Moonbound Audiobook By Robin Sloan cover art

Moonbound

A Novel

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Moonbound

By: Robin Sloan
Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.24

Buy for $20.24

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

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 eleven 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 challenges: 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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Robin Sloan (P)2024 Macmillan Audio
Adventure Editor's Select Epic Literary Fiction Fiction Fantasy
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Interview: Robin Sloan goes high science fantasy in his wildly imaginative "Moonbound"

''I kind of set myself the challenge to have my cake and eat it too.'
-0.00
  • Moonbound
  • ''I kind of set myself the challenge to have my cake and eat it too.'

Editorial Review

A departure ... and an arrival home
As a superfan of Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore and Sourdough, I have been counting the days to the release of Robin Sloan's newest book, Moonbound. While described as part of the "Penumbra-verse," fans of Sloan's earlier works should be prepared for a totally different listening experience, both in tone (we've got a unique mashup of first and third person) and scope (we are now 11,000 years into the future!). And yet there is something familiar here, plus some amazing Easter eggs. What is most definitely consistent is the wildly inventive creativity and whimsy on display. You will meet a multicellular AI, talking beavers with advanced debate skills, salamander wizards, and sentient swords. In all its complexity, Moonbound feels like Sloan's ultimate labor of love, and it may actually be the connective tissue of his very imagination. Prepare to be amazed. — Emily C.., Audible Editor

What listeners say about Moonbound

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    48
  • 4 Stars
    12
  • 3 Stars
    13
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    3
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    51
  • 4 Stars
    17
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    43
  • 4 Stars
    12
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Great world building but ...

Beneath some very elaborate and creative world building, this is your basic young wizard coming of age story. And there's no clear denomment. This reads more like the first half of a book rather than the first book in a series.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Now one of my favorite books

It's been a while since I've had the feeling of "I hope this never ends" while coming towards the end of the book. Thankfully, it ended with the great human question: what comes next. And so I have an itch of a hope that we shall one day return and likely find out more about the storm machines.

I love books that somehow believably intermingle all the genres, science fiction and fantasy, comedy and mystery, adventure and even a hint of romance.

I love love love this book and hope to meet the author some day... probably in his beloved SF.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Story with a capital ‘S’

Moonbound has creative storytelling and language! This book books so hard, you’re gonna love it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

If you loved a wrinkle in time as a kid you are in for a treat

Some how Sloan manages to have woven together a truly zany plot, with well developed characters and meditative pacing that dives into deeper philosophical thought, without ever taking it too seriously.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow! Wow! Wow!

My mind is stretched, my heart sings, my hope restored, my soul yearns to know - What Happens Next? Thank you Robin, amazing!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Magnificent!

Moonbound was a joy to listen to. I love Robin Sloan’s mind! His stories defy what you think may be a trite genre novel and he flips the narrative this way and that until you have something new, thought-provoking, and original. I highly recommend Moonbound (and his other novels!)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

All about story

I enjoyed the construct of the book and truly would love to see it made into a filmed series. It is engaging, terrific characters, and very creative.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

This book is my new obsession

To keep it succinct, my review of this should read "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

This would be accurate, but not useful. The book is the opposite: useful but not accurate. Which is why I love it.

This is post climate emergency fiction married to Arthurian metatext dancing with enormous space opera barely glimpsed in the tear of the veil of dust around earth, making saucy eyes at eldritch horrors of our own design, obeying our own ineluctable rules of narrative. Itt is a carneval of the weird (and the wyrd), laugh out loud funny in the least explainable manner, it ping pong a between weighty myth-making language and snarky almost post modernism flavored inappropriate and yet so appropriate Twitterisms. It does so rarely, which makes it slap more.

I love this. I will read it again. It will live in my brain forever, like a friendly symbiotic yeast starter in a mech suit.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Tenuous and hard to understand.

The further I progressed in this book the more confused I was. Initially I thought it was a retelling of The Sword in the Stone or some aspect of The Canterbury Tales. I was happy with that and then it changed and I didn't know if I was part of a VR game. My impression was that the idea was hatched in a fever dream. I have read all of the author's books and this is the first one I have not raved about. I did not enjoy the story but I appreciate it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great Story!

This book was an excellent experience in both storytelling and performance! I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in science fiction and classic literature retellings.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful