New Moon has one foot firmly set in a hard science fiction tradition of lunar sociology best exemplified by Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and also worked on by Clarke, Asimov, and John Varley. In the early 22nd century, the moon is a mining outpost that provides Earth with vital Helium-3 and rare earth minerals. It's a harsh world of 1.8 million or so souls, with absentee corporate overlords, where everything is negotiable, beauty is cheap, and death is omnipresent in a thousand ways. This is a serious story about existence and flowering on the thinnest of margins.

But McDonald has a second inspiration, which I didn't realize until reading about this book afterwards, and that's the classic soap opera Dallas. The moon is ruled by the Five Dragons, great family corporations, and our heroes, the Brazilian Helium mining Cortas, are sliding towards a war against the dominant Mackenzies. The Cortas are lead by an old woman, with five children scrabbling for the future of the family. Rafa is the golden boy, the heir apparent, with a weak temperament. Lucas is the schemer, a Machiavellian with a deadly plan. Ariel is an outsider who abandoned the family to become a lunar lawyer. The last two siblings fade to colorlessness. Luna and Lucasinho, grandchildren, round out the family. Lucasinho in particular is a spoiled playboy, a viewpoint into lunar society. The other families are less developed, reptilian antagonists rather than characters.

It's melodrama, but to paraphrase a former FBI director, "I'm just a messy bitch from New Jersey who loves drama", and while this book takes it good time to find it's place, once it arrives it is utterly compelling. The finale, an orgy of shocking violence, is particularly well done. I can't say that New Moon is great. I can say that after finishing the book past midnight, I immediately grabbed the sequel and stayed up till 5:00 AM getting through part two.