A Palace Near the Wind
Ratings1
Average rating2.5
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. But 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.
A powerfully imaginative, compelling story of a young woman seeking to save her family and her home, as well as a devastating meditation on the destruction of the natural world for the sake of an industrial future.
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Ratings
Cover: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Initial Draw: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐
Pacing: ⭐⭐
Finish Line Feeling: ⭐⭐⭐
Review
Thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to review this eARC.
First of all the cover for this book is absolutely beautiful. It features a striking colour pallet and a beautiful scene of a girl in the wind in a traditional asian block print art style. The issue I have with this is the girl on the cover is clearly human but the main character is a "tree person" with bark like skin and pine needle hair. Who is this person on the cover?
Besides the cover, the blurb really drew me in. As an activist myself I love the idea of a story that draws parallels between a Chinese fantasy setting and the constant human expansion into and exploitation of the natural world. The execution of this though really lacked any impact on me. The characters were physically described at a basic level but by the end I really felt like I had no better idea about them as people and didn't care about them more than a superficial desire for the the protagonist to succeed. The natural land of 'Feng' they were attempting to protect was also only briefly described and instead the entire story could have largely been in any setting. The main plot was quite heavy handed with a constant reminder the protagonist intended to assassinate the king followed by a change of tact and a then a constant reminder they intended to escape the palace (This is all in the synopsis and not a spoiler.)
Going into this book I also expected there to be more of a linkage to Chinese mythology/religion but besides a relatively generic elemental magic linkage and some of the characters/regions having Chinese names I didn't really get that.
Overall I didn't really enjoy this book but I did enjoy the premise and I am very keen to hear more about Feng and about the industrial nation that attempts to destroy it. I hope the author continues this story and focuses more on what makes this story exciting and less on the generic assassination/escape plot lines.