As with all the Raksura books, I loved this, but I read it with a sense of dread, knowing it was the last.

I have so many questions. About First and Kethel. About Brambles clutch. About Moon and the rest of Indigo Cloud's impact on the rest of the Raksura. Do the half Fell's scent change once they stop eating people and start bathing?

It's going to be really hard to leave these characters behind... ( )

2822

So, so satisfying. Trying to say more but I keep deleting it because it's hard to not be spoiling. Book is so new I don't want to say much yet. Just...all the feels.

**re-read**
So many little things that make this wonderful - seeing Moon so much more confident in the others (the way he never has that moment of "will they come looking for me?" in this one - he knows if they survived, they'll search forever, which is a huge step for him); Pearl and Malachite being just the thing each other need sometimes to balance each other out; the progression of Stone and Moon treating Consolation's kethel as progressively more like a real person as they adjust to him and his non-puppet status (the kethal, our kethel, Kethal); all the little ways in which various characters have to face up to their fears or anger, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing; the way at the end everyone sits down and talks through their feelings together to keep their relationships in good repair. The plot related action is a lot of fun too, but the way all the little moments flesh everyone out into real, complicated people is the big key to everything. Oh, and ( )

The Harbors of the Sun, the fifth and final full-length novel in the Books of the Raksura series, starts where the previous novel, The Edge of Worlds, left off. After being betrayed, Moon and his companions have to rescue their kidnapped friends and retrieve a dangerous artifact that is part of a weapon that could destroy both the Fell and the Raksura. As if that's not enough, back at home in the Reaches Pearl and Malachite are facing the potential of a massive Fell attack.

There's a lot happening in this book, and unlike the other novels in the series, Moon is not the primary viewpoint character. This initially made the book a bit confusing and harder to get into, but I enjoyed seeing more of Jade, Chime, Bramble, Heart, and some of the others, and I did not miss Moon as much as I had expected to. I think this may have even ended up being one of my favourite books of the series, and it was much better than The Edge of Worlds, which I had been a bit disappointed in. There's a lot more action, and the pace does not drag at all. Wells's world-building and character development is excellent, as always. The Fell, in particular, have grown a lot from their initial appearance as typical fantasy villains in the first book of the series. Wells seems to excel at writing cranky and unsociable characters - including Stone, Malachite, Pearl, Moon himself to some extent, and of course Murderbot in her science fiction series - and Malachite and Pearl were especially awesome in this book. And of course this book contains the usual dose of flying ships, mysterious artifacts, and ancient cities that I have come to expect from the Books of the Raksura.

I am sorry that this is the final novel of the series (though I still have the novellas and short stories to read). I am especially curious about what would happen next now that the half-Fell flight is living in the Reaches. I would highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys fantasy. It hasn't received nearly as much attention as Wells's Murderbot series, but I think these books are just as good, if not better. ( )

Read 2017, favourite. ( )