The Cloud Roads: Volume One of the Books of the Raksura

I had never read anything by this author before, so I was pleasantly surprised by the book. I don't like to write reviews that give away the plot, so instead I'll just talk about why this book made such a good impression on me, and the one thing that bothered me. The Cloud Roads is that curious beast, a book that defies genre labels. Mind you, I'm not saying it transcends its genre. I hate that phrase, because it implies that genre is a bad thing, and I have no problem with genre.The Cloud Roads is impressive because it mixes genres in an interesting way. The book is set on a world called the Three Kingdoms that doesn't appear to be our own earth. The many and varied humanoid and non-humanoid species on it are clearly alien-- not elves or fairies or dwarves or any other mythical creatures from assorted folklores. No, they are true aliens, and not Star Trek putty-on-their-noses aliens, but beings in a world where a single " species" can have many forms.The protagonist is named Moon. When the story begins, he doesn't even know what kind of creature he is, because he has never met any others like himself since he was quite young. The Three Kingdoms are inhabited by groundlings (creatures who walk), skylings (fly), and sea creatures (swim/live in the water). Moon has two forms, groundling and skyling, and can shift between them. There is no science in this shifting, as there is in Joe Haldeman's Camouflage. The change is clearly accomplished with magic, like the augery and a few other features of this world. For one thing, in one form Moon wears clothes and in the other not, and Wells accounts for this by mentioning that he had to learn to do that magic as well as the magic of changing his body.Eventually, Moon meets several Raksura, other creature with two forms who can shape-shift at will. But the Raksura's alien-ness is not limited to shape shifting and the oddness (wings, scales, tails) of their bodies. No, their species has two main classes of beings, one of which is winged when shifted and the other not. In addition, not all Raksura are fertile. They live in communal "courts" where they are dominated by a reigning queen, a specific variant of Raksura, who is fertile. Queens mate with consorts, and while both are large fierce fighters with a full compliment of wings, scales, and claws, queens are pretty damn scary fighters.Queens fight over consorts, and mark their mates with a scent, so that other queens will leave them alone. But not all females are queens. It's not that they don't have gender roles, it's that they have multiple roles for each gender. The Raksura may be humanoid, but they are not human. Thus, Raksura relationships do not always occur in tidy pairs, and the concept of family is pretty much indistinguishable from community.The bad guys are called the Fell, and they also shape shift and fall into multiple categories of beings, with the smarter "rulers" controlling the dumber varieties. They are impressively evil in that they exist only to prey on other species, which they do quite literally by eating their victims.If I have any complaints with the book, they are mostly about how creatures are named. Raksura is a perfectly fine term, but the two categories of Raksura are Arbora, who are teachers and mentors and whose alternate form is wingless, and Aeriat, who do have wings in their shifted (or non-groundling) form. Why, after building such a wonderfully rich and totally alien setting Wells chose two names that sound and look like English words for tree-related and air-related I will never know. They grated on me, pulling me back from her magical otherworld into the everyday, and I resented that because she did such a good job on everything else. Even calling the bad guys "the Fell" struck me as misguided. No other species had a particularly apt English adjective as a name.I wanted more consistency and logic than I got in naming; even the three main categories of Fell annoyed me: rulers (smart ones), major kethel (the big but dumb ones), and minor dakti (small but still dumb). Rulers were always called just rulers, but sometimes the others were called simply dakti and kethel and sometimes they were major kethel and minor dakti. I kept waiting for a major dakti and a minor kethel to appear but they never did. If they only came in one variety each, then why did they need the major/minor distinction? It made no sense!Of course, I am legendary in my critique group for compaining about characters' names, so it's not surprising this was the one thing that bothered me. I was even bothered by a language being called Altanic because I read it as Atlantic for the first six times I came to it.But, nit picks aside, the story itself is wonderfully told. Moon is a great protagonist; damaged, prickly, but still soft-hearted, Moon hopes for good from the world but so often encounters bad. Wells does a good job of sketching secondary and tertiary characters in just a few sentences, so that the other "people" all feel real. The story has a good mix of action, dialog, and Moon's thought processes. The story is told from Moon's point of view, in third person so close and consistent you could change all the pronouns to make it first person with almost no re-writing. The flying scenes are particularly well done.In short, I loved it!Caveat for Kindle owners: The Kindle version has some bad formatting-- several instances of missing spaces between words and some funky paragraphs. It's not horrible, but I wish they had proofed the ebook layout.

All of Martha's stories are rich, compelling, and thought-provoking. I love her descriptions of the varius cultures set in her stories; not the least of which is the extended families and matriarchies. Her stories of the Raksura weave an understandable and consistent lore that supports the motivation and setting of the players. This is a novel in a series that everyone should read once...1

The Cloud Roads introduces us to Moon, an orphaned shapeshifter who has spent years living among the groundlings (more traditionally humanoid looking races) disguised as one of them. Moon has long given up on finding his real people, and he doesn't even know the name of his race at the beginning of this book. Instead he's focused on living in different locales with various races, moving on when they became suspicious of him, forging some semblance of a life as best as he can. Despite Moon's somewhat detached nature due to his self-reliance, cynicism, and general distrust--learned habits from having to keep on the move--Moon is not a solitary creature by nature and finds comfort living among others, even if he isn't free to be himself. That all changes one day when he meets another shapeshifter like himself, and Moon begins a life changing journey that may finally provide the answers he feared he'd never find.Moon presents an interesting conundrum in Raksuran society. He has difficulty with the mores of the society, and while Moon tries to keep his outward feelings neutral, even as he worries he may doing the wrong things, Moon's survival tactics never quite leave him. Given how he's lived much of his life wandering, he always looks for weaknesses and escape routes when introduced into unfamiliar situations. I appreciated he didn't immediately find personal peace or a feeling of belonging among the Raksura, He didn't find himself suddenly eager to sing the songs of his people. No, having Moon work through issues and learn how he factors into this new society gave his journey substance. Moon also showed that, even though he's wary by nature, he is a very dedicated, caring, and trustworthy individual, often feeling his own happiness isn't more important than doing what's right.What made me enjoy this book as much as I did was Moon and how he slowly comes to learn about his culture including the complicated court politics of his people. Because neither Moon or the reader know anything about the Raksura, this allows a level of world building that feels almost like we're taking this journey with Moon. We're experiencing this strange new place with him, and it gives Wells such freedom of expression with the culture and people. She's allowed to dwell on her world building, presenting Moon and the readers with this beautifully crafted landscape and culture. She weaves this new information into the story without having to resort to info dumping.With the world building, Wells did a terrific job of fleshing out her characters and races, making most of them feel like more than just humans with odd colored skin tones and some structural appearances. Some races outside the Raksura can feel fairly typical for the fantasy setting, but the author still manages to give them cultural differences to make them memorable. The Raksura culture is treated with ingenuity and craftiness by Wells. There's something that feels familiar and human about them, making the reader empathize with them while giving them this unique culture and mannerisms that sets them apart from typical humans or even the groundlings in the story.The Raksuran culture is largely matriarchal and plays with gender roles in clever ways. However, gender doesn't play out in such obvious ways to make the characters feel inferior or in ways that makes it seem like a gender war is happening. The genders largely on equal footing with defined roles that are important to their society as a whole. Gender differences aren't treated as a slight. A female may be stronger than her male counterpart in some cases and it doesn't cause an inferiority complex due to gender. It's just treated as part of the culture and makes a interesting, subtle commentary on gender without feeling like it's crept over into the territory of being angry and preachy. In this same vein, the sexual nature and customs of this world are varied and include various sexual orientations and customs without demonizing them in any way.Chris Kipiniak was an excellent choice in the reading the series. I loved the gravelly voice he used for Stone, which made the character actually sound like his name. I was a little unimpressed with his female voices, but I'm particular about narrators voicing characters opposite their gender in general. He didn't do a terrible job with their voices, though. I just wasn't moved by them. Despite that, he was an engaging narrator and added a nice flair to much of the dialogue. I enjoyed his characterization of Moon best and thought he did a superb job with capturing the wry nature of Moon's personality and Moon's conflicted nature that knew he should practice selfish self-preservation but ultimately always did what was right.In this first book, Wells has introduced us to a wildly imaginative world with these fully fleshed out characters and traditions that take the reader on quite a journey. This is one of the more innovative books I've read in any genre. There haven't been many books that make me feel like I'm reading something that's truly fresh and special, but Wells has managed to make me feel like I've stepped into a whole new world with the Raksura while keeping elements that make it feel familiar.

The Cloud Roads: Volume One of the Books of the Raksura is a captivating fantasy novel. It's the first of the series, and it sets up the world and the characters in a way that makes the reader eagerly anticipate the next book. The story follows Moon, a shape-shifting creature known as a Raksura, as he discovers more about his past and his people. The world building is fantastic, and the different cultures and societies of the Raksura, the Fell, and the groundlings are all unique and fascinating. Moon is a great protagonist, and the supporting characters are all well-developed and add depth to the story. The pacing of the book is perfect, with just enough action and plot twists to keep the reader engaged. Overall, The Cloud Roads is a must-read for fans of fantasy literature, and I can't wait to see where the series goes from here.

I entered into this series as an spanish twitter (@teknomagic) relentlessly recommended it. I was being cautious at first, as the premise sounded pretty weird, but... OH, BOY, DID IT PAY OFF!Amazing world-building, an greatly constructed plot and characters I just want to know more about... Yeah, the Books of Raksura just won a new fan.

A good book and I would like to read the series but 10, 12, 14 Euro for 300 pages and less? Sorry, but this is ridiculous.

Martha Wells Raksura series follows Moon through a huge and well crafted world of multiple sentient species each with their own distinct culture. His is a journey of discovery as he has grown up an orphan surviving alone and hasn't seen another of his species since the death of his mother, who had told him nothing of their people. The emotional depth of the characters and the level of world building remind me of Anne McCaffrey and her Petaybean and Acorna series', as well as the engaging first books of both Christopher Paolini's Eragon and Maggie Furey's Aurian. Having read the next 3 books of the Raksura, I can reassure you that the characters continue to develop without mysterious overnight changes of character, while more of the "3 worlds" (Earth, Sky, Water) is gradually and naturally revealed. Even the villians gain increasing depth avoiding the trap of simply assuming that all baddies are simply psychotic. As seen on the cover art, our MC has wings and can actually fly, these images not simply a hook. Finally, these are basically clean reads - nothing really explicit, wouldn't hesitate to recommend to a teen.

I chose to rate this book five stars because I cannot think of anything that I disliked about it. This book caught my attention from the start, and did not disappoint. At first I was worried that I wouldn't like Moon, but as we got to know him and more of his backstory was revealed, I really began to understand him and I ended up absolutely loving him. I also loved how much power the women had in this book!!This book was really enjoyable, it was easy to read, everything flowed, it had a couple of big surprises that didn't feel out of place, it was reasonably fast paced. The audible narration was brilliant.