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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
Reseñado en mi blog Nanny Books
Tardé en engancharme con Luna nueva, su narración me enredaba en dichos y contradicciones, bruscos cambios de puntos de vista. Sin embargo, cuando encontré el ritmo, no hubo nada que me hiciera parar de leer. Es tal vez una de las mejores novelas de ciencia ficción que he leído este año.
Seguramente parte de la culpa por la cual no pude aclimatarme rápidamente a la novela la tenía la mención a Juego de Tronos (Canción de hielo y fuego de George Martin). Como seguro saben, esa saga está entre mis favoritas de favoritas y cualquier cosa que la mencione me hace sospechar. ¿Hay punto de comparación con Luna nueva? Sí y no. Se entiende que el juego de trama política representada en familias pueda parecer semejante al uso de las casas y linajes de Juego de tronos. Pero ahí acaban las similitudes.
Una sociedad tecnológicamente avanzada y despiadamente organizada, dividida en cinco grandes familias (dragones) que pelean una guerra fría por el control absoluto de la Luna. ¿Eso es todo? No, nos encontraremos sin limitaciones sexuales (no hay etiquetas ni se esperan), un territorio hostil que mantiene a sus ciudadanos en continua guardia, secretos místicos que cubren arreglos científicos y personajes atractivos que tienen la capacidad de horrorizarnos y enamorarnos al mismo tiempo.
Una trama llena de acción, crueldad, sensualidad y agónicas muertes. Pasamos de escenas de sexo candente a cabezas explotadas, de peleas de cuchillos a imprimirnos ropa nueva. Una novela coral donde todos los personajes tendrán algo que decir. Hay irrupciones estilísticas continuamente. Pasamos de una narración en tercera persona a una de segunda y a una de primera en el mismo capítulo. Puede parecer desconcertante, pero solo requiere la atención centrada del lector. El resto es juego de dragones.
Por supuesto, la familia más honrada (supuestamente) es la que protagonizará toda la novela: los Corta, brasileños viviendo en la Luna. Me han encantado, luché desde el principio por ellos y tengo el corazón en la mano con el final. Necesito más. Quiero pronto leer la continuación de este libro y no quiero pensar en cuándo se publicará el tercero. ¡Vamos McDonald, ponte a escribir!
¿Cómo describiría esta historia en una sola palabra? Fuerte. Todo aquí es fuerte: el sexo, la moda, la guerra, los personajes y la calidad. Terminas sin aliento cada capítulo y no tienes idea de por dónde puede surgir el próximo. Cada vuelta de página puede significar un nuevo muerto o un nuevo giro argumental. En fin, estoy completamente satisfecha y no puedo hacer menos que recomendarla.
For me, this was a book that had quite a lot going for it, but didn't quite add up to more than the sum of its parts. I did enjoy it, though, despite being perhaps a bit nonplussed. In the positive column, McDonald has a strong and compelling authorial voice, with a weight and occasional lyricism in his prose that makes reading this a pleasure. And his depiction of a future version of the moon, with its warring corporate dynasties and technocratic/borderline dystopic ways of life that have arisen as a result of its colonization and the harshness of its environment, is richly imagined and fleshed out with lots of compelling detail - its languages, social mores, and economic systems range from the exotic to the downright byzantine. This almost overwhelming level of detail and complexity extends to the cast of characters, with dozens of names, relationships, and personal histories for the reader to keep track of. Ultimately, this led to one of the book's negatives for me - it became a somewhat burdensome task just to remember who everyone was and how they were related. (Helpfully, there is a character list in the front matter of the book, which I found myself going back to constantly throughout the course of the story.) And maybe because of the ever-present moments of confusion trying to keep these names straight, the story that plays out between these characters never quite grabbed me. It seemed to be pretty slowly-paced towards the beginning, with a lot of stage-setting and introductions, before much of anything compelling happened. This didn't last through the whole book, to its credit; several plot twists land with the force of a sledgehammer at various points. But I can't help thinking that they could've been more effective if the character work had been differentiated just a bit better, or if the introductory, expositional sections had been a bit more brisk. Honestly, I'm conflicted even on that point; it's in some of those sections where McDonald exercises some very effective prose and interior characterization, but it also has the effect of slowing down the story's momentum. I guess I couldn't fully get on board with the story's rhythm. But, also to its credit, once it gets up to full speed, it barrels toward a pretty thrilling conclusion with some bold gut-punches saved for the ending stretch. I'd definitely be interested in continuing the series to find out what happens next, despite the flaws of this first entry.
Ian McDonald's gift for meshing non-Anglo cultures and futuristic extrapolations of current technologies here details a Brazilian family's dynastic struggle among the mining conglomerates of the Moon. As in [b:River of Gods|278280|River of Gods (India 2047, #1)|Ian McDonald|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388256017s/278280.jpg|2440580], McDonald doesn't give the reader much of a head start before the action escalates, which can be an overwhelming practice at the front of his books, but the payout is rich by mid-novel when scenes are carouselled in rapid succession and the reader is breathless to match their pace. New Moon is notable for its investment in the sexual pantheon of the Moon's inhabitants and, as always, McDonald's characterization of cultures not his own never feels overplayed to those new to them, or banal or minimized to those familiar. It reads a bit like learning a language, where immersion, for outsiders, is everything. The depth of this kind of presentation is refreshing, and every MacDonald novel feels like a hint at the direction of where the world, and its fiction, should be focused.
Ever since I was a child, I have been obsessed with space and even now, at the age of 21, I still have dreams about going to Mars - alas, I will never be able to afford that. So, I live my space-travelling fantasies through literature and Luna: New Moon (as you can probably guess) is set on the Moon so I knew instantly that I had to pick it up!
The Moon wants to kill you. She has a thousand ways to do it. The bitter cold of vacuum. The lethal sleet of radiation. Choking dust as old as the earth. Your weakening bones.
Or you could run out of money for water. Or air. Or simply run foul of one of the Five Dragons, the corporations that rule the Moon and control its vast resources.
But you stay, because the moon can make you richer than you can imagine.
Until a war breaks out...
The first thing that I feel like I should mention about this book is that there are a lot (and I mean a lot) of characters. McDonald provides us with a character list at the beginning of the book that spans five pages. FIVE. When I started reading the book, the number of characters was putting me off - keep referring back to the character list was interrupting my flow of reading and I was just losing motivation to finish it. I will admit, even when three-quarters of the way through, I was still referring to the character list.
Also, the chapters were long... So, so long... Like 40 pages long. I am one of those readers that love short chapters because I can't just stop reading in the middle of a chapter, I have to finish it. So when it came to this book, sometimes I just had to stop reading in the middle of a chapter because it was getting too long.
However, once you get past the character dumping at the beginning of the book, the plot starts to pick up and we are thrown into a world of lies, deceit, and power. Think Game of Thrones in space. There are families fighting for power, there are assassination attempts and there are marriages between families to try and keep the peace. I did really like the story line and I liked reading from many of the characters perspectives; the one that I especially enjoyed was reading from the perspective of Adriana Corta as she tells her life story to one of the women from the Sisterhood. As Adriana is telling her story, we learn about how society on the Moon came about, we learn about the history of the rival between the families and we are also given insight into the Corta family - which I found very interesting.
Another thing that I liked about this book was the fluidity of gender and sexuality. Men would wear makeup if they wanted to, they would wear dresses and heels if they felt like it, they would have a romance with another man... McDonald created the society that we should be living in now. In this book, there is an acceptance of everything. This book - from what I gathered and please correct me if I am wrong - focuses on people from Brazil, Portugal, Austrailia, Ghana... It was so good to read about people who weren't from the UK, or the U.S.A - it was a breath of fresh air to see people from other countries represented.
Also... that ending. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, to be honest. The last 100 pages just felt way too fast for me and even though it makes me interested to read the second book, I finished the book and I wasn't quite sure what had happened in the end because it was so quick. I will be starting the second book in the next couple of days so hopefully, that will shed some light on what happened at the end of Luna: New Moon.
Overall, if you're looking for a high sci-fi read that is compelling, then this is the book for you. McDonald has created such an elaborate society where everything is intertwined. The only things that put me off this book were the number of characters and the ending. So I give this book 3.5 stars. I'm quite excited to read the second book as I'm intrigued what will happen to the Moon and the civilisations on it. Keep your eyes peeled for my review of the second book! It will be coming very soon!
The Moon wants to kill you. She has a thousand ways to do it. The bitter cold of vacuum. The lethal sleet of radiation. Choking dust as old as the earth. Your weakening bones.
Or you could run out of money for water. Or air. Or simply run foul of one of the Five Dragons, the corporations that rule the Moon and control its vast resources.
But you stay, because the moon can make you richer than you can imagine.
Until a war breaks out...
The first thing that I feel like I should mention about this book is that there are a lot (and I mean a lot) of characters. McDonald provides us with a character list at the beginning of the book that spans five pages. FIVE. When I started reading the book, the number of characters was putting me off - keep referring back to the character list was interrupting my flow of reading and I was just losing motivation to finish it. I will admit, even when three-quarters of the way through, I was still referring to the character list.
Also, the chapters were long... So, so long... Like 40 pages long. I am one of those readers that love short chapters because I can't just stop reading in the middle of a chapter, I have to finish it. So when it came to this book, sometimes I just had to stop reading in the middle of a chapter because it was getting too long.
"The world order was rotten. Diseased with social injustice, racism, sexism, inequality and bad gender politics."
- Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon
However, once you get past the character dumping at the beginning of the book, the plot starts to pick up and we are thrown into a world of lies, deceit, and power. Think Game of Thrones in space. There are families fighting for power, there are assassination attempts and there are marriages between families to try and keep the peace. I did really like the story line and I liked reading from many of the characters perspectives; the one that I especially enjoyed was reading from the perspective of Adriana Corta as she tells her life story to one of the women from the Sisterhood. As Adriana is telling her story, we learn about how society on the Moon came about, we learn about the history of the rival between the families and we are also given insight into the Corta family - which I found very interesting.
Another thing that I liked about this book was the fluidity of gender and sexuality. Men would wear makeup if they wanted to, they would wear dresses and heels if they felt like it, they would have a romance with another man... McDonald created the society that we should be living in now. In this book, there is an acceptance of everything. This book - from what I gathered and please correct me if I am wrong - focuses on people from Brazil, Portugal, Austrailia, Ghana... It was so good to read about people who weren't from the UK, or the U.S.A - it was a breath of fresh air to see people from other countries represented.
Also... that ending. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, to be honest. The last 100 pages just felt way too fast for me and even though it makes me interested to read the second book, I finished the book and I wasn't quite sure what had happened in the end because it was so quick. I will be starting the second book in the next couple of days so hopefully, that will shed some light on what happened at the end of Luna: New Moon.
Overall, if you're looking for a high sci-fi read that is compelling, then this is the book for you. McDonald has created such an elaborate society where everything is intertwined. The only things that put me off this book were the number of characters and the ending. So I give this book 3.5 stars. I'm quite excited to read the second book as I'm intrigued what will happen to the Moon and the civilisations on it. Keep your eyes peeled for my review of the second book! It will be coming very soon!
Kept trying to describe the economic system of these books to friends and eventually landed on "a kind of bisexual, lunar, feudal capitalism"
Two stars for too many characters to keep track of that didn't further the (very thin) plot line. Too much exposition that didn't further (the almost non-existent) plotline. Too many explicit, detailed descriptions of sex that didn't further (the very predictable) plotline.
As someone who read this book (as opposed to listening to the audio version) I found Ian McDonald's writing tics to be extremely annoying. I don't think there was any sentence longer than five words, nor any dialogue more than a few short syllables* (*but for the run-on sentences that composed Adrianna's confession or Marina's stream of consciousness blather). Paragraphs were short and the POV changed constantly without warning. This makes for a choppy reading experience. It was often difficult to near impossible to tell which character was speaking.
In addition, the characters were all very one note and uninteresting. Combined with the choppy writing this made it very hard to actually get into the story.
Although this ends in a cliffhanger, I'm completely uninterested in what happens next and won't be reading the second book.
This was a very poor rip-off of Asimov, Heinlein, and Herbert. It's a poor example of current Science Fiction (if this is what passes for "great" Sci-fi these days; I need to find a new genre).
If you enjoy soap operas and like the "near future" genre, then you may enjoy this read.
As someone who read this book (as opposed to listening to the audio version) I found Ian McDonald's writing tics to be extremely annoying. I don't think there was any sentence longer than five words, nor any dialogue more than a few short syllables* (*but for the run-on sentences that composed Adrianna's confession or Marina's stream of consciousness blather). Paragraphs were short and the POV changed constantly without warning. This makes for a choppy reading experience. It was often difficult to near impossible to tell which character was speaking.
In addition, the characters were all very one note and uninteresting. Combined with the choppy writing this made it very hard to actually get into the story.
Although this ends in a cliffhanger, I'm completely uninterested in what happens next and won't be reading the second book.
This was a very poor rip-off of Asimov, Heinlein, and Herbert. It's a poor example of current Science Fiction (if this is what passes for "great" Sci-fi these days; I need to find a new genre).
If you enjoy soap operas and like the "near future" genre, then you may enjoy this read.
Like Game of Thrones on the moon if everyone was queer and Brazilian and GRRM could write! Loved this one.
New Moon has a lot of jargon, a lot of characters, and a lot of things to keep track of from the very first pages. I felt a little lost for about the first third, maybe even the first half of the book as I learned this new language. There was some time committed to flipping to the glossary in the back or the character list in the front in order to refresh my memory on who had showed up, or learn a new word, but once I had that all down the words flowed well and the story was riveting. I liked the diversity of the Moon, that Lunar life wasn't dominated by any one race or culture from Earth. The society that McDonald built in between these pages is definitely worth not only reading but being immersed in.
I was torn on how to rate this - I'm thinking between a 2.5 and a 3, so I rounded up to be generous because I don't hate this book at all, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
The overall premise - five dynastic families fighting it out on the moon for power and resources - has a lot of potential. It's clear the author spent a lot of time on the world building, but unfortunately it was rarely presented the way it should have been.
There is a LOT of new jargon to go along with this world and for the most part I could infer what it meant, but with so many new terms and not much explanation to go along with them, it became confusing at parts. A lot of the terms are from other languages than English. There is a glossary but: 1) I really hate a necessary glossary in a work of fiction, and 2) the glossary, along with table of contents, were the last items in the ebook so I didn't even realize it existed until I finished the book.
If you're not going to throw me a bone here and there by integrating the worldbuilding, at least take the lazy way out and introduce a character who is completely new to everything and has to have things explained. The closest we got to that was Marina but even she had been there for a while and knew what was what.
What disappointed me most is that opportunities to delve into these new aspects were passed over in favor of gratuitous sex scenes that did little for the overall story. Several subplots are introduced and never explained(reverse werewolf? experimental children?) It's possible the author means to flesh them out in book two, but they're clearly important and I felt frustrated that all I got were vague references by the characters, with no explanation to sate my curiosity. It felt like when someone makes a comment, you ask for clarification, and they say, OH I CAN'T TELL YOU. WELL FINE THEN. Why even say anything?
This book is written in multiple POVs, which I typically enjoy. However, the jumps between characters' perspectives here was not done with any rhyme or reason. We would get a paragraph or two from one character, then with no warning, jump to another character in a totally different scene. It was hard at times to keep up with whose perspective I was reading. Many times, we would be in a character's perspective long enough to see one little interaction with another character that didn't even further the plot, then jump to another character. This disjointed style made it hard to connect with any of the characters and it also didn't help the plot feel any more cohesive.
Perhaps this is part of why the characters felt so flat and lifeless. I didn't dislike any of them, to be honest, but I felt like they were a list of character traits rather than actual people. A lot of times the dialogue felt unnatural and forced. Adriana was my favorite and her flashback chapters were the ones that kept my eyes glued to my screen.
Overall the writing was okay. There were several typos and I think this entire book really needed a good run through an editor. Not sure that I'll be picking up number two. The ending was pretty intense and I'd love to know how this all plays out, but I don't know if I want to go through another 400 pages to know. Maybe if it becomes a TV Show it'll work better in that format.
The overall premise - five dynastic families fighting it out on the moon for power and resources - has a lot of potential. It's clear the author spent a lot of time on the world building, but unfortunately it was rarely presented the way it should have been.
There is a LOT of new jargon to go along with this world and for the most part I could infer what it meant, but with so many new terms and not much explanation to go along with them, it became confusing at parts. A lot of the terms are from other languages than English. There is a glossary but: 1) I really hate a necessary glossary in a work of fiction, and 2) the glossary, along with table of contents, were the last items in the ebook so I didn't even realize it existed until I finished the book.
If you're not going to throw me a bone here and there by integrating the worldbuilding, at least take the lazy way out and introduce a character who is completely new to everything and has to have things explained. The closest we got to that was Marina but even she had been there for a while and knew what was what.
What disappointed me most is that opportunities to delve into these new aspects were passed over in favor of gratuitous sex scenes that did little for the overall story. Several subplots are introduced and never explained
This book is written in multiple POVs, which I typically enjoy. However, the jumps between characters' perspectives here was not done with any rhyme or reason. We would get a paragraph or two from one character, then with no warning, jump to another character in a totally different scene. It was hard at times to keep up with whose perspective I was reading. Many times, we would be in a character's perspective long enough to see one little interaction with another character that didn't even further the plot, then jump to another character. This disjointed style made it hard to connect with any of the characters and it also didn't help the plot feel any more cohesive.
Perhaps this is part of why the characters felt so flat and lifeless. I didn't dislike any of them, to be honest, but I felt like they were a list of character traits rather than actual people. A lot of times the dialogue felt unnatural and forced. Adriana was my favorite and her flashback chapters were the ones that kept my eyes glued to my screen.
Overall the writing was okay. There were several typos and I think this entire book really needed a good run through an editor. Not sure that I'll be picking up number two. The ending was pretty intense and I'd love to know how this all plays out, but I don't know if I want to go through another 400 pages to know. Maybe if it becomes a TV Show it'll work better in that format.