Last year, I took it upon myself to finally read T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. I had been seeing an uptick in Arthurian stories and my only real exposure to the tale have been insane, but lackluster visions from the silver screen like Excalibur (1981) and King Arthur (2004). Since then, while I haven’t exactly sought out newer tellings of the classic tale, my nose catches a whiff of it every now and then, forcing me to follow it. Enter Moonbound, by Robin Sloan, a science fantasy re-telling that takes place millennia into the future.
Seven dragons were created to explore the universe. Upon their return to Earth, they declared war on Humanity, hunting them down and surrounding the planet in dust. They did not want Earth to be noticed by the horrors that exist beyond the veil. The wizard Malory will not stand for this and attempts to birth his own version of King Arthur to challenge the dragons on their moon fortress. However, his chosen creation Ariel, refuses the call and instead of grabbing Excalibur, picks up the ancient talking sword Regret Minimization to begin whatever journey lies outside the wizard’s domain. Inside Ariel’s head is an ancient piece of technology that refers to itself as the chronicler. Will Ariel eventually come around to the wizard’s scheme to challenge the dragons?
Right off the bat, Moonbound is a delight. The prologue sets up the world quite nicely, and the first few chapters have the familiar feel of Arthurian legend. Sloan does a great job of sprinkling in various nods to other versions, pulling them into his tapestry. They also feel just slightly off, giving Moonbound its own special flavor. The perspective is fun too, making you feel like you’re along for the journey as the reader. And once the story veers away from the source, a new world of magic and technology pulls you along. The world is whimsical as hell. It feels like Sloan just sort of had some wild seeds for ideas that he followed into the madcap realm they end up in. There are wizard fighting bog kings, a society of highly organized beavers with their own form of debate, and odd academies devoted to exploring the deepest depths of knowledge, diving into the 43 million dimensions of space and time. I can’t believe I’m going to state it this way, but everything about the setting is just fun. Everything feels delightful in a slightly off-putting way that made me want to explore it.
What made it work despite being so wildly different from the tried and true Arthurian tellings is that thematically it hits some of the same beats – minus a few key ingredients. This is definitely a story more about Arthur and a small group of miscreants than it is about the knights, the grail, and the attempt to maintain good order. I particularly enjoyed the emphasis on Ariel learning from the environment and the various animal societies that inhabit it. It was something that stuck out to me about The Once and Future King that was heavily featured in Moonbound. It easily glommed onto the bigger themes about exploration, space, and our relationship to our surroundings. More on this later.
The characters were delightful. Malory feels like a mad Merlin in all the right ways. Ariel fits his role as Arthur well, despite his more passive nature in the first half of the story. Considering there are themes about autonomy and questing, this makes sense. But there is a feeling that you’re along for the ride for a bit that slowed the pace down for me. The various characters he encounters, such as Durga, the last daughter of the Anth, who is hell bent on revenge against the Dragons for destroying her people. Or Scrounger, the best treasure hunter around, who had to be promised peril to consider joining the quest. Or Agassiz, the delightfully curious talking beaver who runs a fish-based computer. There are plenty more, but just shouting them out could take a while. Just know that there are plenty of characters to glom onto for a myriad of enjoyable reasons.
I want to talk about this book’s exploration of its environmental themes. Part of what makes them interesting is how the various characters talk about the environment and their role within it vs their relationship to it. The previous human society was able to develop artificial super intelligences to solve the problem of climate change, before they wholesale turned on humans, for a completely different reason. And yet, ten thousand years later, the world has changed. A massive entity known as the storm computer competes with the society of beavers to determine the direction of the climate. The beavers don’t see this as a moral battle either, just one that has to be waged for their own existence, but also a duty to the world they have created in their inhabiting of it. Durga carries the baggage of the previous humans, a separation from nature even though she feels some moral defense of it is necessary. Ariel is lost as he learns about the size of the world outside of Malory’s domain. Agassiz has several conversations with the rest of the group about their place within the world and how to contribute. I particularly like how she sees her and the rest of the beavers’ place within the world. It isn’t just “environment good, industry/expansion bad.” There is a foundation of a world view within the beaver’s society that I think most people can easily pick up. You have a responsibility to yourself and to those around you, whether they can speak or not. It is an ecosystem, not measured to its most quantifiable parts, but felt and observed through interaction.
But I also wish there was a little more to the examination of that specific theme with regards to Ariel’s journey. I think in the grander scheme the conclusion fits the exploration. It’s more that the ending sort of feels rushed. Not in the sense that Sloan didn’t know what to do. It just has that “quest complete” feeling that a lot of contemporary fiction falls into. It does leave the world open for more, with a “here’s where they are now” ending, along with an incredibly powerful last sentence. Considering that one of the main characters engages in a specific form of debating (one I find particularly compelling), and that form is used a few other times in the book to engage in decision making, it feels like a missed structural opportunity for me. I’m not saying the thematic arc is unsatisfying because of it, but I think it would have been an incredibly interesting play by the author to exercise some creativity with the form especially since this theme feels so central to the story.
One last point I want to make is that the book does include mentions of Silicon Valley. Normally, I don’t find this shit frustrating, but I think I’ve read a few books lately that just make a big deal about SV tens of thousands of years after the fact. It also doesn’t really concern itself with what the fuck SV actually is. It just is a place, a land where technology, entrepreneurship, and genius reside. Again, this isn’t really a particular problem with Moonbound as much as it’s just the straw that breaks the camel’s back for me. I just am frustrated with the portrayal giving so much power to SV for the outcome of the future, whether it’s good or bad, without really engaging with the myths and realities of that place. And in a book that is literally about playing with and twisting myths to make new realities, it’s just another missed opportunity. Especially if you want to play with the theme of autonomy. But that’s neither here nor there. Just a personal bug bear.
Moonbound, by Robin Sloan, was the kick I needed to get out of my reading slump. It plays with interesting ideas in a compelling world that left me wanting more. Its themes concerning the environment play with our relationship to nature in ways that most contemporary genre fiction doesn’t get close to. The characters are exciting, breaking out of their archetypes and really selling the quest at hand. It even inexplicably has several appendices, one of which is an armory of swords that weren’t even named in the book. If you’re a fan of Arthurian legend, or just want a good adventure story that wanders off the beaten path, then you should be Moonbound.
Rating: Moonbound –Grab your tickets to visit the Alamo of the moon at the Dragon’s Citadel.
-Alex
