If You Liked Murderbot, You Might Like the Raksura, Too

As you may have heard when I mentioned it forty-zillion times, 2020 was My Year of Murderbot. I read and re-read the series, I listened to the audiobooks, and I noodled around fanart and fanfic collections. As I said to Martha Wells in our podcast conversation, Murderbot was my Sanctuary Moon.

All Systems Red
A | BN | K | AB
In pursuit of That Murderbot Feeling (e.g. This character gets it. Let’s hang out some more as I escape into this world alongside this character who is also trying to escape from dealing with people) I took a peek at Wells’ other books, with not a small amount of trepidation. I know when I step outside the world of Romance, I take a risk that Main Characters May Die and Happy Ever Afters are Not Guaranteed, which does a number on my willingness to read something. When my mental energy is already significantly depleted, the risks of placing my emotions into a story that may cause more anguish than I’d like are often too great to overcome. I read a lot of summaries.

With encouragement from other Murderbot fans, I tried The Cloud Roads, the first novel in in the Books of the Raksura. Well, now. It’s very different, but the similarities of theme, style, and character personality are so very delightful.

You know how sometimes you can see elements of one character in another, like there are glimpses of Roarke from the In Death series by Nora Roberts in Rogan Sweeney, the hero of Born in Fire?  

Show Spoiler

Frame from animated show of spiderman pointing at another version of himself

I mean, maybe you aren’t familiar with that example precisely, but you know what I mean, right?

That’s how I feel about the Raksura series: I see shades of the conflicts and personality types from the Murderbot Diaries in different moments, which, yes, please! That’s what I’m looking for! Coupled with the absolute vastness of the worldbuilding and the number of creatures my imagination is attempting to visualize, I’ve been very entertained indeed.

There are several smaller novellas and prequels in the series, but the Raksura novels start with The Cloud Roads. Moon is alone in the world, trying to survive. He must hide what he is, even though he doesn’t know what he is. He knows he can change his shape between a “groundling” form and a form wherein he has wings and claws and tails. There’s an Uber Evil in this world, the Fell, which also have wings and claws and are generally up to no good, and their resemblance to Moon’s wingy form causes him a number of problems.

Moon has unwillingly lived a transitory existence since he was young, when his mother and siblings were killed and he was left to fend for himself while hiding the whole wing thing. His life has been constant attempts to find shelter and safety in communities of different groundling types. Something eventually goes wrong and Moon has to leave or flee or escape his former friends, so his life pattern is a series of temporary infiltrations in an attempt to find a safe home.

Moon is deeply, painfully lonely.  He knows he is different but he doesn’t know what he is. He feels his isolation and would go off and live alone, except that Raksura have a visceral need for contact and connection with others, so that isolation becomes more painful than the sustained stress of hiding himself.

After Yet Another Groundling Community has discovered Moon’s resemblance to Everyone’s Enemy The Fell, and his life is yet again in danger, another, much larger creature that, holy shit, looks just like him except for being about forty-seven times bigger discovers then chases him. Stone eventually introduces himself, and explains what he is,  and what Moon is: they’re Raksura, and they’re definitely not meant to be solitary creatures.

Stone brings Moon to Stone’s home court, and, of course, things get weird and political and complicated. Moon doesn’t understand anything about the Raksura. The rules, customs, and ridiculously formal protocols of interaction are baffling, as are the different statuses held by different kinds of Raksura and what they mean. It’s all really exhausting and annoying and complex and he’s constantly making mistakes he doesn’t understand. These are allegedly his kind and Moon isn’t sure if he wants to attempt to belong with them, because seriously, they’re annoying af.

Sound familiar?

Ashton Kutcher on that 70s show saying to Mila Kunis Could you be any more annoying?

And that’s the setup, too. All that happens in the beginning, and then everything gets even more complicated. Poor Moon.

Home, identity, and loneliness are major themes of this series. Finding where one belongs is a common enough theme: Moon is desperately lonely, and craves a community on a deeply painful level, even when that community is either suspicious because they can sense he is lying about something, or made up of creatures that are exactly like him, except they are fluent in everything he is not. Stone is an elder of sorts in Indigo Cloud, the Raksuran court, and he promises Moon will be welcomed among his own kind. That doesn’t exactly go as smoothy as either of them might have hoped.

Moon would love to have a home and a family, but that yearning is matched by distrust born of a LOT of experience with rejection and deception. It’s humbling and a deep relief for Moon to not have to hide what he is, but discovering what he is means that now he has to figure out who he is, and who he is within this new society. (Again, familiarity ahoy!)

The Serpent Sea
A | BN | K | AB
Because Moon learns what he is and where he allegedly belongs in the very start of the story, the rest of the first novel and the series overall is about figuring out who he is in relation to what he is. He doesn’t know how to be himself in the court because the community of Raksura presume he will behave in a way he either doesn’t know or doesn’t like. When he goes by instinct, he often offends people without wanting to – which adds another layer of stress and trepidation to every conversation.

The other Raksurans are often bothersome and inconsistent; as much as Moon is drawn to them, he’s equally repelled by their unspoken expectations. The confusing annoyance of politics also influences everything that happens to and around Moon. It’s a court, so there’s drama with multiple queens, different kinds of Raksura with different jobs, status, and responsibilities. Moon is constantly tripping over unspoken rules of community behavior, then feels awkward and terrible because he screwed up. Moon’s existence as a solitary Raksuran also means his screwups are suspicious: Raksurans do not trust solitaries.

Moon thought that the problem with interacting with different individuals was the lying and the hiding he had to do to conceal himself, that the base level of deceit and dishonesty were what made everything so difficult for him.  Sorry, dude. Not so much.

Moon discovers that even when he no longer has to hide what he is, he still has problems. Other individuals are complicated and confusing. Everyone has a different motivations, and everyone is hiding something. Moon, like Murderbot, has to figure out how to deal with immediate and overarching levels of annoyance that come with family and community. Moon also has to decide if the freedom to be himself is worth all the annoyance, and if he can trust that the court will accept him and won’t expect him to hide who he is again to conform to their standard of behavior.

Murderbot both wants and fears personhood and acceptance as a construct among humans. Murderbot resembles humans in many ways, but is not human. Moon both wants and fears being Raksuran, and being accepted as he is. While he appears to be Raksuran, his understanding of the world and how to live within it is completely different from the court’s, and Moon fears that he’ll never be able to reconcile the differences enough to be accepted and welcomed.

While the Raksuran books are told in third person, as opposed to the very deep first person point of view of the Murderbot Diaries, Moon’s point of view has plenty of sardonic observations about the Raksurans, their politics and codes of behavior, and their rules. There’s plenty of sarcasm and irritation. While Murderbot hides to watch media in moments of botheration, Moon finds a high spot and hangs upside down by his tail. The similarities are so charming.

Hard same, you two.

a woman with long hair and sunglasses behind the wheel of a car says I don't want to talk to people

Despite their having mostly one-word names (Chime! Jade! Stone!) which I thought would confuse me, every character is distinct and fascinating as they reveal themselves. The individual and narrative development happens in fractions of a teaspoon at a time, and the internal conflicts are matched with external antagonists and social complications. This combination means I stay up way too late reading despite Daylight Mother Crapping Savings Time screwing up my brain.

The emotional pangs I feel for Moon as I make my way through the series resonate in similar ways to my experience reading Murderbot. I don’t think I can relate any harder to the feeling of wanting to find a community while also being so very bothered by people. With both series, I’m transported into a different universe and diverted by interpersonal problems and larger endangerments looming over everyone that both resemble and deviate from my own world. Murderbot and Moon are not exactly the same, but the flavor parallels are significant enough that I’m happily making my way through each book, savoring everything. So if you liked Murderbot, you might also really like Moon. In my reading, they’ve both been a form of sanctuary.

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  1. LisaM says:

    I read the Raksura books first, because there was a long library queue for Murderbot, and because I lean more toward fantasy than what (looked like) hard sci-fi. I fell hard for Moon and Stone, and binged the first four books and the short stories. I was lucky enough to see Martha Wells at a book signing at that time, but it was for Murderbot, and I felt awkward asking Raksura questions. I did babble about my love for them when she signed my books. Later of course I fell hard for Murderbot, but the Raksura are the ones I come back to more often.

  2. Gill says:

    Yes, I know what you mean about stepping out of the romance genre. I read The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers last week, as listed on Veronica Scott’s excellent blog. I loved it.

  3. Heberta says:

    I named my Roomba Murderbot.

  4. SB Sarah says:

    Heberta I love absolutely everything about this decision. WELL PLAYED.

  5. Heberta, now I want to get a Roomba just so I can call it Murderbot! Brilliant!

  6. MaryK says:

    SARAH! Be prepared, I’m about to Squee SO MUCH.

    I love this series! I’m so happy to find someone else who loves it. I’ve read it and listened to it multiple times so that I’ve had to ban myself from it so I don’t burn out on it. MW books are the kind I can read over and over because they feel alive. It’s almost like I expect to find new things happening whenever I pick them up again.

    I haven’t read the last two novels because I’m kind of saving them. I have read the two Stories of the Raksura collections. Be sure to read those as well. The Dead City and The Dark Earth Below in Volume II are particularly good.

    I love the found family aspect and even though there’s a romance my favorite part is the relationships Moon develops with friends especially Stone, Chime, and later Shade. In fact, I’ve been thinking of asking for a rec league for books with a Martha Wells type vibe. If you have any suggestions, PLEASE pass them on.

    In the meantime, I have THOUGHTS. 😀 I can’t tell from this post whether you’ve finished the initial trilogy so I’ll try to be circumspect.

    What did you think of Malachite? Ever since you mentioned on SmartTwitches that you were reading the books, I’ve thought “I bet she’ll like Malachite.” I’d love to know if MW planned out the trilogy in advanced or if books two and three happened organically.

    Didn’t you just love the “How Do You Like Me Now” aspect of book 3?

    One of my favorite parts of book one is when Moon finds the fledglings.

    PS – MW’s City of Bones, which I also loved, has a proto prototype of Murderbot in Khat. Fair warning, that book is an even stranger fantasy setting though I found it easy to understand. Interestingly, it has a potential romance that comes to nothing and I was happy about that. I really wish there was a sequel. MW writes such great characters.

  7. Kate says:

    I need a t-shirt that says “That Murderbot Feeling”.

  8. SB Sarah says:

    @Kate:
    I need a t-shirt that says “That Murderbot Feeling”.

    Yes! And under that. “Yuck. Feelings.”

    @MaryK:

    I haven’t listened to them yet, but I am very curious to hear what the book sounds like and how it changes the experience of the story. I did like Malachite, and I LOVED Celadon. She’s a bit like a proto Amena or Pin Lee. She likes Moon AND thinks he is a bit of an asshole. But yes, I really liked that in book three, Moon is much more able to accept who and how he is, despite *gestures at protocol-obsessed Raksura.*

  9. Blane says:

    One of my favorite fantasy books is Martha Well’s The Element of Fire, her first book I think. It has a romance element to it. I remember it being a good combination of action, politics, and a little romance.
    I haven’t read it in a while, so I hope it holds up to time

  10. Barb Wismer says:

    Great review! I followed your same path – “Murderbot” series first, which enticed me into the Raksura series. I had the same feelings exactly as you described! Thanks for writing this and hopefully it’ll lead others to enjoy the series and this author.

  11. Rachel says:

    I love The Books of the Raksura soooo much!!!! Like Mark, I’ve read them so many times I can’t even count it anymore. They predate Murderbot by several years too.

    Definitely get the short story/novella collections. Moon and Jade’s first clutch!! Stuff develops with Chime that’s hugely important to know for books 4 and 5. Plus the story of Indigo and Cloud and what actually happened when Indigo stole him. And one about Stone and how he ended up being chosen by his queen.

  12. Leonie says:

    I got into Murderbot via Bookslikewhoa on booktube and then wanted to read EVERYTHING else. And now I couldn’t say which series I prefer, as I love them both so much. Martha Wells is a genius.

  13. PamG says:

    I really enjoyed this post so much, even though Marth Wells is still completely in TBR land for me. Your reference to the Nora Roberts characters really resonated with me because every time I read a new book of hers I automatically try to slot the characters and themes into my interpretation of the Nora-verse. (I have a theory that all romance is somehow about family, and it began with Roberts or actually, Robb.)

    I would love to see more compare & contrast posts on this site–analytical rather than critical. Is that a possibility? In the meantime, I’m off to purchase me some Raksura.

  14. SB Sarah says:

    @PamG: I’m curious about your theory that romance is about family re: Roberts/Robb? What do you mean?

    And sure, I like doing analytical and comparison posts as I think a lot about that while I’m reading. While the past year of Quarantimes has done quite a number on my ability to think critically or analytically about anything, I’ve caught my brain a few times lately thinking about what I’m reading in a way I haven’t for a while, so perhaps my brain and thinking batteries are finally recharging after a year on “standby mode.”

  15. MaryK says:

    @Rachel – I don’t remember a story about how Stone got his queen. Do you know the title? I’d love to read it.

  16. dePizan says:

    Her Wheel of the Infinite, which is a standalone high fantasy novel (although the culture and religion is Asian and Buddhist inspired, rather than the usual northern European), is also very good. It has a 45 year old heroine and a love interest who is 15 years younger. And the age difference just isn’t an issue.

  17. Rachel says:

    @MaryK,

    I double-checked my novella collections and Stone’s queen story isn’t in there. But I remember reading it, even though I’m now blanking on the details. It must’ve been in the Raksura Patreon she did for a couple years that I was a member of. Unfortunately she completely closed it and there’s no way to get in to read those little snippets. I have no idea if she’s thought about doing anything else with them.

  18. Vasha says:

    I have read the 1st Raksura trilogy now and have lots of thoughts. One thing that both series have in common is an interest in leadership. There are leaders in lots of different styles and situations in the Murderbot books and all of them are women except for one who’s nonbinary. In the Raksura series another style is added, the absolute monarch. In Pearl and Malachite we have two examples of the pitfalls that can trip up an absolute ruler who’s used to not having to consult anyone else. In Book 1, Pearl thought the entire responsibility for solving the colony’s problems was hers, and even though she was overwhelmed, she wouldn’t admit it and drove everyone away from her. In Book 3, Malachite was so focused on being the all-powerful protector of her family who made their lives secure that she lost sight of the fact that protecting your children can’t mean controlling everything they do. There’s not a simple gender inversion going on in any of Wells’s books, there’s a lot of subtle feminist things. Really I feel you could write a dissertation on gender in Wells’s novels.

  19. MaryK says:

    @Rachel – Oh, that’s too bad! I’ve been wanting the story of Stone and his queen since I read the first Raksura book. Maybe she’ll do another short story collection.

  20. Idzie says:

    I love this series so much!! May I also recommend another series from Martha Wells’ back catalog, The Fall Of Ile-Rien, which is an all time favourite of mine. Multiple worlds, historical WWII vibes, lots of adventure, and though quite dark at times, has a marvellous understated romance that I just adore (and SPOILER it ends in A HFN).

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