The Dead City

The Books of the Raksura #0.3

by Martha Wells

"The Dead City" is a tale of Moon before he came to the Indigo Court. As Moon is fleeing the ruins of Saraseil, a groundling city destroyed by the Fell, he flies right into another potential disaster when a friendly caravanserai finds itself under attack by a strange force.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Adventure

62 pages, ebook

First published January 16, 2017

About the author

Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, The Murderbot Diaries series, and other fantasy novels, most recently Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023). She has also written media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, Locus Awards, and a Dragon Award, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the British Science Fiction Association Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, the Sunday Times Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-five languages.

She is also a consulting producer on The Murderbot Diaries series for Apple TV+.

Reviews

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale of solitary Moon, fleeing the ruins of Saraseil and arriving in a fishers' settlement, where he tries to help some groundlings fight strange new creatures.
Impressive how Martha Wells manages to add even more new and innovative types of creatures in the wonderful, uncommon Three Worlds.

[aza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poor Moon :( the story was fun and exciting, and helps us understand the mindset Moon had before the first book.
Basically I'm obsessed with this universe

[Karolina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gotta stop reading the short stories before the actual books. I thought I'd get some background, but with no context its :/

[Tinyel · Rating 1 out of 5]

More biological essentialism that's actively hostile to trans people. I did not need to know that Moon *literally checks peoples genitals* before deciding what pronouns he's arbitrarily going to assign them, when it would take five seconds to simply ask people what their pronouns are. This is a world with hundreds of different species and many languages, Martha Wells has no excuse for people not simply telling eachother their pronouns when they're all completely different species with different sex characteristics, speaking multiple languages that have different pronouns.

Like, come on, this is just ridiculous.

[Carolyn F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is part of the anthology Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below

This is Moon before he knew about the Raksura. It's a sad story, but having read the series I know it doesn't all end up sad for Moon. 4 stars.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice enough story. But didn't add much, not even to what we know about Moon. It might be nice if we ever get to spend some time with groundlings that knew Moon and didn't hate them. There was a lot of fighting. And some different types of groundlings with different powers. 3.5 of 5.

[Titus Fortner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do really enjoy Moon's adventures when he doesn't know who he is. So much material to mine with this. 3.5 stars.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

[Nagy Miklós · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great introduction to Moon and the hardships he faces. The storyline while simple was good. It introduced quite a few elements and they helped expand the world.

[C. Steinmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

well, it is almost adding another dimension to the raksura universe... and it is a good story...and laying some principles for moon...but it is not outstanding.