The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the Books of the Raksura, Martha Wells has created a lush world with imaginative cultures and fascinating species. The culture of the shape-shifting Raksura is so foreign and detailed, but she makes it extremely accessible to the reader. It's such a pleasure to read.
It becomes more clear in the Serpent Sea that this is not epic fantasy. The focus is not on a grand scale, but on the fate of a single, struggling clan in a large, indifferent world. We get glimpses of that world, but mainly we learn about the Indigo Cloud clan and their fight to survive.
The Fell are not present in this book, as the clan has escaped to a colony location that their ancestors abandoned years earlier. The descriptions of their new home at the top of a giant tree are beautiful. I feel like I've been there. I feel like I want to live there!
Now it is time to rebuild the clan and to connect with other Raksura - and to do what is needed to make the colony tree a viable home again. This has its share of danger and intense moments while Moon and his companions are on a mission away from the Court, and I felt the danger almost personally because I've come to care about these characters and their individual fates.
It took me a little while to figure out what this was going to be about, and it moved a bit slowly in the beginning, so I didn't feel it was as amazing as the first book. Still a favorite though.
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