I've enjoyed Martha Wells' novels about the shape-shifting Raksura, and this companion volume is equally entertaining. It's not the place to make the acquaintance of Moon and Jade and Stone and Chime and all the other characters from the novels. The stories stand on their own just fine, but you really need the background of the books to get the full benefit of them.The first story (really a novella) is "The Falling World." Jade and several others disappear on a trade mission to another court, and eventually Moon, Stone, Chime, and several others go looking for them. When they find them, they're in a precarious situation, frozen in time. Freeing them is a real problem, and it's complicated by the appearance of a creature the likes of which none of the Raksura have ever encountered.
"The Tale of Indigo and Cloud," another novella, shows how the two courts came to be separated. This was before the advent of Moon in Cloud, and it's a nicely done story of diplomacy and intrigue and fills in the backstory of the two courts.
The first of the two shorter stories in the volume is "The Forest Boy," which is a tale of Moon's life before he came to be part of Cloud. He was a wanderer and didn't know who (or what) he was. It's a story about being different and being unable to be what you're not, among other things. "Adaptation" is another story about identity, this one featuring Chime. Identity, come to think of it, is a theme running throughout the Raksura stories. Anyway, this is a must-have volume for fans of the series. I'd advise others to start with the first novel, The Cloud Roads, which I reviewed here. You'll be glad you did.
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