Farodun is a Human boy growing up on Ilex, one of the moons of the gas giant, Aylini Gynth. But the turbulent and rugged Ilex is nothing like its lovely sister moons, Ieus and Farodunus, known for peace and plenty.
When Farodun wakes to find he has been left for dead in one of Ilex's infamous acid swallets, he vows vengeance against the one who put him there— if only he can escape the perilous sinkhole. It seems unlikely at best, that is, until he is rescued by a stranger whose motives are as opaque as their armor. He can only hope for a small mercy; that this newcomer is friend not foe, and that his situation has not merely progressed from bad to worse.
Farodun soon finds the past colliding with his present, threatening everything he has ever known. Follow him as he navigates a path carved by history of strife to forge his future.
With 27 original illustrations, a comprehensive glossary, and more bonus content that brings the lore and landscapes of Farodun’s world to life, Moon, Have Mercy is a journey of survival, perseverance, and the Human desire for home.
Farodun is a Human boy growing up on Ilex, one of the moons of the gas giant, Aylini Gynth. But the turbulent and rugged Ilex is nothing like its lovely sister moons, Ieus and Farodunus, known for peace and plenty.
When Farodun wakes to find he has been left for dead in one of Ilex's infamous acid swallets, he vows vengeance against the one who put him there— if only he can escape the perilous sinkhole. It seems unlikely at best, that is, until he is rescued by a stranger whose motives are as opaque as their armor. He can only hope for a small mercy; that this newcomer is friend not foe, and that his situation has not merely progressed from bad to worse.
Farodun soon finds the past colliding with his present, threatening everything he has ever known. Follow him as he navigates a path carved by history of strife to forge his future.
With 27 original illustrations, a comprehensive glossary, and more bonus content that brings the lore and landscapes of Farodun’s world to life, Moon, Have Mercy is a journey of survival, perseverance, and the Human desire for home.
Farodun Down woke at the bottom of a well, lying on his back, arms and legs flung wide. He shivered despite it being comfortably warm where he was. At first, he thought he was floating, suspended in the tepid water, but it was only his arms and legs that drifted, listless, out to his sides as if he were in a large bathtub. Far away and muffled through the ground, he heard the sonic boom and characteristic siren of a Bamda train approaching its destination. He didn’t know where that destination might be. Maybe it was possible to work it out, but he was dizzy and dang tired. For the time being, he was content to rest in the peaceful, warm water.
Farodun didn’t recall how he’d come to be here, nor could he say where here was. But about ten meters above him, through the open mouth of the well or cave or whatever it was he was in, he could see Ieus and Farodunus, the other two habitable moons of the gas giant, Aylini Gynth. They’d already reached the peak of their swift transit across the Ilexian night sky, so it had to be close to one or two hour. On the nighttime side of Farodunus, he could see clusters of city lights, like sparkling silkmite webs, branching out over the dark surface of the moon. He watched them for a time, until he spotted the cluster that he supposed had to be the capital city of New Cyrex.
At the moment, everything, including the moons and the stars behind them, was slowly spinning. His stomach began to churn.
Nevertheless, it was a pretty picture. It reminded him of something printed on a souvenir or detailed in a documentary. Farodun liked documentaries— all he ever watched. What would the narrator say about the Gynthan moons? He’d seen a special hosted by the children’s presenter, Cren Ridurun, on that exact subject more than once…
Aptly named for the twin Tannayani goddesses of prosperity and mercy, Ieus is marbled with vast oceans, and streaked with verdant green archipelagos. Splashy! And, here’s Farodunus, covered by white and beige prairies and savannas, with snowy polar caps and big blue rivers and lakes. There is nowhere on Farodunus out of walking distance from fresh, drinkable water. Now that’s merciful!
Every kid from his cohort had grown up watching Cren Ridurun’s Galactic Explorers Club. Farodun still watched it once in a while… alright, maybe more than once in a while. But he’d never cop to that— that show was for kids half his age. In each episode, the host would cheerfully discuss everything from how water reclaimers worked, to bugs that you could find in your own garden on Farodunus, to stars, planets and moons, even the whole galaxy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the good old Cren never had much to say about Ilex.
Farodun could almost hear Ridurun’s upbeat, nasal voice, and for a moment, he was back in his kitchen, spreading grancho roe on ollochi crackers in the orange glow of his odi unit, watching as the host capered about in that ridiculous “explorer” costume. If his head hadn't been pounding so tremendously, he could have believed it was real.
Wait. Where am I…?
“Ilex!” Ridurun’s disembodied voice rang through the well.
Then, to Farodun’s amazement, the Cren himself stepped out of the darkness, striding across the water as though it were solid ground, circular ripples radiating meters from his bright blue, pointed shoes. He came to stand in the spotlight cast from the top of the well and produced— out of the air— a lecturer’s odi board with an animated diorama of the Gynthan System. He cast a congenial grin into the space above Farodun, eyes fixed on the lens of a camera that wasn’t there.
“Yes sir, Ilex, the moon on which Farodunus Down lives with his brother, is not so lovely as its sisters. Ilex took its name from no benevolent deity, but from... a vengeful spirit! Spooky! The legend goes that Ilex was once the greatest shipwright in Arm Sector Three. When he was poisoned by a rival who wanted to steal schematics from him, he returned as a ghost, possessed that rival and his whole crew, and, one by one, walked them into vats of industrial stripper, where they were dissolved! Ha, ha! Whoops!”
Ridurun suddenly yelped in mock pain, hopping back and forth from foot to foot, as though the floor, or really, the surface of the water, was hot. He held his fists up over his head, then opened them to let handfuls of red silk ribbon spill out and over him as he sunk down, howling and blubbering. Farodun didn’t think the bit was appropriate for the target demographic. It had already gone on too long to be comedic, and an absurd amount of ribbon was still spreading out around Ridurun like a silken, red oil slick. When the tendrils drew close to Farodun, he swatted at them, disrupting the surface of the water, and they disappeared.
Farodun pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to blot out the hallucination, to force his jostled brain to obey him and work out where he was and why. Holding a train of thought was difficult, impossible with this maniacal vision of Cren Ridurun dancing around him— and speaking of trains, there was the Bamda again.
Must be leaving the station. If this well would just stop spinning...
He groaned and slowly rolled his head to face in the opposite direction.
Cren Ridurun twirled into view on tiptoes, arms gracefully spread like wings, eyeing Farodun with his head sideways.
“Now, Master Farodun,” he chided, his voice sing-song, “you must pay attention! This is important!”
With a theatrical upward swoop of a finger, he pointed up at the animation, slowly turning in place on tiptoe as he tracked Ilex’s orbit with the tip of his finger. It was making Farodun ill to watch the presenter twirl like that.
“Significantly smaller than the other Gynthan moons,” he continued helpfully, “Ilex occupies an eccentric, elliptical orbit, leaving it without the company of its sisters for much of the year. Aw! Its crust is blackened with volcanic sands and streaked red with immense lava flows, and its sulfurous atmosphere is just this side of breathable. Make sure that whenever you visit Ilex, you always wear an appropriate filtration apparatus that a grown-up puts on your face! You don’t want your lungs to turn to snot! Gross! On the bright side, housing on Ilex is practically free, and the law is weak. Don’t forget to pack some heat if you’re going to be walking around outside! Ha, ha!”
What episode is this? Cren Ridurun never said that… No, no, where am I? Focus, Faro!
He squeezed his eyes shut, which hurt, and took a deep breath, which hurt more. The sharp pain cleared his thoughts, though only for a moment.
Maybe he was near Dano. There was a Bamda rail hub there.
Ridurun was right, though. Ilex was a harsh place, ill-suited to the lives of Terranians like himself.
“Not that Terranians aren’t a common enough sight there, all the same!” Ridurun cut in, derailing his thoughts once more. “Did you know Terranians mature in only six years by the Common Calendar, and can reproduce in as little as four or five? Wow! That’s fast! No wonder there are so many!”
“Please… be quiet. I can’t think,” said Farodun.
The bright chatter was like a hammer on his brain.
He could still see the edge of Ieus, and Farodunus remained in full view, so not much time could have passed. At this point, Farodun became aware of an increasing burning at his arms and legs, past the elbows and below the knees, but he was still comfortable, resting bent slightly backwards over a small island of— he felt at it with his hand— wet laundry? Which made no sense, so some kind of hairy algae, more likely. But it burned when he moved his fingers through the water, and he was profoundly sleepy, so he became still again.
His head throbbed, and a memory of booming and shrieks and his brother, shouting, swirled past in the darkness.
Fireworks? he thought.
“Did you know,” Cren Ridurun asked, thoughtfully stroking the throat fan at the left side of his neck as he paced around the water, “That in just a few tens of millions of years, geologists predict that Ilex will blossom into a paradise even more beautiful than its sister moons? That might seem like a long time, but geologically, it’s just around the corner! Now, what could possibly turn a bitter little rock like Ilex into a lush oasis?”
“Go away!” Farodun pleaded.
He was sore and more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. If he could just sleep, even just for a few hours, maybe he could figure out what he needed to do to get out of this hole. He pressed his hand into the algae bed as he rolled to his side. The motion knocked a spongy clump loose, and it sank away into the warm water. It had been growing on a sort of hollow rock. As he ran his fingers over the surface, he was surprised by how perfectly round and smooth it was; like an overturned glass bowl.
“Well, I’ll tell you! Beneath its obsidian shell, Ilex is rife with aquifers. Who knows what an aquifer is?”
“What do you want?!”
“That’s right! Water! Yeah! The powerful tidal forces Aylini Gynth exerts on Ilex push and pull at these aquifers, and with time, they have turned vast sections of the surface into steaming karsts, pockmarked with acid swallets and sinkholes. Someday, these will feed into lakes and oceans. But don’t get your paddle boats out yet! The most acidic of those swallets can dissolve an adult ksibuon in two weeks, and a little Terranian in a single high tide. Ouch!”
Farodun woke with a jolt. The apparition of Cren Ridurun evaporated in the face of the searing pain at his arms and legs. His boots squelched against the wet mound of detritus he was on as he scrambled away from the burning water and onto his hands and knees. It had risen a lot from where it had been before.
What had Ridurun said? Something about acid swallets and sinkholes. Acid swall—
Oh, no. No.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be an acid swallet. That was not where he was. But his hands were burning. Feet were burning. His face.
For a short time, perhaps a few seconds shy of a minute, the knowledge that he now found himself at the bottom of one of Ilex’s acid swallets horrified him into a stupor. Then, like a tuunga lizard in a fryman’s tank, he was scrabbling at the gritty walls, the blistered skin of his fingertips and palms peeling back against chunks of embedded pumice. Four fingernails went as well.
In defiance of all probability, he made it about a third of the way up the concave wall before losing his grip and falling back into the pit.
His pulse was thunderous in his skull, and under the water, the directional pull of gravity was lost to him. The acid foamed against his face, burned in his nostrils and throat, but at least he had the wherewithal to shut his eyes tight. If this swallet had been a very potent one, he’d have been a goner right then. Small mercy. Concussed and confused, he slipped and rolled in the muck, no matter which way he threw himself. No way was up.
“Siga!” he yelled for his brother.
He was rewarded with a mouthful of burning, but kept splashing his limbs through the bubbling water.
At last, his fingers found it, brushing against that shell stuck in the stringy, muddy heap at the center of the swallet. It was right next to him, but he hadn’t been able to see it. Flinging his arm out, Farodun grabbed onto the pile, hands sinking in the silt. He grasped and clawed at the smooth edges of the bowl, precious seconds lost, before at last he got a hold of the lip and hoisted himself back up to its relative safety.
“Siga!”
In the low light, with his vision blurry and stinging, he couldn’t see what he was sitting on, but he thought it was maybe a bit of an unlucky ksibuon’s carapace.
“Sigarun!!”
But his brother was not there. He remembered now. The four thugs that kicked in their door, the explosive blasts of their weapons, his brother’s girlfriend— what was her name? Ouna, that’s right— going rigid for just a split second before dropping all limp like a muillcloth doll. His brother running towards the kitchen, the bright flash of plasma just before everything went dark.
The one who’d been in charge, he’d recognized— a Lobun he’d seen Siga talking to before. He had a huge star-shaped plasma scar on his cheek, three cybernetic fingers on his primary right hand, and stunk of stale camrack smoke. Farodun could almost smell it over the sulfurous stench in the swallet— which would be flooded in just a moment, he reminded himself. Then there would be no place for him to be that did not promise a miserable death.
Farodun put his hands on his knees and was sick into the still-rising water.
If his throat hadn’t been on fire, he would’ve screamed. He would’ve cursed Siga’s name and whatever scheme-of-the-week had brought this destruction onto them all. A writhing, living anger twisted up in him. At the unfairness of it. At the burning that coursed over his skin.
He wouldn’t die here. He knew he wouldn’t. Because in that moment he decided he would kill that Lobun, and maybe Siga, too, if he wasn’t dead already.
“That’s right, Master Faro,” Cren Ridurun’s voice chirped from the abyss around him. “You’ll kill those sons o’bitches for sure! Most definitely! But to do that, first we must…?”
Farodun nodded.
To do that, first, he would have to survive this swallet.
“Attaboy! So— up, up, and out!”
Farodun couldn’t see the beloved presenter, though whether the hallucination was fading, or his vision was just too blurry, he couldn’t tell.
“Faro, go!” shouted the apparition. “Now!”
Right.
Farodun crouched and sprang upwards, launching his slight body at the near wall, grinding his fingers into its sharp, porous surface when he connected with it. This time, miraculously, he made it almost three meters up before his hand slipped in its own treacherous blood, sending him plummeting, arms flailing like wild pinwheels.
He landed badly, crashing into the very island that had previously saved him. The air went out of his lungs as if into a vacuum, and there was a loud crack, followed immediately by a blistering pain that shot through his right arm. That brought another burst of adrenaline, and without thinking, he had flung himself against the wall and was struggling towards the surface once more. His arm sang each time his weight shifted to it, but he was possessed. Again, he pushed himself up along the sharp, craggy surface, until at last he was bare centimeters from escape.
In the moons’ light, he saw the outline of a rocky protrusion that looked to be a good handhold. It wiggled right before it crumbled in his grip. For an instant, his feet pedaled against the curve of the wall, loosing a cascade of sand and salts and bits of lava rock. Then he was falling backwards.
And then, he wasn’t.
A broad hand, clad in black, had materialized from the night and gripped a fistful of his sweater. There Farodun dangled in soggy, burnt, disbelief, his feet braced against the limestone.
Lifting him up and out, it set him onto the ground.
He was saved.
The rescuer loomed huge over him, even crouched as it was, with one knee on the ground and a long forearm resting across the other. Eyes bleary and stinging, he could make out little besides that the figure was clad all in black, and was wearing the strangest evo helmet he’d ever seen; the face of it was completely smooth, like an oblong bowl made of opaque black glass, and the back swept backwards to a blunt, angled wedge.
Head tilted to the right, the rescuer had been looking at Farodun, but now it looked up, scanning the distance. A bright headlamp switched on in the center of its helmet’s forehead, turning it into a cyclops of sorts. It swept the light over him up and down once before directing its attention over the edge and down into the swallet. Then it swung it back to face him and shut the headlamp off. With a soft, scornful noise, almost a cough, the being stood. It had to be over two hundred centimeters tall.
“Can you walk, pup?”
The rescuer offered him a hand, its voice granular through the vox box in its helmet. Some part of Farodun, still fueled by adrenaline, tried to respond in the affirmative, but instead he only slumped forward into the tarry soil.
Drifting in and out of wakefulness, Farodun was tucked into a ball against a cool, rigid pillar of some sort. At first he’d thought it was a drainpipe or a chemical drum or some large piece of equipment. It wasn’t until the fifth time he woke that he realized that this object was, in fact, the being that had pulled him from the swallet.
Somewhere above him, he heard somebody curse. Then, a sudden, intense jostling sent lightning from his right arm directly into his brain, and he passed out.
When he came to again, he got the hazy impression that he and his rescuer were moving fast. Warm night air rushed past them through the small, open-top vehicle they were riding in.
A sipper, he thought, his bruised brain wandering down any path it came to. Probably a rental.
The trundling single-person rovers were the cheapest make-do vehicles for a place where the ground was intermittently sandy, sharp, and hot. From the way the sipper hurdled along, its heavy, balloonish tires bouncing and skipping over the uneven terrain, it was never meant to travel at this speed for any amount of time.
While one ironclad arm kept Farodun from being bounced from the sipper, the other reached past him to steer. The rescuer stared straight ahead, and looking up at it, Farodun could see the articulated cowl that shrouded its tapered neck from its jaw to its sternum. It must have felt him moving, because now it spared him a quick glance.
“Hang on, pup,” it said, “almost there.”
But Farodun had already faded into unconsciousness.
The dedication of Moon, Have Mercy to anyone who has wished for or would grant mercy to another already sets the tone for the outstanding depth and caliber of this book. Narrowing down the genre or target audience as young adult would do the scope of this work of art an injustice - anyone would enjoy the profound themes and intricate storytelling immensely, regardless of age. This fact is even more impressive given that our protagonist Farodun Down is barely 12 human years old. The author is right to advise caution with younger readers, because of the graphic nature of some violent scenes, and the mature themes explored.
It is precisely the intersection between beauty and brutality where this story has made its home, and this is evident from the very first scene. Farodun, a human boy living on Ilex, the cruelest moon orbiting the gas giant Aylini Gynth, wakes up in an acid swallet — yes, acid! We are immediately swept into trying to understand the nature of his predicament and how he got there. He recalls a vicious attack on his home and being shot at for something his brother did to some really bad and dangerous people. We get to meet his rescuer and see them through Farodun's eyes, understand their background and motivations. As the relationship between this unlikely duo deepens, the dangers of life on Ilex become clear, as well as just how hard Faro has to work for his place under the sun — or rather, his place on this moon.
Farodun's character is so endearing and relatable — flawed, but eager to learn and improve, and with a vivid imagination that results in some stunning dreamlike scenes. It is so easy to root for him and the Threlan Ed as they learn to live together and trust each other. All the characters are written in such a believable way and simply feel real and full of life. The writing is exceptional — vivid, evocative, lyrical, immersive, capturing the essence of who the characters are through their words, gestures and movements. There is a kind of safety and comfort for a reader that comes from knowing you are in the hands of an author who knows their story, world, and characters inside out, and has put a lot of thought into revealing what they want you to know at the time they want you to know it, and Miyasaki is a true master in this respect.
The extent of the worldbuilding is beyond impressive, with every name, whether of a living being or an object, used with intention as a piece of an elaborate puzzle. The exposure to the lore can be quite intense — the direct speech and the narration immediately name everything in Farodun's world in a natural way that fits the situation — but the author uses some clever techniques to make the immersion more gradual, such as Farodun recalling his knowledge about the nature on Ilex or Doctor Thyrnon filling him (and the reader) in on the complex history between humans and Threlans. All of this makes the reader feel like a part of the cruel and captivating world rather than a clueless know-nothing outsider looking in.
The 90-page glossary at the end of the book is extremely helpful, especially with the names of materials, animals, plants etc., even though coming across a new word is not frustrating at all, but instead serves to immerse you in the story, with plenty of context to figure out what it could mean even without referencing the glossary. Perhaps the best way to use the glossary is at the end of the book in order to avoid spoilers, even though flipping back and forth between the story and the supplementary materials is certainly easier with a printed edition than with an e-reader.
Another great reason to opt for a printed edition, apart from supporting this brilliant author, is the gorgeous original illustrations that follow each chapter and bring the characters and the landscapes to life to an even greater degree.
The amount of detail about the Threlan languages in the supplementary materials is another absolute treat, and the creativity in coming up with words for the concepts is stunning.
Moon, Have Mercy is the definition of a labor of love, clearly put together with the utmost care and heart, the kind of story that stays with you, to be revisited over and over. There is always an extra detail, an Easter egg, a new piece of lore to discover in this unique sci-fi gem.