Wolf Moon

4.5 stars rounded up to 5

After the events of the first book, the survivors of the Corta family are scattered among the other Dragons. They all react in different ways to the fall of their House, and this is what sets the book in motion. It's fast moving ride, and by the end there are major repercussions for the Moon, and for what I presume will be the next book (there's no official indication that this is a continuing series, but surely McDonald is savvy enough to realise there will be lynch mobs after him if he leaves this hanging).

It's not all slam bang action, although there is plenty of that. The depiction of life on the Moon focuses on sexuality and gender (in fact, with the emphasis on this as well as family and Wagner's wolf pack, you could make a case for saying that the whole theme of the book is belonging, not least expressed in the ties between the Earth and the Moon, but I digress...) as well as the brutal hyper capitalism that governs lunar society. There's also plenty of the nuts and bolts of just living on an inhospitable airless world - a bit like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, you get the feeling that this is how it will be.

McDonald is one of the very best SF writers around at the moment, and this book, while emphatically not a good jumping on point for newbies, does nothing to dissuade me from that opinion. The next volume has just gone to the top of my want list.