"Luna: Wolf Moon" by Ian McDonald
Unlike "The Map of Chaos", which can be read in isolation from other books of the trilogy, it’s strongly not recommended to take on "Luna: Wolf Moon" if you are not familiar with the first part of the cycle: in essence, these are not two separate books , and one, mechanically cut in two. It would be better to start from the beginning and thus avoid the torments of obscurity that people who have read "Luna: New Moon" immediately after the release: the novel ends literally at the most interesting place, and it was not easy to withstand a whole year of waiting.
The Lunar Trilogy Invariant by Ian McDonald is, of course, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. However, McDonald goes further than its predecessor. His Moon is no longer just an earthly colony populated by creatures that are not very similar to humans (lunar gravity changes a person's anatomy in just a few months), but, in essence, another civilization, with different ideas about law, family, fashion, rules of reference business, but also about the top and bottom, about expensive, cheap and priceless, and most importantly - about good and bad. The McDonald’s moon is essentially a post-state in which, instead of a single law for all, there is a complex system of contracts, ethical standards are replaced by public consensus, and power structures are the top five of toughly competing (and therefore deterrent) business corporations. It is the enmity and alliances of these dominant clans - Asamoah immigrants from Ghana, Sun Chinese, Mackenzie Australians, Vorontsovs Russians, and irresistible, but also the most unlucky Brazilians Corta - that make up the plot.
Having taught the reader to lunar exoticism in the first volume, in the second Ian McDonald deftly turns the picture upside down, sending one of the heroes - the new head of the Corta family, Lucas, who miraculously survived the massacre by competitors - to Earth. Orders there have not changed much compared to our time. A person from a post-state living outside nationalities, religions, social strata and generally accepted dogmas finds himself in a world where this entire still defines a lifestyle, and his constant perplexity visually demonstrates to the reader the relativity and conventionality of our ideas about the norm.
However, this inverted optics is just one of the many (and extremely diverse) tricks that the author constantly shows to the hypnotized reader throughout the five hundred or more pages of the novel. In his thoughtful, logical, and connected world, McDonald manages to build a roller coaster with a dozen storyline loops and free falls. So, even if socio-economic futurology is not your strong point, "Luna: Wolf Moon" still has good chances to keep you in good shape. Perhaps the only bad news related to the "moon trilogy" is that the third - the final - part has not yet been published, even in the author's homeland in the UK, which means that the story will have to wait at least a couple more years.