The problem with reading epic, dynastic novel series as the pieces are published is that I tend to forget characters and the things that happened to them before. Even when an author skillfully weaves that information into the latest narrative, the emotional impact is gone. McDonald has done some wonderful world-building and storytelling in this series. But reading this last installment just didn't have the satisfying impact I had hoped for. Perhaps if I someday re-read the trilogy all at one go, I will be more pleased. ( )

I particularly enjoyed mentally exploring the far side of the moon, following the author's fictional trail from "Rozhdestvenskiy to Schrodinger, from Mare Orientale to Mare Smythii". Ian McDonald finished the story well, leaving room for expansion of the works whilst tying up all the loose ends. He summed up the trilogy himself in the text found in this volume: "The world is a laboratory, where humans experiment in cultures and societies and philosophies. New politics, new religions." ( )

This is probably the best of the "Game of Thrones on the Moon" trilogy, and really good in certain points, but also inconsistent. The every ~50-100 pages porn interludes got annoying, and some of the completely over the top descriptions of graphic murders were...over the top, but there was reasonable character development and some interesting interaction.

Overall, this is far from the best Moon series. It had some interesting libertarian angles, too, but was really more weird family/political intrigue than anything else. Not really my taste, but definitely some people will enjoy it. ( )

Third and final in this imagining of how the moon might be colonized. All the plotting and scheming of the first two books are resolved -- in some ways I preferred this last book, but maybe I was simply used to the place and the people. What stands out still is the imagining of the habitats, the ways bodies change in less gravity, the ways being only humans and almost no other living beings shifts how people interact and think. **** ( )

part 3 of the trilogy. it's one hundred years past our time. mining the Moon is a product of predatory late capitalism, an unforgiving environment in which air and water must be paid for, the only law is contract law, and the major currency of life and death is carbon. surviving the Moon, even for the Five Families who built it, is perilous, and it yields a very different culture to Old Earth: brutal, alive, fast changing, highly skilled and massively innovative. the founding families themselves now confront a rising third generation that doesn't know or value Earth, and in fact physically can't live there. it's Game of Thrones in the political, but it's the culture and what it produces in the way of individuals, cities, factions, and aspirations that makes this trilogy so riveting, addictive, and cinematic on the page it really needs to be made into a massive TV series immediately. ( )