/lit/ - Literature

>>20042790
The Cloud Roads, The Books of the Raksura #1- Martha Wells (2011)

This was one of the most uneven books I've ever read. The worldbuilding was top tier. It provided an amazing sense of wonder and potential. Initially, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, that made it contrasts all the more with how bad everything else is, especially the plot and antagonists, which were both basic and terrible. The characters and their relationships were adequate at best and left much to be desired. There's a romance, but it's not much of one.

There arguably weren't any humans in this world, it wasn't entirely clear as there were so many different races. At least one of the races isn't humanoid at all and yet is basically treated the same as if it weren't unusual. None of the races are of the standard sort, at least not that I could tell anyway. Several are reminiscent of others, but not enough to where I'd call them that.

The world was littered with the ruins of many different civilizations all over the place and no one seemed to really know what that was about. As can be seen on the cover there were floating islands of varying sizes dotted here and there, which also had ruins of ancient civilizations on them. I loved the idea of floating islands and continents. Not nearly enough was made of them, though how they float was explained.

The protagonist, shown on the cover, was a shapeshifter and that's his shifted form. In his groundling form, as those without wings were called, he's considerably more "human" and was able to pass among the various humanoid races. He also served as the reader surrogate because he knew almost nothing because of his upbringing, so characters were constantly informing him about everything.

This had a strong start for me, but the more I read, the less I was enjoying myself. Over time the plot takes precedence over everything else, and it's a relatively standard adventure plot of fighting one-dimensional cannibalistic pseudo-demons who just want to murder, rape, and devour. I was exceedingly disappointed. This could've been great if everything else had been on par with the worldbuilding.

Based on how I felt as the book progressed, combined with a few reviews from those who have read the entire series, and reading the provided summaries of the following books, this will be the only book in the series that I'll read. I can already tell that for each book I'd read in the series that I'd only become more embittered and regret having done so. I choose to avoid that agony.

Rating: 3.5/5 (rounded down)