Moonbound
A Novel
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure.
It is eleven thousand years from now. A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a remote village under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of eye-popping discoveries and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to rescue the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel encounters an entity from an earlier civilization, a sentient, sensitive artificial intelligence with a special perspective on all of human history—who becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally . . . and our narrator.
Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself from the creator of the Penumbraverse, Robin Sloan. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism of one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Prepare to be absolutely riveted by this witty and delightful blend of science fiction, Arthurian fantasy, and brilliant wit. In the year 13777, 12-year-old Ariel lives in a valley ruled by a seemingly all-powerful wizard. When he makes an unexpected discovery, Ariel is thrust into a hero’s journey that could change not only his life, but the universe as he knows it. Ariel’s quest is told by the chronicle, a sentient AI the size of a speck of dust that carries the entirety of history within it. Thoughtful, often hilarious, and genuinely exciting, Moonbound reminds us of the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, but with Terry Pratchett’s sense of humor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young boy goes on a quirky quest through a postapocalyptic world in bestseller Sloan's gentle yet thought-provoking adventure set 11,000 years after humanity lost a war to the genetically engineered "dragons" it had developed for space exploration. Now 12-year-old Ariel de la Sauvage is tasked by the Wizard Malory with pulling Excalibur from its stone. But Ariel angers the wizard when he returns with another sword, bucking his destiny. Fleeing Malory's wrath, Ariel experiences life beyond his small village for the first time as he travels toward the city Rath Varia, helped along the way by talking beavers and amiable robots. Once there, he learns how wizards can reshape life and concocts a dangerous scheme to defeat Malory by activating humanity's "Plan Z" in its fight against the dragons, a signal meant to summon a human army held in stasis in space. Unfortunately, the signal brings only Durga, a teen girl trained by humans in propaganda and kept in stasis for centuries. She agrees to help topple Malory if Ariel will help confront the dragons once and for all. Narrated by the fungal chronicler implant that attaches to Ariel, the story is full of wildly inventive and audacious worldbuilding delivered in a cozy tone reminiscent of Becky Chambers. With the flavor of a classic coming-of-age adventure or a complicated video game, this is a world readers will hope to come back to.
