasties and the corporations, it is a scary world - in a place where you need money to breath, life means almost nothing. And because of that it means everything.
A great start of the story and I want to see where it will go in the next novel - and to see who actually survived at the end. show less
Intense, dense, fast, as often tender as it is brutal, as often harshly judgemental of its world as it is in awe of its acheivements, with a spoiled, rich, ruthless, power-hungry family at its core that nonethelss come to be truly lovable, even admirable - Luna: New Moon, doesn't care about contradictions, it loves its contradictions, those are the cognitive and emotional boundaries it utterly eschews, the same way Lunar society embraces the polysexual. Five families dominate the Moon, they are rich and powerful and dangerous - old school feudal aristocrats, new-style corporate overlords, in a society wehre every breath of air and drink of water has to be paid for. It opens with a Moon Run - rich young kids on a rite of passage, and it show more never stops running through its huge cast of characters and multi-laeyred, intricate plots, across the utterly transformed face of of the Moon. A major, brilliant, exhilerating piece of pure science fiction. show less
New Moon has one foot firmly set in a hard science fiction tradition of lunar sociology best exemplified by Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and also worked on by Clarke, Asimov, and John Varley. In the early 22nd century, the moon is a mining outpost that provides Earth with vital Helium-3 and rare earth minerals. It's a harsh world of 1.8 million or so souls, with absentee corporate overlords, where everything is negotiable, beauty is cheap, and death is omnipresent in a thousand ways. This is a serious story about existence and flowering on the thinnest of margins.
But McDonald has a second inspiration, which I didn't realize until reading about this book afterwards, and that's the classic soap opera Dallas. The moon is ruled show more by the Five Dragons, great family corporations, and our heroes, the Brazilian Helium mining Cortas, are sliding towards a war against the dominant Mackenzies. The Cortas are lead by an old woman, with five children scrabbling for the future of the family. Rafa is the golden boy, the heir apparent, with a weak temperament. Lucas is the schemer, a Machiavellian with a deadly plan. Ariel is an outsider who abandoned the family to become a lunar lawyer. The last two siblings fade to colorlessness. Luna and Lucasinho, grandchildren, round out the family. Lucasinho in particular is a spoiled playboy, a viewpoint into lunar society. The other families are less developed, reptilian antagonists rather than characters.
It's melodrama, but to paraphrase a former FBI director, "I'm just a messy bitch from New Jersey who loves drama", and while this book takes it good time to find it's place, once it arrives it is utterly compelling. The finale, an orgy of shocking violence, is particularly well done. I can't say that New Moon is great. I can say that after finishing the book past midnight, I immediately grabbed the sequel and stayed up till 5:00 AM getting through part two. show less
But McDonald has a second inspiration, which I didn't realize until reading about this book afterwards, and that's the classic soap opera Dallas. The moon is ruled show more by the Five Dragons, great family corporations, and our heroes, the Brazilian Helium mining Cortas, are sliding towards a war against the dominant Mackenzies. The Cortas are lead by an old woman, with five children scrabbling for the future of the family. Rafa is the golden boy, the heir apparent, with a weak temperament. Lucas is the schemer, a Machiavellian with a deadly plan. Ariel is an outsider who abandoned the family to become a lunar lawyer. The last two siblings fade to colorlessness. Luna and Lucasinho, grandchildren, round out the family. Lucasinho in particular is a spoiled playboy, a viewpoint into lunar society. The other families are less developed, reptilian antagonists rather than characters.
It's melodrama, but to paraphrase a former FBI director, "I'm just a messy bitch from New Jersey who loves drama", and while this book takes it good time to find it's place, once it arrives it is utterly compelling. The finale, an orgy of shocking violence, is particularly well done. I can't say that New Moon is great. I can say that after finishing the book past midnight, I immediately grabbed the sequel and stayed up till 5:00 AM getting through part two. show less
All right! What an ending! I won't spoil it, but it's one hell of a satisfying ride.
As I read it, I kept saying to myself, "Damn! This was MADE for HBO. (Or Showtime.) This could be done Brilliantly as a well-funded high-quality production. Hell, this would be even better than GoT, and not only because it's SF instead of F! It's full of glitz, sex, the weight of history, capitalism, and tradition, not to mention all the sprinkling of assassinations and attempted assassinations to liven the party. Plus, it has all the glory of THE MOON. Heinlein, eat your heart out."
First off, expect nothing less than a huge story of dynastic families struggling for control of the moon. There's tons of characters and a great many of them get stage time. show more That's not really a problem if you're used to some of the great epics. Hell, Even SOIAF (or GoT for everyone else) is rife with it. Tons of characters, lots of build, lots of tearing down, and a sense of something truly grand being laid out before us.
Now, I have to be honest. I've never read [a:Mario Puzo|12605|Mario Puzo|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1379918709p2/12605.jpg], but I am, like most red-blooded males and females, quite familiar with the Godfather. I've enjoyed the character builds, the struggle for family, business, and love. I've loved the struggle so much that I get giddy even at the flashbacks and the humble beginnings. All these things rambled in my mind as I read Luna. Gloriously.
But.
Ian McDonald's wonderful novel is not a retelling or a knock-off of the Godfather set on the moon. But it is just as deep and complex and wonderfully fleshed out as if I was growing up in New York City, carving and empire out for myself in Adriana's reminiscence, or living in modern day Luna, seeing all the fruits of your labor and feeling a deep pride in your accomplishments, knowing that family, whether by flesh or sentiment, is the most precious thing in either world. Earth is the old world, literally, and the Moon is the New World. It flows very naturally, and all of these wonderful lives made a stunningly detailed tapestry.
I generally don't prefer epic dynasties in my reading habits, but when I do get through them, I'm generally floored by the amount of care and precision placed into every line, every word. There's something truly brilliant about the effort placed into this novel in precisely the same way.
So: Total Respect.
Soon after starting it, I did have to scale back a few expectations. I've read a few of his novels, before, and I've learned to relax into the characters, never expect grand revelations early or even mid-novel. On the other hand, I've learned that I can always expect a huge revelation or an action at the end.
I've learned to be patient. Trying to discover a plot in his books is like digging for clues of a lost civilization in ten meters of sand.
Fortunately, the civilization always exists. We did buy the shovels and dustpans and brooms. And McDonald even provided us a wide cast of characters (read archeologists and interns) to do all the heavy sifting. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the process in mute admiration. Things have a way of unearthing themselves.
And what a story! I find myself itching all over to pick up the next novel, setting google alerts on his writing status for it, bemoaning the fate that I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO READ IT FOR SOME HORRIBLE FUCK OF A TIME. Gaaahhhhhrrrrgggghhhh!
Did I love this book? You better fucking believe it.
Did this manage to make my list of the best SF of the year? Yes. In fact, I would not be disappointed if it earned itself the Hugo for 2015 for Best Novel. It's hellaimpressive. It's a great epic read. It's also filled to the brim with imminently plausible science. Not a single thing was out of place. No handwavium for 68 thousand kilometers. That's also pretty damn impressive. But the bad? It doesn't break new SF ground EXCEPT in how it teaches SF to fear an awesomely new height in epic familial dynasties. I've seen things like this in Fantasy, too, but this happens to rooted deliciously and consummately in our Earth.
This was totally worth it. show less
As I read it, I kept saying to myself, "Damn! This was MADE for HBO. (Or Showtime.) This could be done Brilliantly as a well-funded high-quality production. Hell, this would be even better than GoT, and not only because it's SF instead of F! It's full of glitz, sex, the weight of history, capitalism, and tradition, not to mention all the sprinkling of assassinations and attempted assassinations to liven the party. Plus, it has all the glory of THE MOON. Heinlein, eat your heart out."
First off, expect nothing less than a huge story of dynastic families struggling for control of the moon. There's tons of characters and a great many of them get stage time. show more That's not really a problem if you're used to some of the great epics. Hell, Even SOIAF (or GoT for everyone else) is rife with it. Tons of characters, lots of build, lots of tearing down, and a sense of something truly grand being laid out before us.
Now, I have to be honest. I've never read [a:Mario Puzo|12605|Mario Puzo|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1379918709p2/12605.jpg], but I am, like most red-blooded males and females, quite familiar with the Godfather. I've enjoyed the character builds, the struggle for family, business, and love. I've loved the struggle so much that I get giddy even at the flashbacks and the humble beginnings. All these things rambled in my mind as I read Luna. Gloriously.
But.
Ian McDonald's wonderful novel is not a retelling or a knock-off of the Godfather set on the moon. But it is just as deep and complex and wonderfully fleshed out as if I was growing up in New York City, carving and empire out for myself in Adriana's reminiscence, or living in modern day Luna, seeing all the fruits of your labor and feeling a deep pride in your accomplishments, knowing that family, whether by flesh or sentiment, is the most precious thing in either world. Earth is the old world, literally, and the Moon is the New World. It flows very naturally, and all of these wonderful lives made a stunningly detailed tapestry.
I generally don't prefer epic dynasties in my reading habits, but when I do get through them, I'm generally floored by the amount of care and precision placed into every line, every word. There's something truly brilliant about the effort placed into this novel in precisely the same way.
So: Total Respect.
Soon after starting it, I did have to scale back a few expectations. I've read a few of his novels, before, and I've learned to relax into the characters, never expect grand revelations early or even mid-novel. On the other hand, I've learned that I can always expect a huge revelation or an action at the end.
I've learned to be patient. Trying to discover a plot in his books is like digging for clues of a lost civilization in ten meters of sand.
Fortunately, the civilization always exists. We did buy the shovels and dustpans and brooms. And McDonald even provided us a wide cast of characters (read archeologists and interns) to do all the heavy sifting. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the process in mute admiration. Things have a way of unearthing themselves.
And what a story! I find myself itching all over to pick up the next novel, setting google alerts on his writing status for it, bemoaning the fate that I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO READ IT FOR SOME HORRIBLE FUCK OF A TIME. Gaaahhhhhrrrrgggghhhh!
Did I love this book? You better fucking believe it.
Did this manage to make my list of the best SF of the year? Yes. In fact, I would not be disappointed if it earned itself the Hugo for 2015 for Best Novel. It's hellaimpressive. It's a great epic read. It's also filled to the brim with imminently plausible science. Not a single thing was out of place. No handwavium for 68 thousand kilometers. That's also pretty damn impressive. But the bad? It doesn't break new SF ground EXCEPT in how it teaches SF to fear an awesomely new height in epic familial dynasties. I've seen things like this in Fantasy, too, but this happens to rooted deliciously and consummately in our Earth.
This was totally worth it. show less
I was anxious about reading this book when I saw the long list of characters, thinking I would forget who was who and that would spoil the story, and had hopes it would be a mindless thriller set on the moon. However I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was actually quite easy to follow the characters as McDonald focusses on just a few at a time. Indeed the story of the families, their feuds, their inheritances, their powers, their histories, and their relationships are strung together very well. I understand the author wanted to create a situation similar to The Godfather, which I feel he has achieved. The fact that the setting is on the moon is what I really enjoyed the most - the imaginings of how humans live there, eat, drink, show more move around, work, play. They have "familiars" - like a cross between the daemons in Philip Pullman's Dark Materials book and a mobile phone, who not only talk to you, but can also keep an eye on your statistics (eg Oxygen levels), and communicate with other familiars, sending and receiving messages. As one character was about to die on the surface of the moon, her familiar said "Your chances of survival are zero. Goodbye, Rachel". I loved McDonald's choice of works to described footprints on the moon: "The regolith is a palimpsest of every journey made across it." show less
Luna: New Moon was marketed as “Game of Thrones set on the moon”, and that seemed pretty accurate to me. The Moon has finally been colonized, primarily by the Five Dragons, five powerful industrial families that are constantly battling for supremacy. We’re following the upstart Cortas, led by matriarch Adriana Corta, who’ve made a fortune mining Helium-3, but are finding that their ascension to Dragon stature comes with a whole bunch of complications.
There’s no one protagonist, as is the case with many of McDonald’s novels. We follow pretty much all of the Cortas, and some others, like Marina Calzaghe, a “Jo Moonbeam” (a recent arrival from Earth) who gets thoroughly tangled in the Cortas’ affairs. There doesn’t seem show more to be plot at first, we dive head first into the Cortas’ lives, what they do, who they love, their struggles with each other, but it’s all extremely compelling. We also learn more about the early days of the moon and its colonization through Adriana’s memoirs, which adds a lot of context to the story and is a lot of fun. There is plot though, and it all makes sense when it comes to fruition.
Some of the other highlights were the evolution of world/national culture (something McDonald specializes in), the development of interesting AI, and the brutal economics of living on the moon. My only complaint was that I didn’t realize that this was a duology until I reached the end and realized there was no way this story had ended. I’m looking forward to the sequel, though. CBS is also developing a TV show based on the books, which I really hope goes to series. show less
There’s no one protagonist, as is the case with many of McDonald’s novels. We follow pretty much all of the Cortas, and some others, like Marina Calzaghe, a “Jo Moonbeam” (a recent arrival from Earth) who gets thoroughly tangled in the Cortas’ affairs. There doesn’t seem show more to be plot at first, we dive head first into the Cortas’ lives, what they do, who they love, their struggles with each other, but it’s all extremely compelling. We also learn more about the early days of the moon and its colonization through Adriana’s memoirs, which adds a lot of context to the story and is a lot of fun. There is plot though, and it all makes sense when it comes to fruition.
Some of the other highlights were the evolution of world/national culture (something McDonald specializes in), the development of interesting AI, and the brutal economics of living on the moon. My only complaint was that I didn’t realize that this was a duology until I reached the end and realized there was no way this story had ended. I’m looking forward to the sequel, though. CBS is also developing a TV show based on the books, which I really hope goes to series. show less
In Luna: New Moon, Ian McDonald has given readers the cities in the moon of our adolescent dreams. There are cities in tunnels, vast biodomes, miners on the dusty mare and even flyers. It is a diverse, colourful, multiethnic pantasmagoria. Sexuality is fluid, and everyone seems to be rutting when they are not fighting.
Luna is a dog-eat-dog libertarian realm, where air, water, data and bandwidth must be paid for by ones labour. Those that do not earn, will die. Luna is ruled in all but name by the Five Dragons, (Mackenzie, Sun, Vorontsov, Asamoah and Corta) who operate as cross between Robber Baron Capitalists and Cosa Nostra crime families. These potentates live lives of luxurious slendour, leavened with the everpresent threat of show more assassination or worse from their corporate enemies.
A newly arrived Jo Moonbeam, Marina Calzaghe is catapulted from poverty into the orbit of the Cortas, when she prevents the killing of Rafa Corta at a family party to celebrate the 'moon run' of 3rd generation Dragon Scion Lucasinho Corta. She is saved from starvation and suffocation, but plunged into the peril of a world for which she is initially unprepared.
This is first part of what will be a diptych, so the climax, and it is a tense and gripping ones does not resolve the conflict which has been brewing throughout. Nevertheless, it is a wild ride, and a strong contender for award status this year. show less
Luna is a dog-eat-dog libertarian realm, where air, water, data and bandwidth must be paid for by ones labour. Those that do not earn, will die. Luna is ruled in all but name by the Five Dragons, (Mackenzie, Sun, Vorontsov, Asamoah and Corta) who operate as cross between Robber Baron Capitalists and Cosa Nostra crime families. These potentates live lives of luxurious slendour, leavened with the everpresent threat of show more assassination or worse from their corporate enemies.
A newly arrived Jo Moonbeam, Marina Calzaghe is catapulted from poverty into the orbit of the Cortas, when she prevents the killing of Rafa Corta at a family party to celebrate the 'moon run' of 3rd generation Dragon Scion Lucasinho Corta. She is saved from starvation and suffocation, but plunged into the peril of a world for which she is initially unprepared.
This is first part of what will be a diptych, so the climax, and it is a tense and gripping ones does not resolve the conflict which has been brewing throughout. Nevertheless, it is a wild ride, and a strong contender for award status this year. show less
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Once the reader has oriented herself, she will shoot through the rest of the book – pages flying, hurtling towards a brilliantly tense and readable denouement. I turned the last page gasping to read the second volume of McDonald’s dyad, out next year.
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Author Information
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Gallimard, Folio SF (639)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Nouvelle Lune
- Original title
- New Moon
- Original publication date
- 2015-09
- People/Characters
- Adriana Corta; Rafa Corta; Lucas Corta; Ariel Corta; Carlinhos Corta; Wagner Corta (show all 27); Lucasinho Corta; Rachel Mackenzie; Lousika Asamoah; Amanda Sun; Robson Corta; Luna Corta; Marina Calzaghe; Jonathan Kayode; Adrian Mackenzie; Robert Mackenzie; Duncan Mackenzie; Denny Mackenzie; Bryce Mackenzie; Jade Sun; Hadley Mackenzie; Analiese Mackenzie; Grigori Vorontsov; Kojo Asamoah; Abena Asamoah; Hector Pereira; Helen de Braga
- Important places
- The Moon
- First words
- In a white room on the edge of the Sinus Medio sit six naked teenagers.
- Quotations
- Then he realized that this was a subculture where everyone was a subculture.
The only beautiful thing on the moon is the people.
When you apply to go to the moon the LDC insists on a DNA test. If you plan on staying, if you plan on raising children, the LDC doesn’t want chronic genetic conditions showing up in later life, or in your descendants. My D... (show all)NA is from all over Earth. Old World, New World ; Africa, eastern Mediterranean, western Mediterranean, Tupi, Japanese, Norwegian. I’m a planet in one woman. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A second pair of helmet beams strike out and fix him in a pool of light, a third: Louisa and Abena have arrived, but he walks ahead of them, down the dead river bed between the orixas, down to where the rescuers are waiting.
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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