349 reviews for:

Luna: New Moon

Ian McDonald

3.66 AVERAGE


2.5 stars, mostly because this isn't quite what I was looking for / in the mood for.

The other reviews have it right: Game of Thrones In Spaaaaaace. A soap opera or telenovela. I also think this book/series is what [b:Red Rising|15839976|Red Rising (Red Rising, #1)|Pierce Brown|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1461354651s/15839976.jpg|21580644] wishes it could be. I guess I came into this wishing for more than just political/familial machinations.
adventurous dark mysterious reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

3.5

He tenido el mismo problema con Luna: Luna Nueva que el que he tenido con Jade City.
Para resumir, lo mejor de este primer libro para mi ha sido el ambientación de la sociedad lunar.

Reseña completa

Una portada. Sí, una simple portada fue lo que me llevó a comprar Luna: New Moon de Ian McDonald. Curioso que dejándome llevar por una portada (y, alguna que otra recomendación) haya caído en una de las mejores novelas de ciencia ficción que he leído nunca y entre mis tres o cuatro mejores lecturas de este año. Ian McDonald es un autor de ciencia ficción veterano, y muy conocido entre los lectores asiduos de este género. No en mi caso, ya que esta ha sido mi primera toma de contacto con el autor anglosajón.

Luna: New Moon recuerda a Dune, de Frank Herbet (la lucha entre casas en un contexto de ciencia ficción y que se perpetúa de forma generacional), y a su vez tiene la complejidad de «Canción de Hielo y Fuego» en cuanto a maquinaciones, giros de guion y tramas palaciegas. Una combinación alucinante. En Luna: New Moon la trama ocurre en la Luna. No hay viajes interestelares, no hay grandes planetas alienígenas. Lo más lejos que ha podido llegar la humanidad ha sido la colonización de nuestro satélite. En la Luna hay cinco familias que gobiernan, apodadas Los Cinco Dragones: los Vorontsov, los Sun, los Mackenzie, los Asamoah y los Corta. Cada una de estas familias tienen su fuente de riqueza y poder explotando de diferentes maneras lo recursos de la Luna. En el caso de los Corta, los “protagonistas” de esta primera novela, se trata del comercio de Helio-3 en la Tierra. El Helio-3 es la fuente de energía más potente descubierta hasta ahora por la humanidad.

Reseña completa

3.75
dark inspiring reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Really, really good stuff. As with River of Gods - the only one of his other novels I've read - McDonald takes the role of a futurist: not just picking one particular aspect of the future and running with it (in this case, miners on the moon) but also thinking about how everything else in the world will progress over the next century and applying that to his exotic setting. So we have five corporate families vying for lunar dominance in the helium-3 trade that keeps Earth's lights running: but we also have a society where nearly everyone is bisexual, digital holographic "familiars" which act as personal AI PDAs, stockbrokers exploiting the one-second gap between Earth and the moon for futures trading, futuristic paintball games where the rounds are hallucinogens, every strata of society wearing super-stylish fashion because everything comes from a 3-D printer anyway, and a thousand other things besides. Much of that detail is just mentioned in throwaway lines. McDonald is a sci-fi writer in the streak of William Gibson: explaining very little, just tossing you into the world and expecting you to keep up, which is how it should be.

He's variously described this book in interviews as Dallas (the TV series) on the Moon, the mafia on the moon, and Game of Domes. Even without that last one I would have compared it to Game of Thrones anyway, mostly because of the five families it focuses mostly on two: the Cortas, originally Brazilian, who are our good-guy Stark analogues; and the Mackenzies, originally Australian (and with a fairly brutal Rupert Murdoch analogy), who are the bad-guy Lannister analogies. The Mackenzies actually veered a little too much into stereotypical villain territory for me; they live in a city beneath a gigantic crucible of molten metal (so, hell) and include among their number the wheezing, ICU-bound Robert Mackenzie, an uncouth centenarian who's described as physically vile to behold, and Bryce Mackenzie, an obese man with paedophilic tendencies a la Baron Harkonnen. The Game of Thrones analogy in general is probably not a beneficial one for McDonald; he's overall a much better writer than Martin, but Martin writes the specific area of bloody dynastic backstabbing better than McDonald.

It's also (like Game of Thrones) a very slow novel to start off with, with a lot of characters to keep track of, but that's unavoidable in a book like this. By the time it got to the first short action setpiece, a bit more than 100 pages in, I was hooked. Any author who can make you feel furious about the death of a character you were only just introduced to is doing a good job.

A really great sci-fi book, highly recommended, and I'll be buying the next one as soon as it's out.

murderbot42's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 38%

I tried, I really did. I just didn't like his writing style. Someone described it as "Game of Thrones on the moon" and they were so right because I hate Game of Thrones. Should have listened.

this book is ridic with all the silly names, politics-you-don't-care-about, and family machinations. ugh.

боротьба п'ятьох династій (П'ять драконів) за ресурсно-економічне правління на Місяці. Потомки емігрантів з Південної Америки, Північної, Китаю, Росії і ще когось, я не уважно читала цей момент, бо більш явно шманались на місячній сцені представники трьох перших династій, можливо інші плануються на наступні томи книги.
Добре прописані моменти медичні і юридичні - після пеновго часу у гравітації місяця з кістьми відбуваються незворотні зміни, тому після закінчення виділеного терміну треба або вертатись на Землю, або отримувати громадянство Місяця.
"Через мое тело прошли магнитные поля, и машина выдала анализ плотности моих костей. Мой срок был длиннее срока Ачи на восемь дней. Пять недель — и мой вид на жительство на Луне превратится в гражданство.
Или я могу полететь на Землю, в Бразилию."


до кінця книги ми поспостерігаємо за сексуальними актами майже кожного члена сімейства Корта

>При лунной гравитации бюстгальтеров не носят