Ian McDonald’s VUČJI MESEC Available in Serbia!


WOLF MOON, the second novel in Ian McDonald‘s acclaimed Luna series is now available in Serbia! Published by Laguna as VUČJI MESEC, and translated by Goran Skrobonja, here’s the synopsis…

JEDAN OD ZMAJEVA JE MRTAV.

Pala je Korta helio, jedna od pet porodičnih korporacija koje vladaju Mesecom. Njena blaga podelili su brojni neprijatelji, a preživeli su se razbežali.

Prošlo je osamnaest meseci. Preostala deca senjore Korte, Lukasinjo i Luna, pod zaštitom su moćne porodice Asamoa, dok je Robson, u šoku jer je prisustvovao očevoj nasilnoj smrti, sada štićenik – praktično talac – Makenzi metala. A poslednji naslednik Lukas nestao je s površine Meseca.

Samo gospa Sun, udova Taijanga, podozreva da Lukas Korta nije mrtav, i još važnije – da je i dalje jedan od glavnih igrača. Najzad, Lukas je oduvek bio Spletkaroš, pa čak ni u smrti neće prezati ni od čega kako bi povratio sve i izgradio novi i moćniji Korta helio. Ali Korta heliju su potrebni saveznici, a da bi ih pronašao, odbegli sin će se drznuti na nemoguće putovanje – na Zemlju.

U nestabilnom lunarnom okruženju proračunate odanosti i političke mahinacije svake porodice dosežu zenit u njihovim najplodonosnijim zaverama usred erupcije pravog rata.

Laguna also publishes the first novel in the series in Serbia, as MLAD MESEC.

WOLF MOON and the other two Luna novels (NEW MOON and MOON RISING) are published in the UK by Gollancz, in North America by Tor Books, and are also available in a growing number of translated editions around the world. A prequel novella — THE MENACE FROM FARSIDE — is also available, published by Tor.com.

Here’s the English-language synopsis for the novel…

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 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 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.

Here are just a few of the great reviews WOLF MOON has received so far…

‘… 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

Ian McDonald’s LUNA: MLAD MESEC Out Now in Serbia!


NEW MOON, the first novel in Ian McDonald‘s acclaimed Luna series, is now available in Serbia! Published by Laguna as MLAD MESEC, here’s the synopsis…

Mesec želi da vas ubije.

Možda će vas ubiti kad ostanete bez dnevnice koja vam je dodeljena za hranu, vodu ili vazduh. Možda će vas ubiti kad ste u klopci između vladajućih korporacija, takozvanih Pet Zmajeva. Na korak od bogatstva, u sumanutom futurističkom feudalnom društvu, na Mesecu morate da se borite za svaki pedalj koji želite da steknete. I upravo je to učinila Adrijana Korta.

Kao vođa najmlađeg Mesečevog Zmaja, Adrijana je preotela kontrolu nad industrijom helijuma 3 od korporacije Makenzi metali i borila se da stekne novi status za svoju porodicu. Sada, pred kraj života, Adrijana shvata da je njena korporacija, Korta helio, suočena sa brojnim neprijateljima koje je stekla tokom svog meteorskog uspona. Ako porodica Korta misli da preživi, petoro Adrijanine dece moraju da odbrane majčino carstvo od brojnih neprijatelja… i jedno od drugog.

This edition is translated by Goran Skrobonja.

NEW MOON and the other novels in the series are published in the UK by Gollancz, in North America by Tor Books, and also in a wide range of translated editions around the world. (See below for a selection of the covers.) Here’s the novel’s English-language synopsis…

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.

Finally, here are just a few of the great reviews NEW MOON has received so far…

‘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

‘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… One thing Luna does exceptionally well is to puncture Old Heinlein’s assumption that a frontier society based on the primacy of the family and a disregard of conventional laws would end up like idealised smalltown America. Luna argues that any realistic future colonisation of the moon will be much more The Sopranos than The Waltons. LUNA is as gripping as it is colourful, and as colourful as it is nasty.’ — Guardian

No one writes like Ian McDonald, and no one’s Moon is nearly so beautiful and terrible… Ian McDonald’s never written a bad novel, but this is a great Ian McDonald novel… McDonald has ten details for every detail proffered by other sf writers. Not gratuitous details, either: gracious ones. The fashion sense of William Gibson, the design sense of Bruce Sterling, the eye for family drama of Connie Willis, the poesie of Bradbury, and the dirty sex of Kathe Koja and Samuel Delany… McDonald’s moon is omnisexual, kinky, violent, passionate, beautiful, awful, vibrant and crushing. As the family saga of the Cortas unravels, we meet a self-sexual ninja lawyer, a werewolf who loses his mind in the Full Earth, a family tyrant whose ruthlessness is matched only by his crepulance, and a panoply of great passions and low desires. LUNA: NEW MOON is the first book of a two-book cycle. Now 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

LUNA: NEW MOON is the best moon novel I’ve seen in many years, but it’s also something of a piece with the recent movement on the part of Paul McAuley, Kim Stanley Robinson, and oth­ers to confine novels to the solar system, out of a realistic assessment that this is likely all we’ll have to work with – but McDonald takes this a step further. 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 way that Ian McDonald flawlessly adapts his writing to the relevant culture and country at hand is ingenious, and he showcases this perfectly in his much-lauded previous work. In LUNA: NEW MOON though, McDonald has clearly perfected this skill… 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

In its gravitas and tension and, alas, tragedy, it’s damn near Shakespearian… a setting so brilliantly built and deftly embellished that buying into it isn’t ever an issue; a vast cast of characters as satisfying and sympathetic individually as they are as part of McDonald’s elaborate ensemble… a world as wicked as it is convincing…’ — Tor.com

New Serbian omnibus for Chronicles of Amber out now


Laguna has published a third Chronicles of Amber collection: HRONIKE AMBERA — TOM III includes the sixth, seventh, and eighth novels in Roger Zelazny‘s classic fantasy series: TRUMPS OF DOOM, BLOOD OF AMBER, and SIGN OF CHAOS. Here’s the synopsis…

Šestostruki dobitnik nagrade Hugo i trostruki dobitnik Nebule.

Serijal Hronike Ambera je klasik fantastike; sastoji se od deset delova, objavljivanih između 1970. i 1991. U ovom tomu sadržani su šesti roman, Aduti propasti, sedmi, Krv Ambera, i osmi, Obeležje Haosa. Ovim počinje drugo petoknjižje, serijal o Merlinu.

Merlin, sin Korvina od Ambera i Dare od Haosa, pokušao je da na Zemlji u Senkama živi normalnim životom – daleko od zavera, vendeta i spletki koje rastržu obe njegove porodice. I išlo mu je sasvim pristojno – ako se izuzme svaki trideseti april. Jer na taj dan, već osam godina, neko – ili nešto – pokušava da ubije Merlina. Pucnjevi iz puške. Požari. Saobraćajne nezgode. Tajanstveno odvrnuti ventili za gas. Došlo je vreme da se Merlin vrati svom stvarnom životu u jedinom stvarnom svetu – Amberu, ali ne pre nego što otkrije ko ga je to uzeo na zub i zašto.

The first five novels in the series have also been published by Laguna, in two omnibus editions…

The novels were first published between 1985-87. Here’s the English-language synopsis for TRUMPS OF DOOM

Merle Corey is a brilliant young computer designer in San Francisco, but, he is also Merlin, son of Corwin, vanished prince of Amber, and heir to his father’s wondrous powers. And, someone is determined to kill him. Now he will begin a desperate race through Shadow, not only to escape the mysterious force that threatens his life, but to protect the deadly secret that could destroy both his worlds.

Zeno represents Roger Zelazny in Translation, on behalf of the Zelazny Estate.