Moonbound

Initially I thought I was going to enjoy this book based off the interesting premise alone. During a period of something akin to pax humanity, seven extraordinary humans are essentially turned into demigods and sent out in the universe to explore. Upon their return they have gone insane due to what they discovered/experienced, establish a base for themselves on the moon, and become the new overlords of humanity. They impose draconian rules on earth, telling humanity that it's too dangerous out in the universe, and outlaw all radio communication. They also shroud the earth in a layer of dust in the atmosphere to prevent outside contact from being formed. Of course this leads to a war been the 'dragons' as they are called in the book, and the rest of humanity; a war that the humans lose horribly. All of this backstory is told in the few few pages. The story takes place 11,000 years after this war, following a young boy who has an ancient piece of biotech jump into his body from a preserved warrior of the past. The rest of the Moonbound details his mission to break up the rule of the dragons and reestablish the freedom of humanity.

I was pretty taken with the background to the story, as it felt pretty fresh and interesting to me. Unfortunately for me, we don't spend a lot of time at all focusing on that. Mostly this a cozy and imaginative fantasy world with bit of tech from the past that pop up here and there. The imaginative parts of this story were good. Lot of little tidbits here and there that were fun and interesting. A recycling center that serves as the focal point of a community, a corporate beaver empire that has a biotic mega-computer, a strange religious leader at the bottom of a pool, and the narrator of the book who resides inside the main character himself. Sloan's imaginative world-building was definitely the highlight of the book for me.

Unfortunately, beyond the premise and these bright spots in creativity, not much else in Moonbound was for me at all. The cozy atmosphere that dominates the novel is not in any shape something that I'm interested in. Along with the simple prose it made for light reading, but not meaningful reading. I'm not sure why Moonbound isn't marketed as YA more, because that's the impression that I got from it most.

What I really couldn't stand, and can't stand in a lot of contemporary genre fiction, is the consistent use of 'online' humor and pop culture refrences. This is supposed to be Earth 11,000 years in the future, why are you referencing Seven Nation Army by the The White Stripes? Why are inserting contemporary turns of phrase like "What's he smoking?" ? The humor that Sloan writes with I found to be cringy and un-funny, but that's more of a personal taste issue. The pop culture references are the real sore spot for me. They undermine the world building, took me out of the setting, and degrade the entire novel.

I wish that more time had been spent on the cool premise. I wish that the narrator hadn't been relegated to solely that role for most of the novel, and been involved more in the story. I wish there weren't so many plot conveniences and so much lazy writing. I wish that Sloan had taken time to develop his characters more. I wish a lot of things from Moonbound that clearly weren't the goals. I have to conclude that I am simply not the target audience for this book, but certainly there is a large audience for this type of material, and if I was interested in it I'm sure I would've enjoyed myself.