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May. 25th, 2015 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI think my favorite thing about Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads is how it's basically just Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight if you cut out the humans and had all the emotional drama focused on the dragons instead?
I mean, the protagonists are not called dragons, they're called Raksura. But they're basically dragons. Were-dragons? Shapeshifters who have one vaguely two-legged form and one flying lizard form that is pretty much dragon. (Some of the lizards are non-flying, we'll get to that.) And the dragons come in different cool colors, and some colors are fertile so they get to be queens (female) and consorts (male) and be in charge, and some colors aren't. In Pern the dragons, while intelligent, never really have any issues about this, because having issues about biology is a job for human protagonists. But the dragons in Cloud Roads don't really care about humans and therefore get to have all their issues themselves. "I mean, I get that it's a problem that your community doesn't have any consorts right now but it's still a BIT WEIRD how the queens suddenly started dumping presents on my doorstep as soon as I showed up? PERHAPS WE SHOULD TAKE IT SLOW."
Moon, our protagonist, gets to have the most issues because his family was tragically killed when he was a kid and far away from any other Raksura, and he's been wandering around for years with no idea of what species that he actually is, other than it's shapeshifting and has a dragon form that vaguely resembles the dragon form of another EVIL species that's flying around and therefore people tend to freak out when they see it. The EVIL species is also interested in Moon, for reasons. Anyway, despite his deep-rooted conviction that he will be FOREVER ALONE!!!, Moon then encounters a Raksura colony and gets to be our audience viewpoint character for finding out all about the Raksura and being moderately uncomfortable with his new role and the societal and reproductive expectations thereof. And also with not being FOREVER ALONE!!!, since this is sort of a dramatic circumstantial shift. (Just like Lessa in Dragonflight! No, Martha Wells is certainly a better writer than McCaffrey and I'm maligning her unfairly. But the parallels are there.)
The setup flirts with some reversals of gendered expectations -- consorts are expected to be delicate and high-strung! queens fight over them and then they go with the victor! and Moon is used to being ALONE and he's not LIKE the HIGH-STRUNGPRINCESS CONSORTS that the queens were EXPECTING, excuse YOU -- but Wells is not super invested in exploring biological determinism. The evil species is pretty much EVIL, and some early dropped hints about class and role-related complications in Raksura society don't really get picked up in this book. There are two sequels, though, so maybe then? And, I mean, it's all very entertaining, I will totally read the sequels. I am very happy to read about dragons negotiating awkward social dynamics for a couple hundred pages.
(Although, honestly, my favorite characters were the two plot-relevant cranky humanoids. I would apologize for being human-centric but I'm probably just contrariness-centric.)
I mean, the protagonists are not called dragons, they're called Raksura. But they're basically dragons. Were-dragons? Shapeshifters who have one vaguely two-legged form and one flying lizard form that is pretty much dragon. (Some of the lizards are non-flying, we'll get to that.) And the dragons come in different cool colors, and some colors are fertile so they get to be queens (female) and consorts (male) and be in charge, and some colors aren't. In Pern the dragons, while intelligent, never really have any issues about this, because having issues about biology is a job for human protagonists. But the dragons in Cloud Roads don't really care about humans and therefore get to have all their issues themselves. "I mean, I get that it's a problem that your community doesn't have any consorts right now but it's still a BIT WEIRD how the queens suddenly started dumping presents on my doorstep as soon as I showed up? PERHAPS WE SHOULD TAKE IT SLOW."
Moon, our protagonist, gets to have the most issues because his family was tragically killed when he was a kid and far away from any other Raksura, and he's been wandering around for years with no idea of what species that he actually is, other than it's shapeshifting and has a dragon form that vaguely resembles the dragon form of another EVIL species that's flying around and therefore people tend to freak out when they see it. The EVIL species is also interested in Moon, for reasons. Anyway, despite his deep-rooted conviction that he will be FOREVER ALONE!!!, Moon then encounters a Raksura colony and gets to be our audience viewpoint character for finding out all about the Raksura and being moderately uncomfortable with his new role and the societal and reproductive expectations thereof. And also with not being FOREVER ALONE!!!, since this is sort of a dramatic circumstantial shift. (Just like Lessa in Dragonflight! No, Martha Wells is certainly a better writer than McCaffrey and I'm maligning her unfairly. But the parallels are there.)
The setup flirts with some reversals of gendered expectations -- consorts are expected to be delicate and high-strung! queens fight over them and then they go with the victor! and Moon is used to being ALONE and he's not LIKE the HIGH-STRUNG
(Although, honestly, my favorite characters were the two plot-relevant cranky humanoids. I would apologize for being human-centric but I'm probably just contrariness-centric.)
