A Palace Near the Wind

by Ai Jiang

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 185
Series: Natural Engines #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

Sometimes called Wind Walkers for their ability to command the wind, unlike their human rulers, the Feng people have bark faces, carved limbs, arms of braided branches, and hair of needle threads. Bound by duty and tradition, Liu Lufeng, the eldest princess of the Feng royalty, is the next bride to the human king. The negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop the expansion of the humans so that the Feng can keep their lands, people, and culture intact. As the eldest, Lufeng should be the next in line to lead the people of Feng, and in the past, that made her sisters disposable. Thankful that her youngest sister, Chuiliu, is too young for a sacrificial marriage, she steps in with plans to kill the king to finally stop the marriages.

But when she starts to uncover the truth about her peoples' origins and realizes Chuiliu will never be safe from the humans, 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.

I hadn’t heard anything about Ai Jiang’s A Palace Near the Wind before I picked it up, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I thought the early descriptions of the Feng people and their lives seemed intriguing, and a novella tends to be readable even if I end up not liking it.

Buuut despite being a novella, I found it really dragged. There’s a fascinating world here that’s sadly under-explained: I get that the main character doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but the stuff she did understand/believe wasn’t clear enough to me. Things like… why does Lufeng want her sisters back so badly if they didn’t actually like her? Why were they ‘sacrificed’ and she was held back, only to be sent now as the story opens? How does her body work, what does she look like? If even I wanted a bit more of that kind of detail, as someone who can’t picture anything, I imagine it must stand out a lot more to people trying to form a mental picture.

The main problem was really that nothing could shock or surprise me, because I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t get emotional about anything because I didn’t really have a stake in it. There’s a lot here, but it’s like viewing it through smudged smoky glass: it’s hard to grasp what’s actually happening and what it means.

I don’t think I’ll read the follow-up, personally; I found it a struggle to get through this novella, so I don’t think it’d be a good use of my time to try to read more, even if it contains answers to some of my questions.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)