SOLVED: Sort of romance, fantasy, winged race, matriarchal

Copying my post about Martha Wells Raksura books here. (Characters are all alien; also qualifies as reverse harem):
The original Trilogy, of the first three books in The Books of the Raksura (5 Book Series), are available in the current Science Fiction Humble Bundle for the next 6 days 18 hours, for $15. For that price, you get 17 other books, too, but I would totally buy the bundle just to get The Cloud Roads (The Books of the Raksura Book 1), The Serpent Sea (The Books of the Raksura Book 2), and The Siren Depths (The Books of the Raksura Book 3) if I didn’t already own them!

Moon is a shape-shifter — he has a groundling form and a winged form. And while there is a diversity of beings in The Three Worlds, he has never found anyone else like him, since he was the only survivor of a predator attack on his family in a forest when he was barely old enough to fly in his shifted form. So he has spent his life alternating between extreme loneliness and trying to fit into a succession of groundling communities with diverse rules and customs that he doesn’t understand — often with unfortunate departures. In the middle of one such expulsion he encounters another being like him, who tells him that he is a Raksura, and offers to take him back to his court, in exchange for his assistance in combating an enemy called the Fell. Since Moon has previously been in a city that was attacked in conquered by the Fell in his earlier travels, he agrees.

However, the devil is in the details: Raksuran courts are formalized societies, ruled by queens, and Moon arrives at a time when Jade, the daughter-queen, is expected to take a consort. I won’t give away more details, except to say that there are some great scenes when Moon arrives at their court, and an immediate understanding of why there are going to be interesting complications. Because the court has been under attack and suffered a series of unfortunate events, Jade, who could normally be expected to be brought up with a wide choice of consorts, has no experience on how to “court” males. And then we have Moon, who is clueless as to how to behave in the formal environment of the court, and who is already skittish about social customs that can lead to unfortunate consequences from his earlier experiences.

This series works on so many levels: there is the tension between Moon and Jade, the question of how they can survive the attacks by the Fell, great world-building about Raksuran and other societies/beings in the Three Worlds, and as in all the very best books, considerable interest in secondary characters and Moon’s interactions with them. There is a great story arc in each of the three books, but it’s even better going through all three books. This series was nominated for the new “best series” category of the Hugo awards last year.