As the Raksura are simultaneously fighting threats from both within and without, Moon undergoes a more personal battle: whether or not he can truly find a place to belong with the other Raksura. Moon accepts, but he doesn’t know the dire straits the Raksura of Indigo Cloud Court are in, nor does he realize just how important he may be to them. He informs Moon that he is part of a race known as the Raksura and offers him a place with his court. When it has an effect on him, the Cordans leave him to die.įortunately, Moon is rescued by Stone, a shapeshifter just like him who has been scouting for others like them. She sneaks some poison that only works on Fell into his tea.

However, one night his lover follows him and sees his other form without his knowledge. For a time, he’s been living with the Cordans where he lives in a tent with two women, one of which he has formed a relationship with. Over the years Moon has learned the hard way how to best blend in with the other groundlings, by doing things such as always accepting food and hunting away from the others. If the groundlings see his winged form, they confuse him with the bloodthirsty Fell and no longer want anything to do with him. Even if he manages to be friendly with others, he still always has to hide what he truly is. He’s lived among various groundling communities, but he’s never really found a place to belong. Since then, he’s never met anyone else like him: Moon has two forms, one with wings and one without. When Moon was very young, his mother and siblings were killed, leaving him all alone. Thanks to a brief Twitter conversation with Martha Wells, I discovered that she is working a third book even though it hasn’t been purchased by the publisher yet. The second volume, The Serpent Sea, is scheduled for release in January 2012. The Cloud Roads is the first book in the Books of Raksura series by Martha Wells, author of the Nebula nominated novel The Death of the Necromancer.

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells