In the Luna series, if you would first seek revenge, dig a lot of graves. No, more than that. Get an excavator.

Wolf Moon picks up closely in the wake of the Corta's disaster of the first book, with the survivors in various forms of tenuous exile. It turns out that the Corta-Mackenzie war was orchestrated by the Sun family, seeking to smash two rivals and collect the pieces. The Mackenzie stronghold of Crucible is destroyed in a terror attack, their elderly founder assassinated, and the two largest factions set against each other. Sun plots are only hampered by a slight tendency towards villainous monologues, otherwise, they win.

This is a book where the complex motivations of the first book are pared down. Survival, escape, revenge, all in a harrowingly escalating lunar war that sees the breaking of fragile taboos about mass violence and the introduction of knife drones, projectile weapons, and orbital bombardments.

The story focuses on many of the same characters as before. Lucasinho dealing with his trauma, Lucas' ambition and plot to regain his family's power on Earth. Wagner Corta has his viewpoint expanded. He's a 'werewolf', a member of a group that has turned bipolar disorder into a new community that has inhuman creativity and focus as a gestalt pack.

Wolf Moon is a simpler book than the first, as second books often are. Having set the pieces up, McDonald crashes them together, enjoying the destruction. Despite an annoying tendency to start chapters and leave the point-of-view as a surprise, the book holds up well for a second book.