July Reading Recap

Now that I'm actually writing again, will my reading spree taper off? Time will tell!

→ MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan: After the Anth have solved all Earth's problems, humanity engineers a crew of beings, known as dragons, and sends them to explore the galaxy. The dragons return determined to prevent any further exploration by isolating Earth in a veil of moondust. The Anth fight back, but the dragons are invincible from their citadel on the moon, and the war is disastrous for humanity. (This is all explained in a four-page prologue.) Eleven thousand years later, a microscopic chronicler wakes up again. A young boy, Ariel, has just stumbled upon the preserved corpse that was the chronicler's previous host, and so this sentient "sourdough starter with a mech suit" leaps into Ariel's body and once again experiences the world. Earth has changed immeasurably, and mysteriously. Ariel lives in a small village dominated by a castle, as well as by a wizard who flies an airplane. Ariel has a handheld video game device and a dog that can talk. (All animals can talk.) The sky remains dust-shrouded, and soon Ariel and the chronicler will set out on an epic quest to revive the war against the dragons.

This novel is a weird and wonderful adventure that plays around with the conventions of genre, quests, chosen ones, and other classic tropes. While the story's patterns are familiar, little about it can be anticipated, and each new stage in the characters' journey brings fascinating surprises and extends the imaginative worldbuilding. MOONBOUND is quite different from Sloan's previous novels, but it has the same gentle humor and lovingly developed characters. (There are also some small references to his earlier books.) Sloan has planned this as the first book in a series, and I look forward to spending more time with these great characters and seeing other elements of the far-future Earth.

→ DIXON, DESCENDING by Karen Outen: Dixon has climbed serious mountains, but he never dreamed of attempting Everest until his brother Nate suggested it. The brothers have come into some money after their mother's death, and Nate's proposal is that they train together and then take a few months out of their lives to travel to Nepal and climb with a tour group. For Dixon, that means a semester off from the boys' middle school where he works as a psychologist, leaving his favorite kids, including one who is the target of relentless bullying. Still, Nate's dream of Everest becomes Dixon's as well, until he can't imagine not making the trip, and not reaching the summit, whatever the cost.

The novel begins on the mountain and sets up ominous foreshadowing before jumping back to establish what led the brothers there and what they've left behind. Careful shifts between time periods build up the tension as the story circles around the question of what happened. Outen did extensive research to portray the experience of climbing Everest, and her evocative writing captures both the majesty and the agony to be found on the mountain.

Dixon and Nate are Black, a rarity on the mountain that attracts some attention. Dixon's students are also young Black men, but they lack the privileges he grew up with, and his desire to help them doesn't always work out. In the portion of the book focused on the aftermath of the Everest expedition, there's an emotional story about Dixon and two of his students. While that plotline can't live up to the adventure and suspense of the Everest plot, it's well-crafted with high stakes of its own, and Outen ties the threads together in a satisfying ending. I recommend this, especially to others who share my horrified fascination with the idea of anyone climbing Everest.

→ PEOPLE COLLIDE by Isle McElroy: Eli and Elizabeth are an American couple living in Bulgaria, where she's earned a coveted fellowship. Eli is aware of being the less ambitious one, and he's hanging around with little to do while Elizabeth teaches and writes. Until one day, when Eli discovers that he's taken over Elizabeth's body. Once he reconciles himself to this strange situation, he assumes Elizabeth is in his own body, but she's nowhere to be found and isn't responding to calls. Because Eli can't explain the situation to anyone else, he has to pretend to be Elizabeth and act like Eli is the one who's disappeared. Soon a clue emerges to her possible whereabouts, and Eli is off on a search for his missing wife and his own missing body.

While the body swap is a familiar premise, McElroy bypasses most of the usual components, for good and bad. I had mixed feelings about this novel due mostly to imagining it would be a different sort of story. I was always eager to find out what would happen next, but I wasn't always as interested in where the author chose to take the story as in where I thought it might go. However, McElroy writes well, with excellent insight into the characters and relationships, and they use the premise to explore a range of ideas.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders offers Another Way To Think About "Conflict" and "Stakes" In Your Fiction: "A lot of conflict is really about people dealing with all the weird programming that was crammed into their brains when they were younger, because most people have been indoctrinated with a ton of bad ideas about how the world works. I'm really interested in writing about the conflicts that take place within people. (In fact, one of the most interesting conflicts a character can have is the struggle to see past the toxic notion that life is about being aggressive, fighting, taking what you want, and so on.)"