This fun and fast-paced novel brings the legend of Paul Bunyan into a futuristic setting. The author tweaks the character slightly into the form of Paul Banyan, a logger on a planet called Shinnkaria who is trying to figure out a way to get lumber out of a forest called the Indigo Wild, a place full of glowing blue trees that generate their own individual force fields. Thrown into the mix is a trio of unlikely heroes: cyborg Frank Hone, pilot Mike Blink and an A.I. named Melody. The three are on the run after destroying the headquarters of a corporation that was involved in an interstellar slave trade. Deadly, sentient warships called Manticores are sent after them. Hone and his associates are forced to land on Shinnkaria to escape them. With the Manticores in orbit just waiting for them to poke their heads out, Hone, Mike and Melody throw in their lot with Banyan and learn that they’ve been unsuccessful in breaking through the trees’ forces fields and now they’re also under attack from a radical activist calling himself Johnny Rainforest. This man, once a prominent scientist, now a fanatic, has found a way to control many of the large predators that roam the Indigo Wild and has sent them to drive Banyan and his crew out of the woods and off the planet. In an effort to discover how Rainforest controls the animals the three fugitives team up with Bob, a Blue Ox native to the planet, to venture deep into the heart of the Indigo Wild to try to locate the source of its power. Deliriously imaginative, this story draws on numerous other tall tales besides the story of Paul Bunyan, and creates a few of its own in the process. A real treat. Check it out.