#the subtext when you think about how raksura and fell actually work and how we don't know why they split. hm.

[captainsupernoodle]

reading the books of the raksura is an experience full of so much cognitive dissonance which probably isn't helped by the fact that i gulped down the first three books in under a week i think and therefore had minimum higher thought engagement involved beyond "hey i'm. not a fan of reverse sexism as a trope."

the way it ends up feeling is like wells really wanted to play with the concept of a fully nonhuman race based off of colony insects (which is cool! i'd really love to see more delving into species that function drastically differently from humans from their pov instead of from an outsider pov!) and then did not fully engage with the fact that uuuuuh a biologically mandated caste system has some really fucked up implications when carried over to a sentient species! and a biologically evil species is also fucked up!!

(also between the way raksura courts work and handwaving mensah's planet in murderbot as a utopia i'm feeling an overarching tendency towards "this one place is a great place where everything works well all the time because of reasons.")

from a reader's perspective it really grinds some of my gears (let moon actually fight a queen already!!) but from a writer's and worldbuilding perspective there is So Much fascinating, juicy stuff to play around with. (also frustrating stuff. how come everybody is afraid of shifters because fell and nobody has ever seen raksura but raksura can't convince anybody fell are real and very dangerous and also how has nobody heard of raksura when there's a whole bunch of them in that forest and they have enough regular friendly contact with other species to speak the trade language but have no concept of how valuable gemstones are and??????????)

BUT FASCINATING. courts seem to be technically run like large extended families. my memory is not the best and i've not done an actual analysis but i'm pretty sure courts only have like a few hundred people in them?? except they live in trees so huge they support platforms the size of islands? like every court is an independent small town. everybody knows everybody else. they're all more or less self-sufficient, apparently. there's no over-arching government between courts, just allies. how big are the reaches? how many courts are there? it seems like the populations of fell and of raksura are actually pretty tiny, but why? hey, is the narrative ever going to engage with the fact that the only non-fell descendants of the forerunners are in a tight symbiotic relationship with a totally different species where they're always on top of the political structure and don't contribute to the running of the court except as scholars and a "better" warrior class?