“Moonbound: A Novel”

Robin Sloan, author of “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” spends his time in the Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley, but, he writes me, in 2021 and 2022 as he was “shuttling around in your part of state” he was making voice notes for his new book, “Moonbound: A Novel” ($29 in hardcover from MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; also for Amazon Kindle and audiobook formats).

It is, he writes me, “A novel dreamt up (in part) on the road between Capay Valley and Oregon House,” and, as his ten-year-old son Orion says, after Sloan read him the book, it’s YA (Young Adult) but something even younger children could enjoy—if they don’t mind the intensity of a post-apocalyptic world, in the year 11,377, full of talking beavers, giant flies, and dragons made up of information.

About those dragons. Back in the year 2279, the Anth (“for that is what humans called their civilization at its apex”) created seven engineered intelligences, the “dragons,” and sent them out on a spaceship. Instead of opening a door into the universe, the dragons on their return built a base on the moon, pulverized a chunk of their new home and created a dust cloud around Earth so it would “forevermore hide from the cosmos.”

The Anth tried to fight back, but most all humans were destroyed. It was “a bummer so colossal that it was definitely … the worst thing that had ever happened” in Earth’s history. 

Thousands of years passed and one of the mini-intelligences, engineered by the Anth as a “Chronicler,” found itself inside a boy named Ariel, 12. 

The Chronicler tells the story, about how Ariel, escaping from the Wizard Malory, who had somehow created him, finds his destiny. But Sloan, with sly humor, upends standard fantasy tropes. There’s a sword in a stone for Ariel to pull out, but he ignores it and finds a very different, talking, sword. (More details: robinsloan.com/moonbound.)

Sloan upends the whole idea of “destiny” in the book (the first of a planned series) so surprises abound as Ariel ventures out into a world brilliantly imagined, where, with every page turned, readers will ask: “What happens next?”

"The Crossingway"

"What about my birthday party at the Redding Water Park?" Howell, about to turn thirteen on November 1, and who lives with his parents and sister in the town of Mount Shasta, will only slowly come to understand his part in a great transfer of power and consequent world-shaking events that will come right after his birthday. 

He and his friends must battle the evil Drygoni who, says his uncle Tal, "dig deeper and deeper into the Safonals until they are possessed ... Painless and unnoticed...." Safonals are ordinary folk who have become "bullies, young and old; gossips who say hurtful things about others when gathered in grocery stores, churches, street corners, schoolyards or on Facebook; ... and, so many more."

In order to gain Doeth power Howell must come to a place where here and there meet. It's called "The Crossingway" ($12.95 in paperback from Austin Macauley, austinmacauley.com; also for Amazon Kindle), a cracking-good YA adventure from Chicoan Lynn Elliott, playwright, novelist and Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Chico State.

Elliott revels in language-play, bringing in, as he notes in an email, "Mabinogi, tales of hauntings from Spanish and Aztec, references to Haitian culture, haunted sites from Native-American culture" and more. In Welsh, "mabinogi" means "instruction for young bards." Howell's mother, Rhiannon, has schooled him in Welsh mythology. Her brother Tal's "real name," Howell says, "is Taliesin who was supposed to be some mystical Welsh poet and friend of King Arthur."

Howell is bullied at school by Bully Harold Bully, Pug the Pyro and Sloppy Jack, who call him "howl" (yelled howlingly). 

When his mother mysteriously vanishes on a trip from Mount Shasta to New Mexico, Howell begins a mind-bending transmogrifying journey to rescue his mother, save Sister Sarah from evil Tommy Foxglove, and rout the bullies (who have multiplied and taken on new forms), aided by blind Leonel, a Latino, deaf Dazmonique, born in Haiti, Jimi One and Jimi Two (twins), and Native-American Dani Walks-Her-Pony. Each has a key part to play in helping Howell brave the tests he must endure.

Will Howell succeed? It all depends on the pronunciation of a word--and a little help from his friends.

"As Many Nows As I Can Get"

Imagine a little Colorado town named Graceville ("Western slope, two hours out of Denver"). It's the last summer fling for graduating high school seniors Scarlett Oliveira, best friend Hannah, Cody Martinez (Scarlett's first love), and David Warren (her second love). 

"Scar," a physics major, turns down an offer from MIT and instead will head to Colwyn College in Watertown, Maine. David will head to Stanford. They are Graceville's finest. All the planets seem aligned.

But in physics, gravitational and other forces can set things to wobbling, a perfect metaphor for how Scarlett's orderly life is upended when she jumps with David off the Mine Gulf Bridge into the waters below. "I want to feel everything," David says. "What it's like to be that heron, or those clouds, and to jump off that bridge." After Scar's impulsive choice she and David are in each other's orbit--but orbits decay.

What follows is Scar's account of lives upended by love and death, an emotionally resonant debut YA novel by Paradise native Shana Youngdahl. Now living in Maine, she teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.

"As Many Nows As I Can Get" ($17.99 in hardcover from Dial Books; also for Amazon Kindle) flits in short chapters from Scar's present (a road trip with her Colwyn College roommate Mina) to moments in the previous two years when David's magnetism was irresistible, when Cody moved on to someone else, when the past was a "now." 

"The past is not gone," Scarlett writes, "it's just not being witnessed. One flip and I'm headed out on the road with David ten months ago, another flip and I'm in this car with Mina today, another, it's eight months ago, and I'm sweating through college orientation. All these nows happening at once. And if all our nows happen at once, then death--it's just a scavenger hunt through time."

Brilliant student Scar makes life-changing mistakes, David makes a fatal one, and the story, with its electric repartee among friends and spot-on grasp of the lives of these teens, presents Scarlett with the question: Who am I in this now? The answer is not to be missed.

"Happily And Madly"

Chico novelist Alexis Bass introduces "bad girl" Maris Brown in her new YA novel, "Happily And Madly" ($17.99 in hardcover from Tor Teen; also for Amazon Kindle). I listened to the audio performance by Soneela Nankani; she captures in Maris' narration her bored cynicism with her dad's "new" family and her twitterpated emotions when she first meets the mysterious Finn. This is no ordinary summer.

Maris' father, George, a rep for Goodman Pharmaceuticals, has remarried. The "New Browns" are composed of George's wife Tricia ("A thirty-six-year-old who looks exactly her age, despite the new-mom short-bob haircut"), Trisha's eighteen-year-old daughter Chelsea (about the same age as Maris but utterly naive), and baby Phoebe (the "love child," Maris puts it).

Maris is invited to spend the summer with her dad and his family, immersing her in the moneyed life in Cross Cove on the New England coast. The "New Browns" are all smiles. Maris hardly fits. "I don’t look like them. I do not have a smile for every occasion. I do not glow. I am a daughter entirely by circumstance. Baggage from George’s first marriage. Nothing about me is beautiful or precious, and my shadow is the first thing you would notice."

Chelsea can hardly wait for the arrival of her London-based boyfriend, Edison, but meanwhile Maris, exploring the woods on a nearby island, encounters a young (and very handsome) man who calls himself Finn, wounded and trying to escape a trio of ruffians out for blood. It is all because of a poker match gone bad, with Finn losing and unable to pay up.

Maris' quick thinking saves Finn's life, and though she doesn't believe the story for long, she also realizes that Finn's presence makes her heart beat faster. She craves "mystery and excitement"--and Finn's kisses. Later, when Edison shows up for Chelsea, she sees immediately who he is and admits (surprise!) she wants him all to herself.

But this well-crafted and heartfelt novel is not just about a romantic triangle. Everyone seems to be lying (except Chelsea) and it turns out that murderous plots are afoot, with Edison--and George--deeply involved.

Love must persevere, because justice can be rough indeed.