Adriana, the matriarch, is cold, calculating and singularly driven. He always feels the burden of maintaining the family and tries to protect it from what he sees as the messes that his hot-headed older brother Rafa creates. Lucas, Adriana’s second son, is manipulative and practical. The Corta family’s choices and actions began to flesh out their personalities and general outlook. After a few chapters of learning the intricacies of the family dynamics, though, they began to feel familiar. I kept having to go back and forth to make sure I was not just continuously adding new characters of my own creation. There are also so many that it was hard to keep track of them. McDonald’s characters are vibrant and interesting, if not entirely likable in the beginning. All her family has to do is keep their enemies at bay while making sure they don’t destroy themselves from the inside. As her influence begins to wane, the other Dragons smell an opportunity. Adriana Corta, the ambitious matriarch of the family, fought tooth and nail for the business, taking it away from another of the Dragons, the Mackenzie Metals corporation. The Cortas own most of the helium-3 refining business on the moon, controlling the ebb and flow of energy across habitats. It does not center on a specific character so much as the family itself as they navigate the politics of life on the moon. Luna: New Moon follows the Cortas, a family that counts itself amongst the five Dragons, the elite corporate families, of the moon. Ian McDonald intricately weaves a tale of intrigue and consequences in Luna: New Moon, focusing on human characters living within a detailed and cruel society of their own making. Luckily, I did not need to look very far– a book I have had on my shelf looked all the brighter. A story that highlights the moon’s complete hostility to human life, regardless of whatever technology is developed to colonize it. I needed something that captures the majesty and terror of a place that is so desolate and barren. It captures me whenever I see it, so I will always look for a book to fill me with that same sense of foreboding wonder. There is something so fascinating about that big, grey, dusty rock as it hangs in the sky. Hot off the heels of Gunpowder Moon, I just couldn’t help myself when it came to reading another book about the moon.

New Moon by Ian McDonald