The Cloud Roads

Moon, the main character of the Raksura series, shares a great many characteristics with Murderbot: he's isolated, traumatized, often inspires fear in others through no fault of his own, and doesn't know where he belongs or how to fit in. Naturally, the first book is mostly concerned with reuniting Moon with his people and chronicling the joys and pains of integrating into this complex society. The plot is slightly predictable, but this is easily compensated for by the sheer originality of the setting: one of the few fantasy books/series I've read that does not bother with the conceit of fitting human society into a world where magic exists, but rather imagines a world where magic is just another routine natural force. There are no humans in this world but there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of sentient humanoid species, and just as many sentient non-humanoids. There are also floating islands, flying boats, ruins of wondrous monuments built by long-vanished peoples, and trees large enough to hold entire forests on one of their branches. It's fun, it's compelling, and it has distinct elements of coziness that make it a comforting re-read for me.

There is one criticism I think is valid, which is the gender essentialism of the Raksura. I don't believe this is deliberate on Wells' part; it's simply an extension of the magical but somewhat caste-ist conception of how Raksura society works. Certain people just get certain jobs by virtue of their phenotype at birth. Which could be oppressive, except that Raksura society doesn't have money and nobody has to work for food and shelter. This didn't HAVE to mean that Raksura don't experience gender dysphoria, but that's what ends up happening--even though one of the MCs has an unexpected shift of body plan and has challenges dealing with that. There is, however, a laidback background acceptance of multiple sexual orientations. I didn't find this to be enough to ruin the story, but some people have, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

When I first picked this up, I was perplexed. The cover copy makes it sound like the sort of story you'd find buried deep in the fiction section of DeviantArt's anthro community. A flying, shapeshifting orphan who doesn't know his own species? Really?

But a disproportionately large number of authors and reviewers who have my respect (Catherynne M. Valente, N.K. Jemison, Foz Meadows, C.J. Cherryh) were saying excellent things about it, so I gave it a go.

Pretty quickly I was sucked right in, and wasn't at first able to articulate just why. The world building is excellent, with care and thought given to the differences between different intelligent species both biologically and culturally. The characters are given depth and realistic strengths and weaknesses based on their personalities, histories, and places in their culture's hierarchy. The relationships even have nuance and make sense!

It's a little like the movie Avatar, but if James Cameron gave even one damn about decent plot construction and character building. Oh, and no humans.

I'm pretty put out that my library doesn't have the sequel. The first ends rather abruptly, and I'm itching to get on to the next. Going on my to-buy list...