A review by laurareads87
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells

adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

4.5, rounding up.  As Murderbot's biggest fan, I was happy to pick up a copy of Wells' earlier The Cloud Roads, and very happy to have found that I like her fantasy too!  I will absolutely continue this series.
What I like: the Raksura are a totally original and entirely plausible not-at-all-human-like fantasy species.  Their societal norms, social roles, biology, and culture are thoroughly developed and make sense.  Moon as a protagonist is great -- clear motivations, complex, and sympathetic without ever being perfectly likeable.  There are some great secondary characters as well.  The plot moves along at a consistent pace.  The world building is perhaps the novel's best aspect: complex, dynamic, and fantastical.  Wells also handled a disturbing aspect of the story that might be challenging for many readers -- the fact that
the antagonist species is trying to forcibly reproduce with the Raksura against their will
-- very well: it wasn't 'content warning' heavy in a way that made it unreadable.
What I didn't like so much: My only wish was that the main antagonists in the book, the Fell, were given some kind of motivation or back story or something.  They're terrifying, and the reader does get a sense of their social organization and biology, but because the reader learns about very few of them by name and spends almost no time with them outside of battle scenes, it is hard to say that they are motivated by much beyond their desire to kill (and eat) others.  I hope that this is further developed later in the series.
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