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 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.
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 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.