If New Moon introduced a wild world, and Wolf Moon broke it on the hammers of war, Moon Rising attempts to find a new peace. Lucas Corta is back, having deposed the former titular ruler of the Moon with the help of an Earth-based alliance.

It's fast paced and dramatic, and full of those moments, but oddly minutes after finishing it, I can't really remember any of them in detail, except for a nine year old Luna Corta going around in half-skull facepaint with the Corta heirloom knives threatening to cut people. Various factions have their vision for the moon, and for human destiny in space. The Suns want Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, running on top of a moon-sized digital stock market. The Vorontsevs and Mackenzies want to expand through the solar system on more bedrock bases of material. The Asamoah new biology and new life. And the Cortas? Family first, and they don't do democracy.

The ending is much the as the status quo ante, with one key difference, through one that's only peripherally mattered to our rich and powerful main cast. Oh, and a lot of people dead, but dead in a way such that the cycle of violence is broken, or maybe just suppressed for a generation.

This is a 3.5 book, but the prior two were really 4.5, so I'll round it to four stars across the board for the series.