The second novel in Ian McDonald‘s critically-acclaimed Luna series, WOLF MOON, is out now in Italy! Published by Urania as LUNA PIENA, here’s the synopsis…
Un Drago è morto. Corta Helio, una delle cinque corporazioni familiari che governano la Luna, è caduta. Le sue ricchezze sono state suddivise tra i molti nemici, e i pochi sopravvissuti sono dispersi. Dopo un anno e mezzo i figli di Helio, Lucasinho e Luna, sono sotto la protezione dei potenti Asamoah, mentre Robson, ancora sconvolto per la morte dei genitori, è praticamente un ostaggio della Mackenzie Metals. E l’ultimo erede legittimo, Lucas, è scomparso dalla superficie del satellite. In un difficile ambiente lunare, la mutevole lealtà e le macchinazioni politiche delle famiglie raggiungono il punto di rottura mentre scoppia la guerra vera e propria.
Luna: Wolf Moon continua la saga dei “Cinque Draghi” di Ian McDonald.
Urania has also publish the first in the series in Italy as LUNA NUOVA.
The Luna series — NEW MOON, WOLF MOON, and the upcoming MOON RISING — is published in the UK by Gollancz and in North America by Tor Books. It has also been published widely in translation. Here’s the English-language synopsis for WOLF MOON…
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 from 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 a 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 between the families erupts.
The Luna series as a whole has been met with an outpouring of praise and critical acclaim. Here is just a small sample of the praise WOLF MOON has received…
‘… powerful sequel… compelling throughout. Each of McDonald’s viewpoint characters is made human in fascinating and occasionally disturbing detail, and the solar system of the 22nd century is wonderfully delineated. Fans of the first volume will love this one and eagerly look forward to the next.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘NEW MOON was one of the most interesting sci-fi novels of 2015, with smart ideas on humanity and economies matched by street smarts, political brawls and murder in the streets. LUNA: WOLF MOON turns that up to eleven – it’s a fascinating story, which is also a tense, enthralling read.’ — Sci-Fi & Fantasy Review
‘The fights and vengeance that follow are more vicious and intricate than anything in Game of Thrones, full of great acts of self-sacrifice and viciousness alike, brave cavalry charges and last stands, cowardice and avarice. McDonald’s great gift is to hold the micro- and macro-scale in his hand at once. Starting with his debut novel, 1988’s Desolation Road, McDonald has used his intense, finely crafted and small personal stories of his vast casts of characters as the pixels in an unimaginably vast display on which he projects some of the field’s most audacious worldbuilding — never worldbuilding for its own sake, either, but always in the service of slyly parodying, critiquing or lionizing elements of our present-day world.’ — Boing Boing
‘A Howling Good Read… No one builds a world like Ian McDonald does. Piece by piece and brick by brick. Spare, simple, elegant when he needs to be…, deep and meaty when he wants to be…, he does his work like an artisan pulling a sculpture from stone. There are no wasted moves, nothing that isn’t vital because, in the end, everything is vital. Everything matters… it is fascinating, all of it. Because McDonald has made a world that is ruthless in its consistency and living, breathing reality, and then made characters who are not just living in it, but wholly and fully of it… McDonald’s corporate war is a gorgeous thing, fought with every tool available… McDonald is able to wrap the biggest events in constellations of the smallest so that a cocktail party here, a discussion of ’80s retro fashion (all mall-hair and WHAM! T-shirts), a love story and a day at work for a guy who cleans solar panels all build and coalesce to form the background radiation of life in this unstable future. Every moment with his characters makes them precious, real and alive.’ — NPR
‘Luna: New Moon was a “magnificent bastard of a book,” as I put it in my review. Part two, it’s my pleasure to tell you, is just as awesome, and just as masterfully nasty.’ — Tor.com
