Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2

The Dead City follows Moon before he meets up with Indigo Cloud. He's recently seen his first Fell and is going through a bit of an identity crises. The world building was interesting enough, as it offers several races we've never seen before and one very interesting culture, but... That's really the only thing I liked about this story because I've never really been a fan of Moon and in this book he was even more...droopy than usual.

In Mimesis, we follow Jade on trip when one of the warriors under her command goes missing. It's interesting, the more I read from Jade's perspective, the more I like her. Seeing her through Moon's eyes...not so much. But this was an interesting little story.Trading Lesson takes place shortly after Mimesis - though it doesn't tie in to it at all which was disappointing - and is about, as it sounds, a trading party arriving at Indigo Cloud. I actually really liked this story, because this has always been my favorite moments in this series: the downtime where people are just talking to each other and learning about stuff.In The Almost Last Voyage of the Wind-ship Escarpment we are sent to another part of the Three Worlds and follow a whole new cast of characters. There are several things I liked about this story: opening up the world even more, the two main characters were well developed and there was a plot that was tied up fairly well even for the short length. However...the three supporting characters were devoid of personality, there was no time setting up who was whom and I kept getting them mixed up because all five characters were introduced at once and you pretty much have to rely on names only to keep them straight, and, the plot was ended rather abruptly. In short, HUGE potential for another book/series, (because I would have loved that) but as a short story, it was just too short and tried doing too much.The Dark Earth Below is...really difficult to explain. It takes place between the third and fourth books and on the one hand is kind of depressing - and I don't do well with depressing - and on the other deals a lot with Jade and Moon's first clutch. ... I don't like babies. I don't like stories with babies, I don't like stories with pregnancies, I don't like children. I don't have a single maternal bone in my body. So, I really wasn't thrilled with the attention paid on that - especially with it being the counterbalance to what was depressing. So...yeah. This story had it's moments when it was interesting, but the incipient babies kind of ruined things.**

I'm actually kind of going between 3 and 4 stars for this collection, but I rounded up because it is Raksura and I think I'm just feeling a little bitter after how much I didn't enjoy the last Wells book I tried reading.