And we’re back with the second installment of the Martha Wells Book Club. This time we’re diving into books two and three of the Raksura series, The Serpent Sea and The Siren Depths. I was eager to get back to Moon, Jade, Chime, and the rest of my adorable flying lizard people, and these two books hit all my expectations.
“Moon had been consort to Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, for eleven days and nobody had tried to kill him yet. He thought it was going well so far.” With these opening sentences, Wells drops us right back into the thick of it with The Serpent Sea. After the Golden Islanders, led by Niran, deliver Indigo Cloud in their flying boats, the court has begun rebuilding in their reclaimed mountain-tree. Much of the first chunk of the book is dedicated to exploring the tree and planning for the future, with Moon constantly surprising himself at how much he enjoys being a part of this whole thing. They also discover some dead groundlings deep in the tree. Something terrible happened to them, and it may have to do with whatever happened to the seed at the heart of the tree. The seed is the life and magic of the tree; without it, the tree will rot and Indigo Cloud will once again be left without a home. Flower, a mentor still reeling from being possessed by the Fell in the first book, learns that Indigo Cloud’s original seed came from the mountain-tree now inhabited by the Emerald Twilight Court. Moon, Chime, Jade, and Flower set off to try and barter for a second seed.
At Emerald Twilight, Moon realizes just how lucky he was that Stone found him instead of a Raksura from another court. “There was no etiquette for solitaries, even if they were consorts.” Indigo Cloud positions itself as a typical court, but it’s more hodgepodge than it lets on. Unfortunately, a second seed isn’t a viable option, but at least Emerald Twilight mentors help Indigo Cloud locate their missing seed. Of course, Moon stirs up trouble between Jade and Tempest, another sister queen, but Jade holds her own, deftly proving her leadership skills and reminding Moon he’s only bad at being a consort because he believes he can’t be good at it.
They set off on yet another cross country journey, this time to a city state built on the back of a magically enslaved sea monster. The sorcerer Ardan seems to be in charge of this island, and Moon, what with all his time spent with groundlings, is instantly suspicious. Nothing on the island is what it seems and things go spectacularly awry. After being chased through the streets and hunted in tunnels carved into the insides of the leviathan, they recover their seed.
Just when it seems like things might finally go their way, they’re ambushed by Halcyon, Tempest’s clutchmate who wants to take her sister’s place. Wells makes an interesting implicit parallel here between Halcyon attempting to seduce Moon and the Fell from The Cloud Roads who had been kidnapping and forcing consorts to breed to create hybrids. Like the Fell, Halcyon doesn’t see Moon as a person with thoughts and feelings. He’s a means to an end. He’s a tool she can use to increase her power. Whether he wants her or not, hell, whether he lives or dies, doesn’t matter so long as she gets what she wants out of him. Her plan doesn’t work, not with Jade ready to kill to protect Moon and Moon being way too squirrely compared to most consorts. When they finally return to Indigo Cloud and replant the seed, Moon finally feels like he’s at home.
The Siren Depths begins with Niran and the Golden Islanders finally setting sail in their flying ships to return home. A contingent of Raksura, including Stone, are going with them because there aren’t enough islanders to pilot the ships. Then Wells jumps the reader three months ahead to Moon still trying to figure out the rules in Court. As Chime tells him, “Consorts are supposed to listen to the Arbora… and gently point it out to the queens.” And Balm points out that consorts also need to listen to warriors and help keep the younger males in line. Neither of which sounds particularly exciting to Moon.
While things are calm in Indigo Court, Wells gives us this paragraph: “Queens and consorts usually had warrior lovers, and no one seemed to mind that Moon slept with Chime occasionally. Which was good, because Chime had really wanted to.” When I read that, I nearly fell out my chair. Here is Wells in 2012 writing an openly queer and polyamorous main character living in a society where queerness and polyamory is not only commonplace but accepted. I was so worried about dipping back into Wells’ older work and getting the usual white cishet fare that I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised when she gave me diversity and inclusion instead. My headcanon was right!
The conversation Moon has with Chime is about fertility and getting queens pregnant, a pretty interesting shift from how he was when we first met him. If The Cloud Roads is about Moon being alone and The Serpent Sea about finding a community, then The Siren Depths is about finding a family within that community. He has people who love him and who he loves in return. He’s willing to risk everything, not just because he doesn’t want to be alone again or because it’s the right thing to do, but because he wants to protect the people he loves. Aw, I just want to give Moon a big ol’ hug.
Of course things immediately go to shit when the court his birth mother was a part of makes a play for him. Meeting his mother, Malachite, a queen in Opal Night, is what he once wanted more than anything, but now he knows that family is more than blood. He also learns that the Fell attack on her court years ago was connected to the one Indigo Cloud on earlier this year. The Fell’s plot to take consorts and clutches has been going on longer than anyone realized. We also see more of what Stone mentioned in the previous book about the Raksura not wanting “imperfect” children when Onyx, the then-queen of Opal Night, tried to kill the half-Fell children rescued by Malachite.
Word comes down that the Fell are ensconced in a city, and Moon and the other Raksura set off to rescue the groundlings. There, with groundlings who can’t help but make things worse and Raksura whose arrogance causes more problems than it solves, Moon encounters the being that drove the Fell to start their hybrid program. Moon learns that the Fell and the Raksura are more closely related than either cares to admit. After a brutal fight, the Raksura are victorious. Everyone lives happily ever after.
One of the things I love most about Murderbot is how Wells writes our beloved killer robot in such a way that several different marginalized groups can see themselves reflected in it. I’m both neurodivergent and trans/genderqueer, and so much of the way Murderbot moves through the world and exists in its body echoes my experiences. Whether or not Wells intended to write a character who was neurodivergent and nonbinary matters less to me than what I feel when I read those books. And I feel seen. Chime’s transformation from mentor to warrior plucks a lot of the same strings as my experience being trans and genderqueer does, especially during puberty. Suddenly the body you had is changing in some profound ways you cannot control or stop. Your body acts independently of what you want. For me, it felt like becoming a new person and having to learn a whole new set of rules and regulations. I just wanted to be me again, but instead I had to become A Woman. It took me another two decades to find the real version of me, and now I feel like yet another new person, one I actually like this time.
Likewise, Chime lived part of his life as a mentor and is now a warrior, two states in Raksura culture that are extremely different. He still has glimpses of his life as a mentor, even though his body is now that of a Warrior. While he’s forced to now live as a person he doesn’t want to be, the other Raksura are also generally supportive (or at the very least indifferent) of him tapping into his remaining mentor qualities and his hunt for a way to get back to his true self. It’s also clear that Moon loves Chime regardless of what shape his body takes or what his societal role is. Chime could stay a warrior the rest of his life or shift back to a mentor right now and it wouldn’t impact Moon’s affection in the slightest. Moon cares about him, not about his physicality. Chime’s transition isn’t perfect. There are times when I think if Wells wrote this book today, some of the stuff skirting biological essentialism would be handled with a more progressive attitude. But it’s still streets ahead of most of what was being traditionally published in fantasy in the 2010s.
With Moon and Stone, we also see how consorts can resist Raksura rigidity. It’s never stated explicitly, but it’s obvious several of the characters in this series wish they could lead lives contrary to their assigned roles. In another life, River would probably have made a decent consort to Pearl. Moon is probably better suited to being a spouse to Jade and Chime and a hunter than a consort with real power and influence. Even with his warrior form, Chime is still a talented mentor. Jade is a strong, caring leader who could bring Indigo Court into a successful future, while Pearl might find happiness in retirement. But none of these options are available to them. For the Raksura who have spent their entire lives at court, the idea of doing something different never occurs to them. Or, in Chime’s case, he’s “afraid to try.” For Raksura like Moon, who spent most of his life with groundlings, and Stone, who has spent his middle age traveling, they know there are other options out there. Stone never seems to take them, while Moon is better able to blend choice with duty to forge something that fits him better. Stone and Moon are both “undesirable” as consorts—Moon because of his “feral” upbringing and Stone because of his vision disability—yet both were able to carve out space in their court.
Join me next time as I spend a little more time with my happy little thruple in The Edge of Worlds.
