Ian McDonald‘s critically-acclaimed latest novel, LUNA: NEW MOON, is out tomorrow in paperback in the US. Published by Tor Books, here’s the synopsis…
In Ian McDonald’s Luna: New Moon, the scions of a falling house must navigate a world of corporate warfare to maintain their family’s status in the Moon’s vicious political atmosphere.
The Moon wants to kill you.
Maybe it will kill you when the per diem for your allotted food, water, and air runs out, just before you hit paydirt. Maybe it will kill you when you are trapped between the reigning corporations-the Five Dragons-in a foolish gamble against a futuristic feudal society. On the Moon, you must fight for every inch you want to gain. 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 her family’s new status. Now, in the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation — Corta Helio — confronted 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.
LUNA: NEW MOON is published in the UK by Gollancz, and has been published in translation (with more editions to come!).
Here’s just a selection from the great aforementioned critical acclaim…
‘McDonald… begins his superb near-future series… scintillating, violent, and decadent world. McDonald creates a complex and fascinating civilization featuring believable technology, and the characters are fully developed, with individually gripping stories. Watch for this brilliantly constructed family saga on next year’s award ballots.’ — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
‘Mafia-style mining families clash in a compelling fantasy that offers up all the pleasures of a cut-throat soap opera in space…That McDonald is able to spin a compelling story from this unforgiving set-up is testament to his skill as a writer… LUNA is as gripping as it is colourful, and as colourful as it is nasty.’ — Guardian
‘With an action narrative driving this political commentary, LUNA is actually a fantastically fun read as well as an important one.’ — LA Review of Books
‘Smart, funny, passionate and at times quite dark, McDonald brings the touch we’ve seen in RIVER OF GODS and DERVISH HOUSE to an entirely new culture as it evolves in a distant hostile place where business or family rules all… it’s terrific. My only complaint: it leaves you wanting the second book right now!’ — Jonathan Strahan
‘No one writes like Ian McDonald, and no one’s Moon is nearly so beautiful and terrible… McDonald’s moon is omnisexual, kinky, violent, passionate, beautiful, awful, vibrant and crushing… I’m all a-quiver for the next one.‘ — BoingBoing
‘Fans of cerebral, high-concept science fiction will love this exploration of society on the moon many decades after it has been colonized. The focus is more on concept and plot than on character, but the former are compelling enough to make this an addictive page-turner. Including the stories of many characters gives the reader important insights into different facets of society, and although the book starts at a slow pace, it accelerates into a mesmerizing political thriller.’ — RT Book Reviews
‘The way that Ian McDonald flawlessly adapts his writing to the relevant culture and country at hand is ingenious… McDonald certainly shows off the well-developed Cortas to illustrate his knack for creating dynamic human relationships that encompass the whole Moon… LUNA: NEW MOON is a world that has been intricately woven together by its author. It’s compelling and thought-provoking, and all without relying on overbearing sci-fi clichés. Brilliantly done.‘ — SciFiNow
‘LUNA: NEW MOON is the best moon novel I’ve seen in many years… Possibly the most chilling lines in the book for an SF reader come from Adriana herself, in her own narrative: ‘‘There was no law, no justice,’’ she writes, ‘‘only management. The moon was the frontier, but it was the frontier to nothing. There was nowhere to run.’’ Inasmuch as it challenges one of the cherished master narratives of SF, in which the moon is only a stepping-stone, and despite what it owes to the tropes of ’70s-era social melodrama, McDonald’s novel has some formidable SF stingers not far beneath its densely textured surface.’ — Locus
The next novel in the series, LUNA: WOLF MOON, is due to be published next year by Tor Books and Gollancz.
