On the lunar frontier …

Survival and success require sacrifice.

Some sacrifices are greater than others.

Sometimes surviving is success enough.

Every frontier, every new world, tempts and tests the settlers who try to eke out an existence there. In Walking on the Sea of Clouds, a few pioneering colonists struggle to overcome the unforgiving lunar environment as they work to establish the first independent, commercial colony on the “shore” of Mare Nubium, the “Sea of Clouds.” What will they sacrifice to succeed—and survive?

It’s the near future. Megacorporations have set foot beyond our planet—mining asteroids, colonizing the moon, riding herd on the bottom line. Earth’s gravity well imposes brutal strictures on anyone seeking escape velocity, but it’s worse for contenders who lack unlimited funding. And for two colonist couples chasing a dream, the thrill of barren lunar beauty may prove insufficient to patch their marital stress fractures. In Walking on the Sea of Clouds, Gray Rinehart draws upon his own extensive professional experience to depict a world of claustrophobic vistas and high-tech deprivation, where even the tiniest details in relational and logistical dynamics may determine the difference between failure and success, life and death. This novel’s style is literary, its pacing episodic, its science hard as a vacuum. Despite a meandering plot, tolerances are tight for marriage on the moon.

Best for: Adults seeking a slice-of-life missive from the pioneers of the 2030s.

Discern: Infrequent moderate language, occasional sexual innuendo, brief-yet-vivid descriptions of gore, and only briefly referenced Christianity.