It’s well done, and always serves the story and the characters. Or not.īe prepared for quite some explicit sex. Luna is about migration, and power-politics and money, about being old and dying, about love, lust and animal instinct, about the melancholic saudade of bossa nova, about the brazen folly of youth, about fashionistas, knife fights, and about a changing new society, one on the brink of becoming civilized by swallowing pride. Throughout the pages those themes are carefully, slowly mined & processed, as the minerals of the moon’s regolith.
The story is tightly plotted, and there’s a smooth balance in its layering of themes. Still, there’s a lot to take in, and McDonald does expect patience from his readers: hardly anything is presented on a silver platter. His flexibility with viewpoints is truly something to behold, but never feels complex or jumpy. The narrative voice McDonald uses is one of a master writer: ultimate freedom here too. Rachel Mackenzie’s stomach lifts at the taint of colostomy. The perfume of fern, the smell of fresh water, can’t hide the smell. No one can bear to look more than an instant at the tube in his throat. The backs of his hands are blotched with slow-healing haemotomas where needles and cannulas pierce the flesh. Tubes pulse, pumps hiss and spin, motors hum. The life-support system towers over his head like a crown, a halo. Will to power, will to own, will to hold and let nothing be taken, not even his husk of a life. The legend is that the chair keeps Robert Mackenzie alive but one look tells the truth: it is the will that burns in the back of his eyes. Yet, there’s still plenty of beauty to be found. Plus sharp observations about the reality of being human. There are no elaborate descriptions, and McDonald’s prose is direct, unforgiving and often chilling. Luna is rich in detail and texture, and yet this novel has a sparse feel. The science is stunning, the society is stunning, the Corta dynasty is stunning. The world McDonald has created is stunning. The book’s projections are savory food for thought. From what I’ve read online about those earlier titles, his newest follows a similar approach: well researched near-future history. It’s brilliant, and it urges me to read McDonald’s other books – River Of Gods, The Derwish House, Brasyl. Luna: New Moon is the first book by Ian McDonald I’ve read. Being bound by contracts, contracts, contracts.
The cost of air, the fear of depressurization. Being in enclosed spaces the entire time. Freedom from gravity, freedom from criminal and civil law, sexual freedom. This hammer of a book is about freedom, and its opposite.
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