A Palace Near the Wind
Natural Engines
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful science-fantasy novella. A story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion that will stay with you long after the final page. For readers of Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven and Kritika H. Rao’s The Surviving Sky.
Liu Lufeng is the eldest princess of the Feng royalty and, bound by duty and tradition, the next bride to the human king. With their bark faces, arms of braided branches and hair of needle threads, the Feng people live within nature, nurtured by the land. But they exist under the constant threat of human expansion, and the negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop— or at least delay—the destruction of their home. Come her wedding day, Lufeng plans to kill the king and finally put an end to the marriages.
Trapped in the great human palace in the run-up to the union, Lufeng begins to uncover the truth about her people’s origins and realizes they will never be safe from the humans. So she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate.
From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this uneven fantasy, Nebula Award winner Jiang (I Am AI) depicts a world full of fascinating tree people who grow needle threads instead of hair, weep sap, and fly on the wind, but entangles them in a trite and often inexplicable plot. To halt the relentless expansion of the human government, called the Palace, into the wild land of Feng, Liu Lufeng must marry the human king, a fate that her mother and three younger sisters have already met—only to never be seen again. Lufeng plans to kill the king instead but swiftly abandons this scheme when long-buried family secrets come to light after the wedding. Unfortunately, Jiang's clever worldbuilding does not extend to the political plot, which is frustratingly simplistic. The conflict between nature and civilization fails to convince, and the story breezes past an incestuous subplot that will disturb many readers. Those searching for a lyrical and contemplative fantasy may find something to enjoy in the atmospherics, but the promise of the prose does not deliver an equally well-crafted plot. This disappoints.
