The novel “Luna: Wolf Moon” by Ian McDonald was published for the first time in 2017. It’s the second novel in the Luna series and follows “Luna: New Moon“.

After the attack to Corta Helio the other families that rule the Moon try to grab their assets. Some members of the Corta family survived while officially Lucas Corta died. The situation has greatly altered the balance of power on the Moon and all factions try to gain any advantage over their enemies.

Every significant event, especially if violent, helps to make the relationships among the various factions more complex and understanding who are the friends and who the enemies becomes more difficult. In a place where the the strongest make the rules, any weakness is exploited by some enemy and an instability can have a series of unexpected and unpredictable repercussions.

“Luna: Wolf Moon” begins about 18 months after the end of “Luna: New Moon” showing, also through flashbacks concerning that period, the consequences of the events of the first novel so you need to have already read it to understand all the events and the many characters. There’s a great story that unfolds in various subplots with a series of complex relationships not only among the powerful families that actually rule the Moon but also within them.

In “Luna: New Moon” Ian McDonald introduced the situation on the Moon at the beginning of the XXII century showing what is still a frontier where everything is negotiable and the law is established by the agreements among the Five Dragons, the big families that shared the Moon’s resources. The build-up of that complex setting led to the beginning of a series of intrigues whose consequences are developed in “Luna: Wolf Moon” along with various new clashes for power.

Sometimes I have to say that I had the impression that in “Luna: Wolf Moon” the story has become more convoluted rather than more complex due to the fragmentation of the various subplots. Alliances, rivalries, attacks that can be covert or open in a series of continuous important events and twists are a strong point of the series but the ramifications of the intrigue at all levels don’t help to follow them all.

There are many characters with different motivations and agendas, some to increase their power, some just to survive, some looking for revenge, some with combinations of these elements. In addition to their ambitions and hopes, the important characters also have their own individuality with emotions, feelings and their sexuality, which can manifest in various ways, also makes a significant part of it.

It’s no coincidence that this series has been compared to George R.R. Martin’s Chronicles of Ice and Fire but the difference in terms of length will be enormous. The third book in the Luna series is supposed to be the final one and probably will be around 400 pages long, like the previous ones. The Chronicles of ice and fire have a development of their many subplots and characters absolutely extraordinary but after more than twenty years since the publication of the first book we’re still waiting for the last two books and the length is already really remarkable.

In essence, Ian McDonald doesn’t reach Martin’s levels of development but manages to keep the pace quite fast thanks to the continuous twists and the final book of his series is about to be published in the US. I felt that “Luna: Wolf Moon” flowed a bit better than “Luna: New Moon”, in part because I already knew the most important characters but perhaps also because the second book is much less focused on the Corta family than the first book and that, among others things, means that it contains far less sentences or isolated expressions in Portuguese.

In a trilogy that tells a great story divided into three parts, the central book can suffer from the fact of not having a real beginning and above all of not having a real end. Like “Luna: New Moon”, “Luna: Wolf Moon” doesn’t have a real end but leaves the various subplots open. We knew from the beginning that it was a great story divided into a number of books, if this isn’t a problem and you like series full of intrigue I recommend reading it.