You should check out Martha Wells

Her writing!

We started reading the books about the Raksura, by Martha Wells, because the publisher sent me a free copy of the latest one to review. I was so charmed by the book! These are stories about aliens who live far far away that I have nothing whatever to do with humans. They fly. Already, I was saying to myself "oh no." But she is a very good writer and makes this peculiar society of winged humanoids work. There are three novels, and on the strength of our impression of the most recent book, which contains two novellas and two short stories, we ordered all three novels. We got the first one and haven't read it yet; I will probably review it later. But it is so nice to find a new author you like a lot. She has written a lot of other books too, not about these arboreal aliens, and we will probably check out some of those soon.

I thought I would give you an update. We liked this book so much that I bought the trilogy of novels to which it is a successor. I have now read the first book entitled "the cloud roads." Martha Wells is a better novelist than a short story writer. The novel was superb and you should definitely read this book first. It introduces the world and some of the main characters very well. I love the multiplicity of intelligent races, the ruins scattered all over the landscape, made by, again, many different races, some of which are known and others unknown.

I think her greatest strengths are characterization and dialogue and they overcome the impossible biology with which she has saddled her viewpoint species.