A review by ergative
The Moon King by Neil Williamson

4.25

 This started out a little bit predictably, but then became quite bonkers. I enjoyed the mashup of detective noir and anarchist political unrest with secondary world fantasy with mind-controlling (alien?) city-ruler with lunar mood-magic and weird big moon-fish. I liked how the action was so thoroughly focused on the city and the islands, but the repeated reference to foreigners and ships and travel prevented it from feeling like an artificially constrained setting. I had the assumption in the back of my mind for quite a while that this was a space-colonization-aftermath type of tale, which is usually the case in stories with repeated references to original settlers with their much better technology, which has slowly been lost or damaged and people can keep it running but not quite fix it. However, as the book progresses it seems more like just secondary world fantasy, and the colonists came over on sea-ships, rather than space-ships. Even the magic pregnancy baby--not at all my favorite plot trope--ended in an unexpected way that I'm not sure I fully followed. Bravo, Neil Williamson!