Reading Wednesday: Re-Read - Books of the Raksura, vols. 1-3

[chomiji]

I found myself in the mood to re-read this series (five volumes plus two books of shorter fiction). I don't think I have re-read the entire work since the final book, Harbors of the Sun, came out in 2017. I've just finished re-reading the third book.

The rough outline is that a young male being, a shapeshifter, finally finds his people after being on his own since childhood. He then has to fit himself into their culture and community, and then help them face a threat not only to their species but to dozens of other types of intelligent beings with whom they share their world.

There are spoilers here, y'all.

I found myself melting into Moon all over again. In so many ways, his story is that of most of us nerdy folk who try to pass for normal and then get rejected when people find out what we're really like. You'd think that at the ripe old age of 61, I would be over this, but it still comes up surprisingly often.

In the time since the last Raksura book came out, author Martha Wells has become acclaimed for her Murderbot series. All Systems Red won a Nebula Award, a Hugo, and the American Library Association's Alex Award (which recognizes YA literature). The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition won a Hugo and a Locus Award.

I like Murderbot, but it makes me a little sad that it's more popular than the Raksura series. Murderbot begins to grow fond of human beings, but it doesn't interact with a continuing cast on a long-term basis. The Books of the Raksura are very much centered around Moon, but they're also stories about community on several levels and about family. I've just finished re-reading The Siren Depths, where Moon encounters his Raksuran birth community at last and eventually comes to deal with that. In the first two books, Moon has noticed that even though he's starting to feel part of his adopted/in-law "court," Indigo Cloud, he can't understand what's going on when they all sing together, which happens from time to time. Near the end of Depths, when his birth court sings, he suddenly feels part of it. I was much more touched by the scene this time than I was back when I first read the book, probably because with a good, plotty story, I rush through at breakneck speed the first time.

I was reading some reviews of the first book, and it was interesting that although most praised Wells' worldbuilding, some seemed to downgrade her for having "serviceable" prose. I have to agree with Escapepod, who noted that the straightforward prose better serves the intricate worldbuilding than a more more elaborate writing style would.

I am still crazy about Stone. The kind of relationship he has with Moon is so rare in most of the fiction I have read. There are lots of great relationships in these books, of all sorts, but this fatherly/elder brotherly thing really gets me. One of the Book Smugglers reviewers at first thought Moon and Stone were going to be lovers, but no. Stone has the upper hand so much, that would be kind of awful (to me, anyway). The Jade-Moon-Chime triad is plenty of Moon romance for me.