In addition to the three novels, there are also a handful of short stories, if you’re the kind of reader who likes to ease into a series that way. I really hope this comes off: it would make splendid, space-age Game of Thrones-style entertainment. As I was reading it, news came through that CBS are developing it for TV. Luna is as gripping as it is colourful, and as colourful as it is nasty. I turned the last page gasping to read the second volume of McDonald’s dyad, out next year… Luna argues that any realistic future colonisation of the moon will be much more The Sopranos than The Waltons. Once the reader has oriented herself, she will shoot through the rest of the book – pages flying, hurtling towards a brilliantly tense and readable denouement. After somebody tries to assassinate Rafa with a cyberengineered fly, and when the Cortas snatch a lucrative new mining property from under the noses of the Mackenzies, matters heat up fast… The Cortas are effectively at war with the “Mackenzie Metals” family, originally from New Zealand. Her first-born son and heir, Rafa Corta, is a hothead, the Sonny Corleone of the novel his younger brother Lucas, calmer and a better tactician, is more Michael Corleone.

Five family-owned corporations, or “dragons”, dominate, and although they operate within the law, they are all mafia-style organisations… The story largely concerns the powerful Corta family, originally from Brazil, ruled by the fierce but dying matriarch Adriana Corta. Helium-3 is plentiful, and mining it provides cheap energy for Moon and Earth both. Rival families compete to exploit lunar resources: the rich prosper and the majority poor go to the wall.

McDonald’s world of lunar colonists is dog-eat-dog, or indeed dog-push-dog-out-of-airlock. Here’s a snippet from the full review by Adam Roberts. While I wait for the books to arrive, I’ve been heightening my anticipation by re-reading the reviews. I just ordered the entire series, and I’m looking forward to long hours in my big green chair.

Play it to win, or die.” Boy, I like the sound of that. The Guardian calls it “Splendid, space-age Game of Thrones-style entertainment. And McDonald just happens to have completed his widely acclaimed Luna series with Luna: Moon Rising in March of this year. We’re heading into the holiday season, with its vacation days and reading time, and I’m casting around for a good, crunchy, science fiction epic. Dick Award for King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991), and has been nominated for a Hugo so many time I’ve lost count, including for his novels River of Gods (2005), Brasyl (2008), and The Dervish House (2011). He won the Locus Award for Best First Novel for Desolation Road (1989), the Philip K. Ian McDonald has had a heck of a career, and I’ve managed to miss all of it.

Ian mcdonald luna