I’ve made no bones of the fact that I am a fan of Martha Wells. I’ve read her work, in toto, since the nineties, starting in those days when I took a look at Nebula and Hugo nomination lists and took them as straight-up reading guides. Her Ile-Rien Nebula-nominated novel Death of the Necromancer introduced me to her work, then, and I moved forward from there. The Cloud Roads, in 2011, started a new universe for her. A world with many humanoid species living in a welter of civilizations and cultures, current and past. A world where two species above all were focused. The Fell, ravenous, destructive and dangerous shapeshifters, their Flights devastating to all, a threat to any and every community. And then there were the Raksura, a shapeshifting species far, far more benign to their neighbors. A species rich in culture and internal society, a matrilineal culture built around courts ruled by Queens, with their consorts and a couple of subvarieties of the species providing a rich social environment. One problem the Raksura have is that their more aggressive flying forms have more than a passing resemblance to the Fell, and so with few exceptions, the Raksura treat with other species in their humanoid form secretly, or not at all. Into this mix, enter Moon…
