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| City of Bones IS on here twice, thanks for noticing |
(Basically, this is a little retrospective on my Martha Wells journey, since she's the author I am definitively the most obsessed with at the moment)
In August of last year, I read the Murderbot Diaries for the first time, on the recommendation of a work friend who is best described as "me, but in 20 years." We both love Frances Hardinge, so I know her taste is impeccable. And the Murderbot Diaries is a great example of that.
I think the Murderbot Diaries have been a lot of people's introduction to Martha Wells' work, if they didn't get on the Martha Wells Hype Train during the Raksura era (circa 2011-2017). Personally, I was pretty immediately enamored with Murderbot. I gave All Systems Red, the first book, four stars on Goodreads, but every book after that has been five stars for me. Murderbot is a character I hold very close to my heart.
Because of my love for Murderbot, I jumped at the chance to read an e-ARC of Witch King in November. I knew that Martha Wells had written a lot of fantasy before Murderbot, but I hadn't read any of it yet. I wasn't sure what to expect from Witch King, so I went into it with an open mind.
Witch King is the story of Kai, a demon in a human body who's sometimes known as the Witch King to the humans he interacts with. He's immortal, which is one reason why the book is in a dual-timeline format. In the past timeline, Kai and the other characters face an imperialistic, invading force that threatens to wipe out and/or assimilate everything. In the present, Kai is waking up from what seems to be an assassination attempt, in a new body, and he's trying to figure out what someone would have to gain from taking him out. One of the central themes of the book is the idea of immortals watching the effects of their actions ripple out through time, which I found really interesting. (Also, Martha Wells took inspiration from The Untamed and the character of Wei Wuxian to write this book. That's also really interesting to me).
As for how Witch King compares to Murderbot, I initially thought that anyone who likes fantasy and likes Murderbot would like Witch King. I was apparently wrong, though, because as Witch King's publication approached, I saw more people saying that they found Witch King to be difficult to get into, or that they didn't like the pacing. To be fair, Witch King does require you to be okay with not knowing what's going on at the beginning (which I personally like in a fantasy book, but I know not everyone does) and it is also more worldbuilding-heavy than Murderbot. I've seen it described as sink-or-swim worldbuilding, and I think that's accurate. Kai has some of the same dry humor and sarcasm as Murderbot, but his story is told in third person, so I can see why readers might not grow as attached to him as they do to Murderbot's super snarky first-person narration style. Also, on the worldbuilding topic, Murderbot will typically just explain aspects of the world to you as they come up, which makes it pretty easy to follow along.
I liked Witch King. And it made me curious about what the rest of Martha Wells' back catalog was like. But I actually read my next Martha Wells book almost by happenstance.
Another book that has grown into a real favorite with me over the past couple of years is The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. I've read it twice in print and was interested to know what the audiobook was like, so I looked it up on Libby. The audiobook wasn't available to borrow, but it did exist, so I looked up what else the narrator (Kyle McCarley) had done. And, would you look at that, in 2011 he narrated City of Bones by Martha Wells for Tantor Audio. I began listening to it mostly to see if I liked his narration enough to check out The Goblin Emperor when I had the chance.
And...well. It was an experience. For the record, I didn't like Kyle McCarley's narration that much. He has a tendency to over-enunciate his consonants that makes his reading of the book feel almost...aggressive? And the way that he read a couple of specific lines actually almost made me DNF the book entirely. But I pushed through, and appreciated the moments when the one character he gave a British accent to showed up, because I like him as a narrator much more when he's being British. In the end, despite the not-entirely-ideal audiobook experience, City of Bones is actually currently one of my favorite Martha Wells books.
They keep moving the title down, huh?
City of Bones is set in the tiered city of Charisat, located in a harsh desert wasteland that, in the time of the Ancients, used to be overflowing with water. Now, the Ancients are gone, water is expensive, and everyone is obsessed with the relic trade, particularly the magic-wielding warders. Khat is a member of a nonhuman race created by the ancients to be able to survive the desert better, and he's also a relic dealer (who occasionally reluctantly moonlights as a thief). He's offered a job that ends up getting him involved with the warders (in particular, a young woman named Elen) and their obsession with the ancients' secrets. There's intrigue, there's conspiracy, there's action, there's a possibility that the world will end, and there's a bittersweet ending that I've thought about a lot since I first read this book in January.
City of Bones has been re-acquired by Tor and is set to be re-released in September, after being revised and edited by Martha Wells. I'm really excited about this because I feel like even among Martha Wells fans, City of Bones has been overlooked for a long time. I hope the re-issue will bring some much-deserved attention to it, and I also hope that they do a new audiobook to accompany the revised edition. No hate to Kyle McCarley, but his consonants really do hit too hard for me.
I think reading City of Bones was also when I started to get a sense of what I now think of as "the Martha Wells Protagonist."
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| A sampling of MWPs |
I consider this sort of a hallmark or trademark of Martha Wells' writing. I haven't finished reading through her whole back catalog, but I've read enough now to have experienced five Martha Wells protagonists. I love them all, and there are definitely some similarities. MWPs are often very competent at what they do (sometimes scarily powerful), and they are also often maligned or disenfranchised in their social context. Khat is a Krisman, not a human, so he'll never be able to be a citizen of Charisat. Kai is a demon, so humans will always look at him with wariness. Murderbot is a rogue SecUnit, so there are people who will always view it as a heartless killing machine.
MWPs also often have a woundedness to them that makes them keep most people at arm's length. Khat was the sole survivor of a pirate attack, and now even other Krismen view him with suspicion. Kai underwent torture during the war with the invaders and has lost people to time. Murderbot was literally created to be an enslaved, disposable security guard who was denied all personhood and autonomy. But despite the fact that Martha Wells' characters tend to have reasons why they're more comfortable keeping people at a distance, the stories she writes about these characters are almost always about them finding community and connection.
And generally, they do so on their own terms, without having to change who they fundamentally are. Khat can't trust most people, but he trusts his business partner Sagai and the closeknit found family they've built together. Part of that is because Sagai allows Khat space, even when he's frustrated with him. As for Kai, he's no longer as idealistic as he was as a young demon, but he has friends that he cares about and he wants to keep the world un-burned with them. Murderbot will never be human, and it has never wanted to be, but there are more and more humans (and bots) in its life who it's forming meaningful connections with. And also, Murderbot's aversion to eye contact and touch are never treated like things that have to be fixed (!).
I'm using Khat, Kai, and Murderbot as examples because they're the first three MWPs I encountered and I've already talked about them in this blog post, but rest assured that all of these things also apply to Moon from the books of the Raksura. The main characters of Wheel of the Infinite are a little different from the specific Martha Wells Protagonist vibe, but still recognizably Martha Wells in Cool Worldbuilding and Importance of Community.
So anyways. After City of Bones I was officially intrigued by Martha Wells' fantasy back catalog, and I began working on tracking down more of her older fantasy books. I have yet to read any of her Ile-Rien books or her YA duology, but I've also read all of the Raksura books and Wheel of the Infinite (which, according to Martha Wells herself on her blog, was the worst-performing book of her career).
Maybe the fact that Wheel of the Infinite didn't do super well is why I had trouble finding it in any local libraries, and had to resort to Ebay. Surprisingly, the copy I got off Ebay that was simply described as being in "good" condition turned out to be a signed first edition personalized to "David," and with the dustjacket carefully preserved in one of those clear plastic slipjackets like libraries use. This charmed me. I feel very lucky that this book, once treasured by a stranger, has passed into my care. I'm going to keep taking good care of it.
As for what it's about, it's about Maskelle, the exiled Voice of the Adversary. Maskelle was once an incredibly important figure in her homeland's religious practices, but that was before she had a false vision that lead to her attempting to commit treason. Now, she's been asked to come back home to help with some strange occurrences involving the Wheel of the Infinite. In the interim, she's been traveling with a theatrical troupe, and she also saves the life of a foreign warrior (Rian) from some bandits. Since Rian has also been exiled from his homeland, he begins following Maskelle and her theatrical troupe (who have a cursed puppet, by the way, which is so fun) and ends up kind of volunteering himself as her bodyguard. And perhaps as her boytoy.
Like City of Bones, Wheel of the Infinite is about a conspiracy that has the potential to end the world. Some of the details of the conspiracy are similar enough that these two books could almost be read as connected - although only in the sense that they could be in the same multiverse. A large portion of the book takes place in an eerie, lifeless world reminiscent of Charn from The Magician's Nephew, which I found pretty cool and spooky.
One thing about the way Martha Wells writes is that she's never going to put a big emphasis on romantic relationships in the way that you might traditionally expect. It's not her style. So even though Rian and Maskelle enter into a relationship pretty early on in this story, the development of their relationship feels surprisingly understated, almost casual. For the record, I like this. I also like more typical portrayals of romantic relationships developing, but here the way their relationship is written felt very appropriate to how they are as characters and as people. They're both adults who have had prior experience, and although they become committed to each other in a certain way, there's not necessarily anything easily defined or traditional about their relationship. It's very interesting, is what I'm saying, particularly in contrast to everything else out there.
So I liked Wheel of the Infinite. It ranks lower for me than most of what I've read from Martha Wells so far, but I like everything I've read from her, so it's still a solid 3.5-4 stars.
Did you think we were done? We're not done. We need to talk about the Books of the Raksura.
I have reviewed all of the individual installments of the Raksura series either here or on Goodreads, but I want to discuss them anyway.
As someone who was incredibly obsessed with Warrior Cats as a child, the Raksura books were a delight to read. They are in many ways different, but the basic premise is similar enough that I would recommend the Raksura books to adult Warrior Cats fans without any qualms.
Moon is a shapeshifter who doesn't know what he is, or if there are any others like him. He's been on his own ever since he was a child, when the family he did have was killed. Since there's a species of evil shapeshifters that have a habit of burning down cities and feasting on the corpses, Moon generally has to hide the fact that he has a second form with wings and frills. The Cloud Roads begins with Moon being thrown out of a community, yet again - but this time, he's found by another of his kind, Stone. Stone, who is in many ways a delightfully crotchety old old man, convinces the very reluctant Moon to come back with him to his home court of Indigo Cloud. What he doesn't tell the very skittish Moon is that he and Moon are both consorts (flying Raksura who are fertile; not all of them are) and he's hoping that Moon can help solve Indigo Cloud's problem of being currently consortless.
Moon, in true Martha Wells Protagonist fashion, doesn't take this revelation especially well. And to be fair, it is a lot. Oh, and remember the evil shapeshifters? They're plotting. As they do. Watch out for those guys.
When talking about this series, Martha Wells has mentioned how a lot of stories about someone searching for where they belong end when the main character finds their family/community/species. But in the Books of the Raksura, Moon finding out that he's a Raksura is really just the beginning. And trying to fit in with Indigo Cloud is, in some ways, more frightening for Moon than trying to fit in with all of the groundling settlements he's been in over the years. After all, if he can't make it work with other Raksura, then maybe there's just something wrong with him.
The Raksura books can kind of be broken up into a trilogy of somewhat standalone installments, two short story/novella collections, and a duology that finishes out the series. My favorite book in the series is The Siren Depths, which is the third book, and I want to write a longer review of it at some point.
I guess that's all for now. This has been an overview of my ongoing Martha Wells era. I still need to read the books of Ile-Rien and the Emilie and the Hollow World duology. I don't think I'll read the tie-in stuff; I have the utmost respect for tie-in media but I haven't watched most of the stuff Martha Wells' tie-in books, well, tie in to. So that's that.
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