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Moonbound
Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure.
In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.
It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.
Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.
In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.
It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.
Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.
11 pages, Audiobook
First published June 11, 2024
About the author
Robin Sloan
26 books30.4k followersRobin Sloan is the author of the novels Sourdough, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, and Moonbound, all published in the U.S. by MCD. He grew up in Michigan and now splits his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley of California.
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January 25, 2024
I remarked of the author's previous book,
Sourdough
, "Someday Robin Sloan will write a perfect book. This isn't it." I'd like to repeat that sentiment regarding Moonbound, but switch "will write" to "may write"; for me, this one is slightly further from perfection than his earlier work, mainly because it lacks the central narrative drive of a mystery or constant pursuit of a specific goal. It also turned out to be post-apocalyptic, which isn't a genre I enjoy, and that probably impacted my evaluation. As well as that, I felt that the worldbuilding was in a fight between what was likely and what fitted the feel the author was going for, and that there were missed opportunities for deeper meaning and significance overall. Still, it's not a candidate for my Most Disappointing Book of the Year award, even though I was disappointed; that award is for bad books by authors who are capable of writing good books, and this is a good book by an author capable of writing a great book.
Of the author's previous novels, the lesser-known Annabel Scheme is definitely science fiction, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is marginally science-fictional at best, and Sourdough is mostly only science-fictional inasmuch as San Francisco is inherently science-fictional (it's there in the abbreviation), though both of those last two are set in a milieu where technology and its impact are important, and Sourdough does have a mystical element. This book looks at first like a high-concept far-future SF novel, set 11,000 (actually closer to 12,000) years in the future, though as it went on I felt it was more like a fantasy novel with an SF excuse; there are talking animals, quests, wizards (so called; they're genetic-manipulation wizards, but they also feel like fantasy wizards), seven-league boots, and entities called dragons.
The background is that a future version of our civilization, known, for unexplained reasons, at its height as the Anth, has been destroyed by its own creations, the "dragons." These were AIs sent out to explore via an experimental FTL technology who came back changed, took over the moon, defeated the Anth in a war, cloaked the Earth in a screen of particles, and forbade the use of radio. To me, that obviously implies that they'd found something out there that was a huge threat and didn't want broadcasts drawing its attention, but nobody in the book seems to tumble to this (or, at least, to say it out loud that straightforwardly), and the dragons don't seem to have offered this explanation; they just came out swinging. One of them implies that the threat is too complex to explain, but that doesn't remove the option of saying, "A complicated threat is out there, and this is how we need to hide from it." To be fair, encountering whatever it is seems to have driven some of the dragons mad.
The Anth's response to the fact that they were losing the war was to hide the human genome in the other living things of earth and (though it's not put this way) commit mass suicide, so that the dragons won't wipe the earth to get rid of the humans, but they can eventually come back. For handwavy reasons, this kills all the birds (except that it unexplainedly doesn't) and uplifts all the mammals (hence talking animals), and apparently some other creatures (the first to become a wizard and convert/restore themselves to human form is a salamander). There have been multiple civilizations in the thousands of years since then, but when a couple of characters turn up who are, contrary to all likelihood, survivors of the Anth, they appear to have no language difficulties. That was a speed bump for me; I doubt there's a language spoken today that would be easily comprehensible to speakers from even 1100 years ago, and 11,000 years ago humans may not have had language at all - plus there's been a complete cultural break from the Anth, except via archaeology, because genome is not culture. If it had been me, I would have had the AI assistant (who jumps from the tomb of a crashed Anth pilot to Ariel, a boy-with-a-destiny who fortunately happens to find that tomb) learn the boy's language from within him and create a transmissible translation matrix of some kind to give to the other Anth person (Durga) who later joins the cast; but then, I think about language a lot.
That (unnamed) AI assistant is the narrator, and reminds me very much of the AI assistant in the author's earlier book, Annabel Scheme , except that AI observed via an earring worn by the protagonist, while this AI observes directly through the senses of the protagonist. It's a clever variation on close third person, and works well, particularly because the AI is able to bring a broader perspective to the boy's experiences that he himself could not have. It's certainly not an unbiased narration, though; the AI, a product of the Anth, melodramatically and, to my mind, inaccurately refers to the fall of the Anth as "the end of history," despite the fact that plenty has happened in the intervening 11,000 years.
The author, like the character Durga, does have an unfortunate tendency to say things for rhetorical effect that make no logical sense if you think about them. For example, a storage device is "stuffed so full of entertainment, it didn't even have room for an encyclopedia". I get the symbolism there - Durga is all about performance rather than reality - but in terms of facts it doesn't work; the whole of English Wikipedia takes roughly the same amount of storage as a single movie. They could have fitted an encyclopedia in if they wanted one. (And earlier the same device is said to hold "every book, movie and song produced by the Anth since the 19th century," which would, if remotely literal, include several encyclopedias. I'm not sure why the many fine works of pre-19th-century culture didn't make the cut, either.)
The AI assistant figures out, based on what seems to me to be inadequate evidence, that they're somewhere on the west coast of what used to be Ireland, but a west coast that's somewhat further out because the sea level has dropped substantially (due, presumably, to the filling of the sky with a screen of particles that's produced an effect like a nuclear winter). But... doesn't that mean they're in an ice age? And shouldn't Ireland, therefore, be much colder than it's depicted (it seems about the same as current temperatures)? The worldbuilding sometimes feels like a bricolage of handwaving, incompletely thought-through speculation, whimsy and geekery; there are a ton of Easter eggs, many of which I know I missed, salted through the text. It's not so obtrusively bad that I'd give it my "weak-worldbuilding" tag, which I've been using a bit lately (mostly on books that are so busy being socially conscious about a very narrow part of today's world in particular that they have no idea how worlds work in general), but it's not particularly strong, and certainly not "hard". It's not all the way towards the C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy end of things, but it's on that side of the spectrum - which, to be clear, I have no problem with as such; "soft" SF is often more humane and therefore more interesting to me. I'm just pointing out that the worldbuilding is a bit janky in places from a strict science point of view. There are other things that don't make much sense to me, too, such as the presence of electricity and electronics (excluding radio), and yet, apart from a couple of mentions of immersion blenders, little evidence of the use of electric motors - a simple and highly useful technology. People walk everywhere, and most work seems to be done by hand, which fits the mythic feel and ambiance but, as I say, doesn't make a whole lot of sense pragmatically.
The editing is mostly good, though it does need another quick pass before publication (I received a review copy from Netgalley). The author does have an idiosyncratic way with colons, sometimes using them where I would use a semicolon, a comma, an ellipsis, a dash, or no punctuation at all, but it's not wrong, exactly, just: unusual.
I enjoyed the beavers' method of arguing, where the two disputants finish up by summarizing each other's arguments in good faith, and in which they build a sculpture together (representing the argument, or its subject) which is what the community examines to make its decision. The collaborative-sculpture part is, of course, too mystical to be practical, at least for intelligent beings who aren't beavers, but I think the part where you summarize each other's arguments in a way that the other party will agree is fair is well worth adopting in the real world. I'm sure I've read about it in a book on negotiation, in fact.
What I was left with overall, though, was a sense of missed opportunities. Sourdough is, in part, a critique of Bay Area startup culture; this could have been a critique, as well as a celebration, of our culture as a whole, but because the narrator is an Anth chauvinist, the late Anth is seen as blameless and utopian, having solved all of the problems of the Middle Anth (our era). A charge of hubris against them is specifically denied. I would have liked to see this position interrogated, and more doubt cast on the narrator's reliability; more made of the risks of AI, given that it was rebel AIs that ended the Anth; and, in general, more contemplation of the human/posthuman condition. The protagonist undergoes a coming-of-age transition, and his original intended role is transformed into something finer, but that happens very much at the end of a story in which he mostly doesn't show a lot of focus or have much of a goal, apart from "don't be used in the wizard's scheme, whatever that is". The plot, inasmuch as there is one, is helped along several times by the sort of coincidence that can sometimes, just, be sold as "fate" in a more fantasy-type setting, but that doesn't really work when you've established the setting as a science-fictional one, however much it feels like fantasy. Also, there's a last-moment rescue which, while it isn't truly a deus ex machina - it's a Cavalry Rescue, which has, in retrospect, been foreshadowed - nevertheless feels like a deus ex machina because it's so perfectly timed, when the exact time that it happened was arbitrary. It does at least give Durga a moment of agency in the story that, up to that point, she was sorely lacking.
I've taken the time to critique it in detail because I think it's a good novel, but that with more work it could have been great. I know the author is capable of excellent writing; there's some of it here, at a sentence level, with observations like "Humans were always waking up from some dream, each individually, over the arc of a life, and also together, in the larger arc," and "More people dilute the poison of yourself, so it doesn't kill you," but I felt that I needed to be shown those things more and not just told them. It probably needed to be a longer book, and spend less time on the vibe and more on insight and theme and plot (and character; most of the characters are the one-trick characters of fairy tale), if it was going to feel fully successful to me.
Of the author's previous novels, the lesser-known Annabel Scheme is definitely science fiction, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is marginally science-fictional at best, and Sourdough is mostly only science-fictional inasmuch as San Francisco is inherently science-fictional (it's there in the abbreviation), though both of those last two are set in a milieu where technology and its impact are important, and Sourdough does have a mystical element. This book looks at first like a high-concept far-future SF novel, set 11,000 (actually closer to 12,000) years in the future, though as it went on I felt it was more like a fantasy novel with an SF excuse; there are talking animals, quests, wizards (so called; they're genetic-manipulation wizards, but they also feel like fantasy wizards), seven-league boots, and entities called dragons.
The background is that a future version of our civilization, known, for unexplained reasons, at its height as the Anth, has been destroyed by its own creations, the "dragons." These were AIs sent out to explore via an experimental FTL technology who came back changed, took over the moon, defeated the Anth in a war, cloaked the Earth in a screen of particles, and forbade the use of radio. To me, that obviously implies that they'd found something out there that was a huge threat and didn't want broadcasts drawing its attention, but nobody in the book seems to tumble to this (or, at least, to say it out loud that straightforwardly), and the dragons don't seem to have offered this explanation; they just came out swinging. One of them implies that the threat is too complex to explain, but that doesn't remove the option of saying, "A complicated threat is out there, and this is how we need to hide from it." To be fair, encountering whatever it is seems to have driven some of the dragons mad.
The Anth's response to the fact that they were losing the war was to hide the human genome in the other living things of earth and (though it's not put this way) commit mass suicide, so that the dragons won't wipe the earth to get rid of the humans, but they can eventually come back. For handwavy reasons, this kills all the birds (except that it unexplainedly doesn't) and uplifts all the mammals (hence talking animals), and apparently some other creatures (the first to become a wizard and convert/restore themselves to human form is a salamander). There have been multiple civilizations in the thousands of years since then, but when a couple of characters turn up who are, contrary to all likelihood, survivors of the Anth, they appear to have no language difficulties. That was a speed bump for me; I doubt there's a language spoken today that would be easily comprehensible to speakers from even 1100 years ago, and 11,000 years ago humans may not have had language at all - plus there's been a complete cultural break from the Anth, except via archaeology, because genome is not culture. If it had been me, I would have had the AI assistant (who jumps from the tomb of a crashed Anth pilot to Ariel, a boy-with-a-destiny who fortunately happens to find that tomb) learn the boy's language from within him and create a transmissible translation matrix of some kind to give to the other Anth person (Durga) who later joins the cast; but then, I think about language a lot.
That (unnamed) AI assistant is the narrator, and reminds me very much of the AI assistant in the author's earlier book, Annabel Scheme , except that AI observed via an earring worn by the protagonist, while this AI observes directly through the senses of the protagonist. It's a clever variation on close third person, and works well, particularly because the AI is able to bring a broader perspective to the boy's experiences that he himself could not have. It's certainly not an unbiased narration, though; the AI, a product of the Anth, melodramatically and, to my mind, inaccurately refers to the fall of the Anth as "the end of history," despite the fact that plenty has happened in the intervening 11,000 years.
The author, like the character Durga, does have an unfortunate tendency to say things for rhetorical effect that make no logical sense if you think about them. For example, a storage device is "stuffed so full of entertainment, it didn't even have room for an encyclopedia". I get the symbolism there - Durga is all about performance rather than reality - but in terms of facts it doesn't work; the whole of English Wikipedia takes roughly the same amount of storage as a single movie. They could have fitted an encyclopedia in if they wanted one. (And earlier the same device is said to hold "every book, movie and song produced by the Anth since the 19th century," which would, if remotely literal, include several encyclopedias. I'm not sure why the many fine works of pre-19th-century culture didn't make the cut, either.)
The AI assistant figures out, based on what seems to me to be inadequate evidence, that they're somewhere on the west coast of what used to be Ireland, but a west coast that's somewhat further out because the sea level has dropped substantially (due, presumably, to the filling of the sky with a screen of particles that's produced an effect like a nuclear winter). But... doesn't that mean they're in an ice age? And shouldn't Ireland, therefore, be much colder than it's depicted (it seems about the same as current temperatures)? The worldbuilding sometimes feels like a bricolage of handwaving, incompletely thought-through speculation, whimsy and geekery; there are a ton of Easter eggs, many of which I know I missed, salted through the text. It's not so obtrusively bad that I'd give it my "weak-worldbuilding" tag, which I've been using a bit lately (mostly on books that are so busy being socially conscious about a very narrow part of today's world in particular that they have no idea how worlds work in general), but it's not particularly strong, and certainly not "hard". It's not all the way towards the C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy end of things, but it's on that side of the spectrum - which, to be clear, I have no problem with as such; "soft" SF is often more humane and therefore more interesting to me. I'm just pointing out that the worldbuilding is a bit janky in places from a strict science point of view. There are other things that don't make much sense to me, too, such as the presence of electricity and electronics (excluding radio), and yet, apart from a couple of mentions of immersion blenders, little evidence of the use of electric motors - a simple and highly useful technology. People walk everywhere, and most work seems to be done by hand, which fits the mythic feel and ambiance but, as I say, doesn't make a whole lot of sense pragmatically.
The editing is mostly good, though it does need another quick pass before publication (I received a review copy from Netgalley). The author does have an idiosyncratic way with colons, sometimes using them where I would use a semicolon, a comma, an ellipsis, a dash, or no punctuation at all, but it's not wrong, exactly, just: unusual.
I enjoyed the beavers' method of arguing, where the two disputants finish up by summarizing each other's arguments in good faith, and in which they build a sculpture together (representing the argument, or its subject) which is what the community examines to make its decision. The collaborative-sculpture part is, of course, too mystical to be practical, at least for intelligent beings who aren't beavers, but I think the part where you summarize each other's arguments in a way that the other party will agree is fair is well worth adopting in the real world. I'm sure I've read about it in a book on negotiation, in fact.
What I was left with overall, though, was a sense of missed opportunities. Sourdough is, in part, a critique of Bay Area startup culture; this could have been a critique, as well as a celebration, of our culture as a whole, but because the narrator is an Anth chauvinist, the late Anth is seen as blameless and utopian, having solved all of the problems of the Middle Anth (our era). A charge of hubris against them is specifically denied. I would have liked to see this position interrogated, and more doubt cast on the narrator's reliability; more made of the risks of AI, given that it was rebel AIs that ended the Anth; and, in general, more contemplation of the human/posthuman condition. The protagonist undergoes a coming-of-age transition, and his original intended role is transformed into something finer, but that happens very much at the end of a story in which he mostly doesn't show a lot of focus or have much of a goal, apart from "don't be used in the wizard's scheme, whatever that is". The plot, inasmuch as there is one, is helped along several times by the sort of coincidence that can sometimes, just, be sold as "fate" in a more fantasy-type setting, but that doesn't really work when you've established the setting as a science-fictional one, however much it feels like fantasy. Also, there's a last-moment rescue which, while it isn't truly a deus ex machina - it's a Cavalry Rescue, which has, in retrospect, been foreshadowed - nevertheless feels like a deus ex machina because it's so perfectly timed, when the exact time that it happened was arbitrary. It does at least give Durga a moment of agency in the story that, up to that point, she was sorely lacking.
I've taken the time to critique it in detail because I think it's a good novel, but that with more work it could have been great. I know the author is capable of excellent writing; there's some of it here, at a sentence level, with observations like "Humans were always waking up from some dream, each individually, over the arc of a life, and also together, in the larger arc," and "More people dilute the poison of yourself, so it doesn't kill you," but I felt that I needed to be shown those things more and not just told them. It probably needed to be a longer book, and spend less time on the vibe and more on insight and theme and plot (and character; most of the characters are the one-trick characters of fairy tale), if it was going to feel fully successful to me.
February 19, 2024
Sloan's third novel, "Moonbound," follows in the footsteps of his first book, "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore," which I adored. Naturally, I eagerly seized the opportunity to delve into his latest work. "Moonbound" by Robin Sloan is a delightful fusion of science fiction, fantasy, Arthurian legend, and epic quest, whisking readers away into a world ruled by dragons.
The story revolves around Ariel, a 12-year-old boy residing in a small town governed by a wizard. Narrated by the chronicle, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence, the tale unfolds 11,000 years into the future, where humans are scarce, and the planet is dominated by talking animals.
Ariel's encounter with the chronicle during one of his explorations proves transformative. When he fails to fulfill the wizard's agenda—extracting a sword from a stone—he must flee for his life. Thus begins Ariel's quest to save his home from the clutches of the malevolent wizard and liberate the universe from the control of the dragons. Along the way, he forges new friendships, brave numerous adventures, and unravels mysteries about his world.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Revealing more of the plot would spoil the fun, as half the joy lies in discovering it firsthand. I relished the nods to Arthurian legend, the clever humor, the expansiveness of the author's imagination, and the intricate world-building. Despite a few sluggish moments, they scarcely detracted from my overall enjoyment. Although my copy lacked maps, I anticipate their inclusion will enrich the narrative. As a fantasy tale, it occasionally ventures into whimsical realms, a delightful aspect! The narrator's voice is vivid and effortlessly draws you in.
Particularly memorable were the beavers' unique decision-making process, the realm of Eigengrau and its inhabitants, and the diverse array of quirky characters. The storytelling and writing style are distinctive and skillfully executed. Sloan adeptly intertwines all the narrative elements. This well-crafted and imaginative adventure tale will hold your attention captive. Sloan has conjured a mystical world that effortlessly ensnares the reader. As with the finest tales, the protagonist becomes a cherished companion, and you can't help but root for him as he navigates the most thrilling of locales. All in all, "Moonbound" is a delightful read and highly recommended!
* Thank you NetGalley and (publisher) for the opportunity to read this arc. All opinions are my own.
* Review in my blog: https://galibookish.blogspot.com/2024...
The story revolves around Ariel, a 12-year-old boy residing in a small town governed by a wizard. Narrated by the chronicle, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence, the tale unfolds 11,000 years into the future, where humans are scarce, and the planet is dominated by talking animals.
Ariel's encounter with the chronicle during one of his explorations proves transformative. When he fails to fulfill the wizard's agenda—extracting a sword from a stone—he must flee for his life. Thus begins Ariel's quest to save his home from the clutches of the malevolent wizard and liberate the universe from the control of the dragons. Along the way, he forges new friendships, brave numerous adventures, and unravels mysteries about his world.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Revealing more of the plot would spoil the fun, as half the joy lies in discovering it firsthand. I relished the nods to Arthurian legend, the clever humor, the expansiveness of the author's imagination, and the intricate world-building. Despite a few sluggish moments, they scarcely detracted from my overall enjoyment. Although my copy lacked maps, I anticipate their inclusion will enrich the narrative. As a fantasy tale, it occasionally ventures into whimsical realms, a delightful aspect! The narrator's voice is vivid and effortlessly draws you in.
Particularly memorable were the beavers' unique decision-making process, the realm of Eigengrau and its inhabitants, and the diverse array of quirky characters. The storytelling and writing style are distinctive and skillfully executed. Sloan adeptly intertwines all the narrative elements. This well-crafted and imaginative adventure tale will hold your attention captive. Sloan has conjured a mystical world that effortlessly ensnares the reader. As with the finest tales, the protagonist becomes a cherished companion, and you can't help but root for him as he navigates the most thrilling of locales. All in all, "Moonbound" is a delightful read and highly recommended!
* Thank you NetGalley and (publisher) for the opportunity to read this arc. All opinions are my own.
* Review in my blog: https://galibookish.blogspot.com/2024...
April 20, 2024
I predict this will be my favorite read of 2024. IT IS SO GOOD!!! I feel like it was written specifically for me?! One of those magical books that just feels perfect and correct?!
If your DNA is comprised of pieces of The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, various upbeat Studio Ghibli movies, some [redacted] legends & fairytales - if you love a quest, an adventure, found bosom companions, a nebulous evil - if you like your fantasy with a healthy dose of science fiction, and your science fiction with a healthy dose of whimsy - if you love a well-constructed argument, different epistemologies, or the concept of multi-dimensional thought - if you just want to go on an epic adventure and have fun - this book is for YOU.
I am so sad it’s over and I can’t wait to read it again.
If your DNA is comprised of pieces of The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, various upbeat Studio Ghibli movies, some [redacted] legends & fairytales - if you love a quest, an adventure, found bosom companions, a nebulous evil - if you like your fantasy with a healthy dose of science fiction, and your science fiction with a healthy dose of whimsy - if you love a well-constructed argument, different epistemologies, or the concept of multi-dimensional thought - if you just want to go on an epic adventure and have fun - this book is for YOU.
I am so sad it’s over and I can’t wait to read it again.
July 18, 2024
Easily one of the most magical reading experiences I’ve had over the past several years. I’ve always really enjoyed Sloan’s work, but this is an author operating at the very peak of his powers.
A must-read for speculative fictions fans who love wonderment, meta narratives, strong characterization, and the pure joy of discovery.
A must-read for speculative fictions fans who love wonderment, meta narratives, strong characterization, and the pure joy of discovery.
May 28, 2024
As a longtime Robin Sloan fan, it brings me no joy to report that this did not work for me. There are some interesting ideas here but instead of feeling fresh and original it ultimately felt far too derivative - of The Dark Tower in particular, but it also reminded me of other writers (Vandermeer, Pratchett, etc.) who I’ve found to have threaded the needle a little bit better. My patience for the loosely threaded pop culture fantasy and new layers of whimsy every few chapters wore thin far quicker than I would’ve liked. Impossible to guess how I would’ve reacted to this if I hadn’t so recently delved into Stephen King’s magnum opus, but as is, I found myself ready for it to end by the halfway point.
That being said, there’s imagination here, and I think Sloan is a good writer. This just has too many ideas and unfortunately wasn’t novel enough to charm me. Alas. I still anticipate his next with great interest!
Thanks, as always, to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
That being said, there’s imagination here, and I think Sloan is a good writer. This just has too many ideas and unfortunately wasn’t novel enough to charm me. Alas. I still anticipate his next with great interest!
Thanks, as always, to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
December 15, 2023
In a word, charming. It’s weirder and woolier than the earlier ones but it’s fun heart-filled adventure.
November 21, 2024
Moonbound was engineered in a lab specifically to boggle my mind. It opens with a 12-year-old boy named Ariel de la Sauvage, who stumbles upon a grave and who lives in a post-apocalyptic, dragon-wrecked Earth where animals talk, wizards run the show, and nothing is as it seems.
The story has a truly unique narrator: a sentient, symbiotic fungus known as the “chronicler” designed to archive human memories. After lying dormant for 10,000 years in the remains of a long-dead warrior, the chronicler bonds with already mentioned Ariel.
Chronicler’s perspective gives the personal feel of first-person, the suspense of limited third-person, and the big-picture view of omniscient third-person, all in one. Not bad. And yes, it’s weird. But somehow, Sloan makes it work.
The story itself is a classic coming-of-age quest. Ariel, fleeing the wrath of the Wizard Malory, travels across the planet, gains allies (like a talking elk with a symbiotic beehive or a very chill hive-mind robot) and learns about himself and the world.
What’s the vibe of the story? Mainly whimsical and occasionally bewildering. Also, it feels fresh when it puts Arthurian legend, far-future sci-fi, and a healthy dose of talking beavers to the mix. Ariel’s rebellion against the sinister Wizard Malory is almost accidental, and it sets the stage for a game of seek & hide.
Sloan’s worldbuilding is wildly inventive. The Earth Ariel inhabits is a place where animals talk, robots roam, and wizards hold power - an anachronistic blend of medieval fantasy tropes and high-tech relics. At the center of this world’s history are the “dragons,” AI creations turned apocalyptic overlords that destroyed humanity’s aspirations for the stars. These dragons remain an omnipresent threat and shape the course of the novel as Ariel sets out on an epic journey.
What sets Moonbound apart is its playful approach to genres and ideas. It’s as much about environmental stewardship and the ethics of artificial intelligence as it is about heroism and destiny. The chronicler’s voice is sometimes detached and sometimes deeply empathetic, and it provides a great commentary on the layers of civilization Ariel’s world has built—and lost.
If there’s a downside, it’s that the ending feels rushed, and some questions are left unanswered. This is a small tradeoff - Moonbound is entertaining and not afraid to ask BIG questions. If you like speculative fiction that challenges conventions, Moonbound should appeal to you.
The story has a truly unique narrator: a sentient, symbiotic fungus known as the “chronicler” designed to archive human memories. After lying dormant for 10,000 years in the remains of a long-dead warrior, the chronicler bonds with already mentioned Ariel.
Chronicler’s perspective gives the personal feel of first-person, the suspense of limited third-person, and the big-picture view of omniscient third-person, all in one. Not bad. And yes, it’s weird. But somehow, Sloan makes it work.
The story itself is a classic coming-of-age quest. Ariel, fleeing the wrath of the Wizard Malory, travels across the planet, gains allies (like a talking elk with a symbiotic beehive or a very chill hive-mind robot) and learns about himself and the world.
What’s the vibe of the story? Mainly whimsical and occasionally bewildering. Also, it feels fresh when it puts Arthurian legend, far-future sci-fi, and a healthy dose of talking beavers to the mix. Ariel’s rebellion against the sinister Wizard Malory is almost accidental, and it sets the stage for a game of seek & hide.
Sloan’s worldbuilding is wildly inventive. The Earth Ariel inhabits is a place where animals talk, robots roam, and wizards hold power - an anachronistic blend of medieval fantasy tropes and high-tech relics. At the center of this world’s history are the “dragons,” AI creations turned apocalyptic overlords that destroyed humanity’s aspirations for the stars. These dragons remain an omnipresent threat and shape the course of the novel as Ariel sets out on an epic journey.
What sets Moonbound apart is its playful approach to genres and ideas. It’s as much about environmental stewardship and the ethics of artificial intelligence as it is about heroism and destiny. The chronicler’s voice is sometimes detached and sometimes deeply empathetic, and it provides a great commentary on the layers of civilization Ariel’s world has built—and lost.
If there’s a downside, it’s that the ending feels rushed, and some questions are left unanswered. This is a small tradeoff - Moonbound is entertaining and not afraid to ask BIG questions. If you like speculative fiction that challenges conventions, Moonbound should appeal to you.
August 29, 2024
Oh my gosh, Robin, what did you just make me read? I loved Mr. Penumbra and Sourdough so reserved this one at the library as soon as I saw Robin Sloan had a new book.
I read somewhere this was in the 'Penumbraverse' so I re-read Mr. Penumbra (still lovely) before diving in, which was pointless as there was no real link. This was some sort of mashup of every 'quest' / sci fi story ever - there were talking beavers and dragons on the moon and manufactured myths and Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes and dream-places within other worlds and an oracle and wizards, yet nothing felt all that thoroughly realized or unique (intentionally, I think?), and I spent the entire book thinking, 'ok, this is kind of boring, but he's going to drop some monumentally genius twist near the end!' but that never happened.....
I am sure I was supposed to draw some deeper meaning and connection from all the little bits like the repetition of the Arthurian legend and every species' need for plot & stories throughout time, and Clovis being a dispersed consciousness and the beavers solving arguments by weaving reeds together.... but I just found it all a bit of a slog.
I read somewhere this was in the 'Penumbraverse' so I re-read Mr. Penumbra (still lovely) before diving in, which was pointless as there was no real link. This was some sort of mashup of every 'quest' / sci fi story ever - there were talking beavers and dragons on the moon and manufactured myths and Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes and dream-places within other worlds and an oracle and wizards, yet nothing felt all that thoroughly realized or unique (intentionally, I think?), and I spent the entire book thinking, 'ok, this is kind of boring, but he's going to drop some monumentally genius twist near the end!' but that never happened.....
I am sure I was supposed to draw some deeper meaning and connection from all the little bits like the repetition of the Arthurian legend and every species' need for plot & stories throughout time, and Clovis being a dispersed consciousness and the beavers solving arguments by weaving reeds together.... but I just found it all a bit of a slog.
September 5, 2024
The author, at https://eliotpeper.substack.com/p/rob...
-- a meandering preview. Read Doctorow's first, is my advice. But this is a great intro:
Please introduce us to the fundamentals of Gibson-Faulkner Theory.
G-F Theory is, of course, the great policy planning framework of the Anth, which is what I call human civilization at its apex—our near future. The idea is that it's a system for imagining and executing big projects that actually works. The theory emerges from the intersection of two maxims.
First, there's William Gibson: "The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed."
Then, there's William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
My review:
This was a book with (for me) a confusing start, and it took me awhile to figure out WTH was going on. And a fair bit of the book never does make sense. But press on: it’s audacious and fun and full of wonderful details: “fantasy disguised as science fiction disguised as fantasy,” as another reviewer put it. Overall this was a 4+ star read for me, and I plan to re-read it down the line. Who could resist a viewpoint character descended from the sourdough-starter in Sloan’s earlier Bay-area book, Sourdough ?
The review to get you up to speed is Corey Doctorow’s, https://doctorow.medium.com/https-plu...
“Moonbound delivers Sloan’s third — and best! — fusion of fantasy and science fiction, ... a road-trip story that visits a dazzling collection of wildly imaginative settings and societies in an epic quest to slay the dragons on the moon.”
Well. The Dragons on the Moon are one of the things that never made sense — I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time? Hiding the humans inside the animals? Say what? But the uplifted beavers with their world-wide web of interlinked reeds and fungal mycelia are great. As are the stoner surfin’ seals on the West Coast of Ireland . . .
You’d do best just to go with the flow here, take stuff as it comes, relax, and have a good time. I did. High marks. Truly, if any of this stuff catches your fancy, you won’t want to miss this one. Sloan is a remarkably geeky writer. Trust me on that.
And of course, read some of the other reviews here, especially by people you trust!
-- a meandering preview. Read Doctorow's first, is my advice. But this is a great intro:
Please introduce us to the fundamentals of Gibson-Faulkner Theory.
G-F Theory is, of course, the great policy planning framework of the Anth, which is what I call human civilization at its apex—our near future. The idea is that it's a system for imagining and executing big projects that actually works. The theory emerges from the intersection of two maxims.
First, there's William Gibson: "The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed."
Then, there's William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
My review:
This was a book with (for me) a confusing start, and it took me awhile to figure out WTH was going on. And a fair bit of the book never does make sense. But press on: it’s audacious and fun and full of wonderful details: “fantasy disguised as science fiction disguised as fantasy,” as another reviewer put it. Overall this was a 4+ star read for me, and I plan to re-read it down the line. Who could resist a viewpoint character descended from the sourdough-starter in Sloan’s earlier Bay-area book, Sourdough ?
The review to get you up to speed is Corey Doctorow’s, https://doctorow.medium.com/https-plu...
“Moonbound delivers Sloan’s third — and best! — fusion of fantasy and science fiction, ... a road-trip story that visits a dazzling collection of wildly imaginative settings and societies in an epic quest to slay the dragons on the moon.”
Well. The Dragons on the Moon are one of the things that never made sense — I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time? Hiding the humans inside the animals? Say what? But the uplifted beavers with their world-wide web of interlinked reeds and fungal mycelia are great. As are the stoner surfin’ seals on the West Coast of Ireland . . .
You’d do best just to go with the flow here, take stuff as it comes, relax, and have a good time. I did. High marks. Truly, if any of this stuff catches your fancy, you won’t want to miss this one. Sloan is a remarkably geeky writer. Trust me on that.
And of course, read some of the other reviews here, especially by people you trust!
February 19, 2024
Review: This was like Alice in Wonderland dropped acid with Ayahuasca. What begins as a fairly normal SciFi novel, quickly morphs into something that bridges the past into the fantasical present. It just seems plausible with the back story rendered in the sublime, that talking societal beavers and huge moths used for travel is granted freedom to happlily co-exist within your mind. Wizards that can craft a human body for a talking possum is a logical process when you accept the inception event that made it possible.
The diverse character presentation was the most riveting part of this novel. Every turn in the story line is met with a different persona/being and culture. The twists are sudden and delightful.
The writing is superb. Most of the novel is written from the perspective of the Chronicler. An AI that resides within Ariel, gathering knowledge and providing insights. The world building is like a better version of Alice that embraces the authentic. There is some blah, blah carbon counting science speculation. Most of Earth would have to be bog for that theory to work.
This novel is a fantastic read. GET IT!
Rating: 4.7/5
The diverse character presentation was the most riveting part of this novel. Every turn in the story line is met with a different persona/being and culture. The twists are sudden and delightful.
The writing is superb. Most of the novel is written from the perspective of the Chronicler. An AI that resides within Ariel, gathering knowledge and providing insights. The world building is like a better version of Alice that embraces the authentic. There is some blah, blah carbon counting science speculation. Most of Earth would have to be bog for that theory to work.
This novel is a fantastic read. GET IT!
Rating: 4.7/5
Shelved as 'on-hold-for-now'
June 16, 2024Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC.
DNF @ 14%
This is a DNF for now. It was too weird for my brain at the moment, and audio wasn't the way to go for me, even though I really like Gabra Zackman as a narrator. I need a hard copy and a fresh brain to get down with this one. Not sure when I'll get to it again, and this is totally a me thing. I hope this finds its audience. Not rating.
DNF @ 14%
This is a DNF for now. It was too weird for my brain at the moment, and audio wasn't the way to go for me, even though I really like Gabra Zackman as a narrator. I need a hard copy and a fresh brain to get down with this one. Not sure when I'll get to it again, and this is totally a me thing. I hope this finds its audience. Not rating.
July 7, 2024
Strange and imaginative! Didn’t really gel with me
June 8, 2024
I am so extremely disappointed by this book. I’m clearly in the minority, but after absolutely adoring Sourdough Mr. penumbra’s 24 Hour Book Store, I had such high expectations for this one. It was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and I sincerely disliked it. I didn’t like the overall storyline, but maybe it’s just because I’m not a big fan of King Arthur? This was just such a departure from his previous works that I couldn’t even believe it was the same author.
July 14, 2024
The lore and world-building for this book was super unique, but I wasn't sure what it was trying to achieve. It felt weird to be chronicling a world 11,000 years in the future but dropping all these references and inside jokes from present day - it feels arrogant to assume the 2000s would be so important to the world millennia in the future. Still a super interesting world to inhabit!
Read
June 6, 2024This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
---
LET'S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY RIGHT NOW
This is not like the Robin Sloan books you may have read. This is not Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (even if everything I've seen from the publisher says it's part of the Penumbraverse) and this isn't Sourdough. If you're looking for something like that, I can't help you by talking about this book.
And yet...some of the same themes, the same kind of ideas, the same oddball ways of thinking, the same characters that will fascinate and (sometimes) frustrate you, the same quality of writing are present. So it is like the Robin Sloan books you may have read. But not really.
WHAT'S MOONBOUND ABOUT?
Maaaannnn....I don't know, I really don't know. In case those semi-contradictory paragraphs above didn't give you a clue. Also, to really talk about it would involve a few pages on my part and several spoilers.
Let's start with this: the events of the book begin in the year 13777. The number of things that the human race has gone through—cultural, technological, societal, scientific, and political changes (revolutions, really) are impossible to describe. Civilizations have come and gone—the planet Earth looks little like it does now, and humanity isn't much like it is now (except humans are going to be human—it's like Doctor Who's far future episodes that way—just without the space travel). Even the Moon—the Moon, for crying out loud—isn't the same.
In William Goldman's The Princess Bride (and the movie does something very similar), Goldman talks about his father coming in while he's sick to read him a book by S. Morgenstern.
Similarly, let me tell you a little about what Moonbound contains:
Knights. Brothers. Talking swords. Dragons. Friendship. Robots. Bogs (which are very different than swamps). Raiders. Wizards. Bees that give direction. Gleaning coffee shops. Climate Warrior Beavers. Constructive debates (literally). Genetic engineering. Legendary warriors. Forty-three million dimensions.* Pizza rolls. Trash-pickers.
* Not really like Marvel's Multiverse, more like the mathematical concept of three-dimensional or four-dimensional space, but much, much more expanded.
I'm not sure that's helpful, but it's something.
We begin when our protagonist, a boy named Ariel de la Sauvage, finds the remains of one of the greatest warriors in human history. This discovery ends up starting a chain of events that will lead to Ariel being on the run from the Wizard who rules the valley Ariel and his brother have grown up in—not just grown up in, but have never left. They have no knowledge of anything outside this valley—if anything exists beyond it, really. But to overthrow the Wizard and save his brother, Ariel will have to go into the wider world and learn about it. He needs experiences that his valley cannot give him. Equipped with this education and experience, Ariel should be able to confront the wizard and rescue his brother and the rest of the people he grew up surrounded by.
Oh, and he's guided throughout this by an AI who has the accumulated knowledge of most of human history and is currently residing in a microorganism that has implanted itself in Ariel's body.
Clear as mud, right?
STORY
More than anything else—and there's a lot of "anything else"—this is a novel about Story. The power of story to shape reality, to shape our expectations, the way we go about our lives, and the way we need others to go about their lives. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The stories we tell others about ourselves. The stories that others tell us about themselves—and us. The stories that societies, governments, and other groups tell us and others about themselves and us.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, Moonbound about the way we can re-write our stories, the way we can take control of them (once we realize the story being told) and change things.
SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT MOONBOUND?
That's a great question, and one I've been chewing on for more than a week now. I want to read this at least two more times before I think I'll be ready to answer that. Maybe the fact that I want to read this at least two more times in the next year or so gives you and me both a hint about what I think about it.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about this book since I started reading it two weeks ago. Part of that is to think about what I read and decide what Sloan was doing and what I thought about it. Another part of that thinking is just reveling in just how strange and wonderful it was.
While reading, when I was able to stop thinking things like, "what is going on here?" or "What is Sloan trying to accomplish?" and just enjoy it and get caught up in the story—I was able to lose myself in the book. And that got easier the further into the book I got. But I also spent an awful amount of time just trying to suss things out and overthinking things.
I don't think that's a bug when it comes to this book—it's a feature. Sloan has given the reader so much to take in, that if you're not chewing on almost every idea, you're doing the book and yourself a disservice. But it's also the kind of book you can relax with and enjoy. At a certain point in the book, Ariel learns to lay back and float in water—which is both one of those things that takes effort and can be incredibly relaxing at the same time. Like him, the reader has to learn how to "float" in this book. And when you do, you'll be rewarded. How greatly you'll be rewarded, I'm not sure—but you will be.
I'm not going to give this a star rating—sorry if that's what you're looking for. I just don't know (in case I haven't used that phrase enough yet in this post)—I can both defend every rating from 3-5 Stars, and I can wage a better argument against each of those. I encourage readers who find anything I've rambled about above intriguing, fans of Sloan, or people who read what the Publisher's site says to give it a shot. And then let's get together and talk about it, because I'd love to bounce some spoilery ideas off of someone.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley—thanks to both for this.
---
LET'S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY RIGHT NOW
This is not like the Robin Sloan books you may have read. This is not Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (even if everything I've seen from the publisher says it's part of the Penumbraverse) and this isn't Sourdough. If you're looking for something like that, I can't help you by talking about this book.
And yet...some of the same themes, the same kind of ideas, the same oddball ways of thinking, the same characters that will fascinate and (sometimes) frustrate you, the same quality of writing are present. So it is like the Robin Sloan books you may have read. But not really.
WHAT'S MOONBOUND ABOUT?
Maaaannnn....I don't know, I really don't know. In case those semi-contradictory paragraphs above didn't give you a clue. Also, to really talk about it would involve a few pages on my part and several spoilers.
Let's start with this: the events of the book begin in the year 13777. The number of things that the human race has gone through—cultural, technological, societal, scientific, and political changes (revolutions, really) are impossible to describe. Civilizations have come and gone—the planet Earth looks little like it does now, and humanity isn't much like it is now (except humans are going to be human—it's like Doctor Who's far future episodes that way—just without the space travel). Even the Moon—the Moon, for crying out loud—isn't the same.
In William Goldman's The Princess Bride (and the movie does something very similar), Goldman talks about his father coming in while he's sick to read him a book by S. Morgenstern.
“Does it have any sports in it?”
“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”
“Sounds okay,” I said and I kind of closed my eyes.
Similarly, let me tell you a little about what Moonbound contains:
Knights. Brothers. Talking swords. Dragons. Friendship. Robots. Bogs (which are very different than swamps). Raiders. Wizards. Bees that give direction. Gleaning coffee shops. Climate Warrior Beavers. Constructive debates (literally). Genetic engineering. Legendary warriors. Forty-three million dimensions.* Pizza rolls. Trash-pickers.
* Not really like Marvel's Multiverse, more like the mathematical concept of three-dimensional or four-dimensional space, but much, much more expanded.
I'm not sure that's helpful, but it's something.
We begin when our protagonist, a boy named Ariel de la Sauvage, finds the remains of one of the greatest warriors in human history. This discovery ends up starting a chain of events that will lead to Ariel being on the run from the Wizard who rules the valley Ariel and his brother have grown up in—not just grown up in, but have never left. They have no knowledge of anything outside this valley—if anything exists beyond it, really. But to overthrow the Wizard and save his brother, Ariel will have to go into the wider world and learn about it. He needs experiences that his valley cannot give him. Equipped with this education and experience, Ariel should be able to confront the wizard and rescue his brother and the rest of the people he grew up surrounded by.
Oh, and he's guided throughout this by an AI who has the accumulated knowledge of most of human history and is currently residing in a microorganism that has implanted itself in Ariel's body.
Clear as mud, right?
STORY
More than anything else—and there's a lot of "anything else"—this is a novel about Story. The power of story to shape reality, to shape our expectations, the way we go about our lives, and the way we need others to go about their lives. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The stories we tell others about ourselves. The stories that others tell us about themselves—and us. The stories that societies, governments, and other groups tell us and others about themselves and us.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, Moonbound about the way we can re-write our stories, the way we can take control of them (once we realize the story being told) and change things.
SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT MOONBOUND?
That's a great question, and one I've been chewing on for more than a week now. I want to read this at least two more times before I think I'll be ready to answer that. Maybe the fact that I want to read this at least two more times in the next year or so gives you and me both a hint about what I think about it.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about this book since I started reading it two weeks ago. Part of that is to think about what I read and decide what Sloan was doing and what I thought about it. Another part of that thinking is just reveling in just how strange and wonderful it was.
While reading, when I was able to stop thinking things like, "what is going on here?" or "What is Sloan trying to accomplish?" and just enjoy it and get caught up in the story—I was able to lose myself in the book. And that got easier the further into the book I got. But I also spent an awful amount of time just trying to suss things out and overthinking things.
I don't think that's a bug when it comes to this book—it's a feature. Sloan has given the reader so much to take in, that if you're not chewing on almost every idea, you're doing the book and yourself a disservice. But it's also the kind of book you can relax with and enjoy. At a certain point in the book, Ariel learns to lay back and float in water—which is both one of those things that takes effort and can be incredibly relaxing at the same time. Like him, the reader has to learn how to "float" in this book. And when you do, you'll be rewarded. How greatly you'll be rewarded, I'm not sure—but you will be.
I'm not going to give this a star rating—sorry if that's what you're looking for. I just don't know (in case I haven't used that phrase enough yet in this post)—I can both defend every rating from 3-5 Stars, and I can wage a better argument against each of those. I encourage readers who find anything I've rambled about above intriguing, fans of Sloan, or people who read what the Publisher's site says to give it a shot. And then let's get together and talk about it, because I'd love to bounce some spoilery ideas off of someone.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley—thanks to both for this.
August 28, 2024
4.5 stars. Um, when you hear an SFF book is bold enough to set its story 13,000 years into the future, you sit up and pay attention - at least I do. It was enough to add myself to the library holds list and once there was a chance I snapped this book up. And found myself totally enchanted by this wildly creative and fun story.
How to summarize?? I'll give it a whirl: when young boy Ariel discovers an artifact from a much earlier time in humanity (now called "the Anth") he picks up a biotech "chronicler" from the era who is just as curious as the reader is to figure out "what happened?" and "what happens next?". Ariel then essentially goes on a quest that, if successful, has the potential to change intelligent life on the planet in a huge way once more.
So - you're reading an adventure story / quest book, and it's well done, imo. It's honestly probably more fun to go into this story knowing very little or not much at all, as I did, and just be delighted by what Sloan comes up with along the way. This is NOT hard sci-fi (how would that even work for a story 13k years into the future??). You'll probably enjoy this book most if you have a healthy sense of whimsy.
I've never read Sloan before so maybe this type of storytelling is his vibe. But now that I've read this, I'm much more likely to give his past and future works a look. I might read MOONBOUND again, which is high praise.
How to summarize?? I'll give it a whirl: when young boy Ariel discovers an artifact from a much earlier time in humanity (now called "the Anth") he picks up a biotech "chronicler" from the era who is just as curious as the reader is to figure out "what happened?" and "what happens next?". Ariel then essentially goes on a quest that, if successful, has the potential to change intelligent life on the planet in a huge way once more.
So - you're reading an adventure story / quest book, and it's well done, imo. It's honestly probably more fun to go into this story knowing very little or not much at all, as I did, and just be delighted by what Sloan comes up with along the way. This is NOT hard sci-fi (how would that even work for a story 13k years into the future??). You'll probably enjoy this book most if you have a healthy sense of whimsy.
I've never read Sloan before so maybe this type of storytelling is his vibe. But now that I've read this, I'm much more likely to give his past and future works a look. I might read MOONBOUND again, which is high praise.
August 30, 2024
I love Robin Sloan books!
May 23, 2024
This was amazing. I feel like it is a love letter to Terry Pratchett. There were so many lovely bits in it. I am working to put some of the silly words into my memory. Bagelness is how I will describe the way i am feeling.
July 29, 2024
A sci-fi retelling of King Arthur is not something I had on my checklist but am I glad it happened! It may be a bit unfair to boil the book down to a Sci-fi King Arthur because it is so much more. The depths of this universe go as deep as the Well of the Wyrm. I loved everything about this book, the characters, the cover, the themes, the premise, it was truly a great joy to read. I devoured this book, it engrossed me more than most books I have read this year. I would recommend this novel to anyone.
July 30, 2024
The story of Moonbound slowly reveals itself and that is deliberate. Everything in this book is deliberate even if at first glance it looks whimsical. It’s a story about storytelling, science fantasy about literature and the meaning of life and stories and I loved every word of it. So far my favorite book of 2024.
May 7, 2024
I like the world building, and the characters, and am looking forward to more in the series. It reminded me of some other favorite authors: T Kingfisher and Jasper Fforde.
September 13, 2024
3.5* rounded up - This is an unusual escape from reality, loaded with both enjoyable absurdity and annoying obscurity. The cover gives you the impression of pure SciFi, but it's a wild blend of fantasy, fairytale, and adventure, served over a bed of science fiction with speculative elements on the side.
I loved the clever approach to narration through a 'chronicler' AI that becomes a ride-along consciousness within the protagonist and is charged with observing and recording for posterity. This unique narrator enables meta commentary on the pitfalls of a storytelling-focused society while simultaneously speculating on how that focus could affect AI. There is no lack of creative and/or thought-provoking aspects of this world.
As well, there are obvious jibes at humanity's hubris and anthropocentrism, but I often felt like there was some subtler variety of satire going on that was beyond my understanding or interest. For the most part, the book is entertaining and good fun, but I have to admit that there were points I was so annoyed with the strangeness of the story that I had to switch over to other reads and came close to DNFing it. In the end though, I'm glad I pushed through and left with an overall positive impression of the work.
I loved the clever approach to narration through a 'chronicler' AI that becomes a ride-along consciousness within the protagonist and is charged with observing and recording for posterity. This unique narrator enables meta commentary on the pitfalls of a storytelling-focused society while simultaneously speculating on how that focus could affect AI. There is no lack of creative and/or thought-provoking aspects of this world.
As well, there are obvious jibes at humanity's hubris and anthropocentrism, but I often felt like there was some subtler variety of satire going on that was beyond my understanding or interest. For the most part, the book is entertaining and good fun, but I have to admit that there were points I was so annoyed with the strangeness of the story that I had to switch over to other reads and came close to DNFing it. In the end though, I'm glad I pushed through and left with an overall positive impression of the work.
July 25, 2024
After people on Earth finally figure out how to work together, they send a group of highly trained people off-planet to explore. The Ais
At some point in Earth's future, people come together, working past differences, to become the Anth. They created a bunch of artificial intelligences, called the dragons, and were deployed to explore space. The dragons returned, and using the moon as a base, made war on the Anth, killing most, covered the Earth in a thick layer of particles, and forbad the use of radio technology to communicate. This implied to me that there was a space-based threat, which completely unsettled the dragons to the extent that they seemingly lost their minds, and this was the their method for hiding from it.
In response, the Anth hid the human genome before all was lost in many other types of life, then destroyed themselves so that the dragons would not destroy the whole planet to rid it of humans.
Many, many years later, as in eleven thousand years later, there are settlements of humans, and there are also talking animals everywhere (these are the ones into whom human genes had been stored by the Anth). This is the background for the actual story told in “Moonbound” by author Robin Sloan. (His novel “Sourdough” was my favourite by this author, and there is a sort of reference to a being from that novel in this story.)
The story begins with twelve-year-old Ariel who finds a dead woman, and the AI with her jumps into him. This unnamed character narrates “Moonbound”, and helps the boy on his adventures after he fails to extract a sword from a stone, placed there by the wizard in charge of the town Ariel lives in, and who has some sort of nefarious plan for Ariel, based on the story beats and archetypes of the King Arthur myth.
Ariel runs away with the wizard in pursuit. Ariel encounters a huge variety of beings, including a number of talking animals and robots as he makes his way through the land. Eventually, Ariel discovers what his purpose is and he must embark on a perilous adventure with the AI to confront the dragons.
This book is absolutely bursting with the weird and the wonderful. The Earth has transformed into something astounding, and everywhere Ariel goes, he meets a bevy of amazing beings: the beavers are standouts (their way of making decisions is great) in a story packed to the gills with interesting people and places (i.e. the fascinating Eigengrau).
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a coming of age and an adventure tale. Sloan does a skilful job of using the Arthurian myth as the backbone to Ariel's home and narrative, while also speculating on what a future world extremely far removed from our own might be.
If I had a quibble it's that Ariel does not have any trouble conversing with all the people that he does, no matter how far he travels from home. Language changes sometimes quite radically in vocabulary, semantics and idiom over years and this doesn't seem to have happened in this far future Earth.
This really is a relatively small complaint, especially as I found this fable-like narrative held my interest and charmed me from its opening all the way to its end.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC in exchange for my review.
At some point in Earth's future, people come together, working past differences, to become the Anth. They created a bunch of artificial intelligences, called the dragons, and were deployed to explore space. The dragons returned, and using the moon as a base, made war on the Anth, killing most, covered the Earth in a thick layer of particles, and forbad the use of radio technology to communicate. This implied to me that there was a space-based threat, which completely unsettled the dragons to the extent that they seemingly lost their minds, and this was the their method for hiding from it.
In response, the Anth hid the human genome before all was lost in many other types of life, then destroyed themselves so that the dragons would not destroy the whole planet to rid it of humans.
Many, many years later, as in eleven thousand years later, there are settlements of humans, and there are also talking animals everywhere (these are the ones into whom human genes had been stored by the Anth). This is the background for the actual story told in “Moonbound” by author Robin Sloan. (His novel “Sourdough” was my favourite by this author, and there is a sort of reference to a being from that novel in this story.)
The story begins with twelve-year-old Ariel who finds a dead woman, and the AI with her jumps into him. This unnamed character narrates “Moonbound”, and helps the boy on his adventures after he fails to extract a sword from a stone, placed there by the wizard in charge of the town Ariel lives in, and who has some sort of nefarious plan for Ariel, based on the story beats and archetypes of the King Arthur myth.
Ariel runs away with the wizard in pursuit. Ariel encounters a huge variety of beings, including a number of talking animals and robots as he makes his way through the land. Eventually, Ariel discovers what his purpose is and he must embark on a perilous adventure with the AI to confront the dragons.
This book is absolutely bursting with the weird and the wonderful. The Earth has transformed into something astounding, and everywhere Ariel goes, he meets a bevy of amazing beings: the beavers are standouts (their way of making decisions is great) in a story packed to the gills with interesting people and places (i.e. the fascinating Eigengrau).
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a coming of age and an adventure tale. Sloan does a skilful job of using the Arthurian myth as the backbone to Ariel's home and narrative, while also speculating on what a future world extremely far removed from our own might be.
If I had a quibble it's that Ariel does not have any trouble conversing with all the people that he does, no matter how far he travels from home. Language changes sometimes quite radically in vocabulary, semantics and idiom over years and this doesn't seem to have happened in this far future Earth.
This really is a relatively small complaint, especially as I found this fable-like narrative held my interest and charmed me from its opening all the way to its end.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC in exchange for my review.
March 28, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Ultimately, this book just wasn't for me. I haven't read anything by this author before, but I had one of his books on my 'to read' list, so when this popped up on NetGalley I thought I'd try it. For me, this book just tries to do too many things at once. It's a scifi story of the distant future, with AI, robots, and genetic engineering, and also a fantasy story with wizards, Arthurian legends, magic, and talking animals. It's a mashup that just didn't work for me. I've read scifi/fantasy mixes that have worked well before, but this one just kept tossing off explanations for how the world became the way it was that didn't make much sense. It's more a fairy tale than anything else, so on some level I don't think we're supposed to care how and why things are the way they are, but it had enough scifi elements to warrant explanation.
I did like the "fairy tale" style of a boy resisting his "story" and then making it his own, but the fairy tale nature also meant we didn't get a lot of depth to the characters. The plot felt more like a series of random events that the author wanted to include, rather than an organic narrative. I did like some of the vignettes, and I appreciate that the author took risks and swung for the fences with something wacky, which is why I gave it three stars. That said, I was looking for a cozy fantasy, and the fact that the plot was "and next we went to this place and met these people and did this" became tedious after a while. If you like wild genre mashups and don't mind aimless wandering in your stories, I think you will enjoy this. It just wasn't my cup of tea.
Ultimately, this book just wasn't for me. I haven't read anything by this author before, but I had one of his books on my 'to read' list, so when this popped up on NetGalley I thought I'd try it. For me, this book just tries to do too many things at once. It's a scifi story of the distant future, with AI, robots, and genetic engineering, and also a fantasy story with wizards, Arthurian legends, magic, and talking animals. It's a mashup that just didn't work for me. I've read scifi/fantasy mixes that have worked well before, but this one just kept tossing off explanations for how the world became the way it was that didn't make much sense. It's more a fairy tale than anything else, so on some level I don't think we're supposed to care how and why things are the way they are, but it had enough scifi elements to warrant explanation.
I did like the "fairy tale" style of a boy resisting his "story" and then making it his own, but the fairy tale nature also meant we didn't get a lot of depth to the characters. The plot felt more like a series of random events that the author wanted to include, rather than an organic narrative. I did like some of the vignettes, and I appreciate that the author took risks and swung for the fences with something wacky, which is why I gave it three stars. That said, I was looking for a cozy fantasy, and the fact that the plot was "and next we went to this place and met these people and did this" became tedious after a while. If you like wild genre mashups and don't mind aimless wandering in your stories, I think you will enjoy this. It just wasn't my cup of tea.
May 8, 2024
Every time Robin Sloan publishes a new book, it becomes a reading highlight of my year—and his latest title is no exception. Moonbound is bonkers. It’s so out of control, I’m unsure how to summarize it well. Between the covers, you get a story that starts in the near future and then shifts 11,000 years forward into a world where creatures made of thought have seemingly extinguished the human race and set up a colony on the moon, and where earth is populated by animals that can speak, sentient weapons, “wizards” who can stitch together creatures that resemble humans, and a fungus that chronicles human history…see what I mean? Bonkers—and I loved every word of it.
For anyone who’s read Sloan’s previous books, this kind of story shouldn’t come as a surprise. His first (Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore) follows a bookstore clerk who uses 3-D mapping to decipher a secret the store and its clientele are hiding. His second (Sourdough) is about a sentient sourdough starter. He has a penchant for the odd, but it turns endearing and playful in his telling, and his writing feels effortless.
At the risk of setting the expectations too high, Moonbound read with the magic of whimsy of Narnia combined with the outlandish imagination of Jeff VanderMeer, and it’s my favorite read of 2024 so far.
*Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Publishers for the ARC.
For anyone who’s read Sloan’s previous books, this kind of story shouldn’t come as a surprise. His first (Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore) follows a bookstore clerk who uses 3-D mapping to decipher a secret the store and its clientele are hiding. His second (Sourdough) is about a sentient sourdough starter. He has a penchant for the odd, but it turns endearing and playful in his telling, and his writing feels effortless.
At the risk of setting the expectations too high, Moonbound read with the magic of whimsy of Narnia combined with the outlandish imagination of Jeff VanderMeer, and it’s my favorite read of 2024 so far.
*Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Publishers for the ARC.
August 7, 2024
Oh. My. God. This was so good, I don't even know how to describe it. It's probably the most imaginative science fiction story I've ever read, but one that transcends the genre in that it works in a lot of elements of fantasy in a very unique way (including wizards and dragons). But it's also a thoughtful allegory about the power of stories, the way stories shape us but also how we shape our stories. This book reads like a simple fairy tale and yet includes complex and nuanced ideas that I suspect I'll be considering and digesting for a long time.
June 3, 2024
I really liked the first 98% of this very literary, science fiction and fantasy story, which is loosely inspired by Arthurian legend, and set 11,000 years in the future, millennia after humans are subjugated by dragons who live on the moon. The characters are interesting, especially the narrator and Ariel (the stand-in for young Arthur), events move briskly through this strange world, as Ariel goes on his quest to escape the wizard Mallory and find help to defeat the dragons. ... but then. it just. sort of ... ended. I guess I'd say the ending was anticlimactic and a bit open-ended. If you're okay with that, loved his previous novels, or literary sci-fi / fantasy, then I'd say give this a shot.
July 11, 2024
"Moonbound" by Robin Sloan is speculative fiction set thousands of years in the future in 13777. The story begins confusingly from the point of view of an artificial intelligent recorder device inside the boy. Actually, they are are the narrator of the whole story.
The main character of the book, though, is Ariel de la Sovage (sp.?). He's a boy about 12 years old. He has a feeling he is destined to do something big in his life, but no idea what.
There are wizards, archetypal heroes, quests, talking bees and beavers, spaceships, and even dragons (kind of).
If you like sci-fi/ speculative fiction and light fantasy, check this one out!
Characters - 4/5
Writing - 5/5
Plot - 4/5
Pacing - 4/5
Unputdownability - 3/5
Enjoyment - 3/5
Narration - 4/5 by Gabra Zackman
Cover - 5/5
Overall - 32/8 = 4
Thank you to Netgalley, Brilliance Publishing, and Jo Leevers for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
The main character of the book, though, is Ariel de la Sovage (sp.?). He's a boy about 12 years old. He has a feeling he is destined to do something big in his life, but no idea what.
There are wizards, archetypal heroes, quests, talking bees and beavers, spaceships, and even dragons (kind of).
If you like sci-fi/ speculative fiction and light fantasy, check this one out!
Characters - 4/5
Writing - 5/5
Plot - 4/5
Pacing - 4/5
Unputdownability - 3/5
Enjoyment - 3/5
Narration - 4/5 by Gabra Zackman
Cover - 5/5
Overall - 32/8 = 4
Thank you to Netgalley, Brilliance Publishing, and Jo Leevers for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
June 19, 2024
A wonderful, whimsical sci-fi/fantasy tale that takes inspiration from many of the classics—The Sword in the Stone, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit, Dune!—while clearly subverting tropes and riding its own flair.
Somewhat illusive, very creative, and a lot of fun. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in reading a sciencey-fairytale with adult complexities or reinvigorating their inner sense of childlike wonder. Robin Sloan does it again!!!!! 9.25/10.
___
2024 RATING SCALE:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 9.25-10
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 8.25-9.25
⭐️⭐️⭐️6.25-8.25
⭐️⭐️4.25-6.25
⭐️ 0-4.25
*Overlap is to allow for subjective
differences in borderline ratings.
Somewhat illusive, very creative, and a lot of fun. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in reading a sciencey-fairytale with adult complexities or reinvigorating their inner sense of childlike wonder. Robin Sloan does it again!!!!! 9.25/10.
___
2024 RATING SCALE:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 9.25-10
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 8.25-9.25
⭐️⭐️⭐️6.25-8.25
⭐️⭐️4.25-6.25
⭐️ 0-4.25
*Overlap is to allow for subjective
differences in borderline ratings.
June 17, 2024
Sloan writes whimsical, fantastic sci-fi, and I loved being along the ride for Moonbound. There are some callbacks to his previous novels here, but I haven't read those books for years and I think Moonbound would be just as much fun for the Sloan newbie. There are some images, scenes, and ideas that really enriched my imagination! I might just turn around and re-read Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore again...
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