This is masterful, adult SF and I can't wait to read the sequel.
BSFG
Luna is a remarkable novel! It is enormously clever and spectacularly visual and yet nothing overshadows the strength of its characterisation. A standout novel in a year that has been fantastic for science fiction.
For Winter's Nights
Luna: New Moon ... Read moreis a refreshing and complex science fiction of the best kind - one that is universally clever and thought provoking, and one that stays with you long after you close the final page.
Upcoming 4 Me
McDonald has created a totally believable setting and does it with a deft touch....This is one of the best Science Fiction novels to reach the shelves this year. Indulge yourself.
SF Crowsnest
Overall, it's a really good read - the environment is convincing, the characters wonderfully flawed and entirely believable, and the plot well-paced and gripping. It'll draw you into its world and refuse to let you out again. If you want to try an innovative piece of sci-fi, with a lot to say and a good means of exploring ways to say it, then this is the book for you.
SF&F Reviews
McDonald creates a complex and fascinating civilization featuring believable technology, and the characters are fully developed, with individually gripping stories. Watch for this brilliantly constructed family saga on next year's award ballots.
Publishers Weekly
Luna: New Moon is the best moon novel I've seen in many years...Inasmuch as it challenges one of the cherished master narratives of SF, in which the moon is only a stepping-stone, and despite what it owes to the tropes of '70s-era social melodrama, McDon-ald's novel has some formidable SF stingers not far beneath its densely textured surface.
Locus Mag
In its gravitas and tension and, alas, tragedy, it's damn near Shakespearian. Add to that all the compulsive qualities of A Song of Ice and Fire, as I suggested in the header: a setting so brilliantly built and deftly embellished that buying into it isn't ever an issue; a vast cast of characters as satisfying and sympathetic individually as they are as part of McDonald's elaborate ensemble; and a plot composed of so many threads that you never know where it's going to go-except that when it ends, it's destined to end terribly.
Tor.com
There's a lot of intrigue, some violence, rather more sex - healthily polymorphous and energetic, this - and all the pleasures of a cut-throat soap opera in space: a sort of Moon-Dome Dallas.
Adam Roberts
The Guardian
Luna is a remarkable novel! It is enormously clever and spectacularly visual and yet nothing overshadows the strength of its characterisation. A standout novel in a year that has been fantastic for science fiction.
For Winter's Nights
Imagine Ben Bova's Farside mixed up with Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress and David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series but then re-imagined for the 21st century, with a sexed-up, more global viewpoint and you'll get an idea of Luna. I foresee great things for this book and award nominations a-plenty. Recommended.
SFF World
Luna: New Moon is a world that has been intricately woven together by its author. It's compelling and thought-provoking, and all without relying on overbearing sci-fi cliches. Brilliantly done.
Sci-Fi Now
Provocative, gripping and prancingly adult, it's a stunning example of how good science-fiction can be, and proof that McDonald is one of the best writers currently working in the genre
SFX
I will read anything that man writes-he is the most underappreciated genius working in the field today
Cory Doctorow
Ian McDonald is one of the very best SF writers in the world. His novels are fearless, brilliant wise...they illuminate and entertain spectacularly
Kim Stanley Robinson
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