Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC!

This is definitely the kind of series where you have to want to pay very close attention to the sharp, precise lines of text, enjoy truly convoluted political machinations, and not mind a lot of weird sex.

What a weird thing to say about a novel, right? But it's true! After so many brilliant and beautiful descriptions of tall towers on the moon, of falling from great heights, both literally and figuratively, we see the grandeur and the decadence and the hubris writ large and upon a grand scale.

It's not just the fall of the moon we have to deal with or it's families squabbling over the remains of a great house that isn't *quite* dead, it's the amazing breadth of the big tale and the sheer oddities of the characters that make this novel -- and the one before it -- shine.

That's not to say I wasn't horribly disgruntled with long passages were things weren't happening to the main plot or when we had to get into all the deviancies of our main characters, in grand detail, making me wonder when the quite ripe core of the tale was going to come to fruit.

I was already thirsting to hell for revenge at the end of the first novel.

The second takes its sweet time getting closer, but alas, even after so much new destruction and close-calls, including a rather traditional (and harrowing as hell) moonwalk in horrible circumstances, we're still not quite ready for the revenge.

Am I alone in wanting a bit of good bloodshed and the turn of the wheel? I hope not! :)

Still, middle novel or not, it's a grand continuance of the buildup of what ought to be a truly stunning tour-de-force of politics, ruthlessness, Great Families, and bloodlust. Godfather Style on the Moon. :)


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