Long before Murderbot showed up to watch media and win our hearts, Martha Wells wrote about Moon and unveiled the wonders of the Three Worlds in The Cloud Roads, kicking off this amazing and unique fantasy series.
Moon had been thrown out of a lot of groundling settlements and camps, but he hadn’t expected it from the Cordans.
In the midst of the pandemic, I devoured this series in audio—all five novels and two short story collections. I started in May 2021 and finished in August. With so much else going on, it was wonderful to immerse myself in the Three Worlds. It’s a rich, fantasy landscape with floating sky islands and hundreds (thousands?) of different intelligent species that inhabit all of the world’s diverse environments. It’s a world with a deep and long history, much of it forgotten by the people trying to live in the world when the series starts.
I love fictional worlds like this in fantasy and science fiction. Worlds or universes that show so many different people, different ways of looking at the universe, of loving each other, and trying to find their way. And in this series, it is populated by new species that I haven’t seen in other books. Elves, dwarves, and orcs are all fine—I love so many books featuring them—but Wells introduced me to new people I hadn’t seen.
The Raksura. At the start of the series, Moon doesn’t know what he is. Different, certainly, from the “groundling” people he lives with. He can pass as a member of a groundling species, but he has another shape. Darkly scaled, bigger, with wide wings, claws, and spines—capable of soaring over vast distances and taking down large prey. All he knows about his people is the memory of his siblings and mother, now dead, killed by a predator species. He fled and survived. But knows nothing of his people or their history. He doesn’t even know the name Raksura.
He knows a different name. Fell. A monstrous species of shapeshifters that preys on other people. They don’t create—they hunt and take. In his winged form, Moon resembles the Fell close enough to be mistaken for one by groundlings. It’s the secret he keeps to avoid being driven out yet again—or worse.
So it starts, and I don’t want to get into spoilers about the books, so I’ll leave it there.
When I read this series, I told my partner, “You’ve got to read these.”
I mean, after all, she’d read and absolutely loved the Murderbot stories. We both read a lot, though, and she had other things that she wanted to read. Despite my repeated (and unsought) recommendations. Fast forward to this month, a year from when I first read the books.
“What was the first book in that series by the Murderbot author?” she said.
“The Cloud Roads. Are you going to read them?”
“Thinking about it.”
Which then triggered a series of me asking over the next couple days, “Did you start it yet?”
Then—finally!—she started the series. A week later she’d already read the five novels. Yeah, she reads faster than me. The series kept her up late, unable to put it down. She’s reading the story collections now, those won’t last long. We’re able to commiserate that there aren’t more books set in the Three Worlds. And we can talk about the series together at last!
What series has captured your attention? Let me know in the comments.
I’ll see you next week—have fun reading!
Ryan M. Williams