Review: 'A Palace Near the Wind' (Natural Engines #1) by Ai Jiang
Pub. Date: 14/4/2025
Publisher: Titan Books
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.
Liu Lufeng is the latest princess of Feng to be given in marriage to the human king of the palace. As her bridewealth means a brief stop to the palace's incursion into Feng, perhaps it will be worth it. She has plenty of plans however, including finding her mother and sisters and, perhaps, finding a way to break this agreement by killing the king. Lufeng is bound to the palace and over the days and weeks she is there, she uncovers secrets and hidden pacts which change what she thought she knew about her world. The Feng are tree-like creatures, deeply connected to nature and the wind, while the humans of the palace are technology-minded. This clash between nature and technology is a big theme in A Palace Near the Wind and much of it is beautifully described. Jiang's descriptions of Feng are stunning and the palace itself, with all its contraptions, is also very intriguing. So much of this novella is full of promise and yet somehow it fell a little flat for me. There is, for example, clearly a history between Feng and the other countries (realms, nations, cities?) but throughout the novella, I did not ever get a clear picture of the world. I don't know how big any of these places are, how they are connected, etc. It might be that this is because the second novella of the Natural Engines duology will fill some of this in, or we are meant to identify with Lufeng's more limited knowledge, but it frustrated me a little. This was also a shame because, as I said above, so much of the world is intriguing and yet I never felt like a got a foothold in it.
This was my first time reading anything by Ai Jiang and there are so many intriguing things she put into A Palace Near the Wind. Maybe because I was so hyped by the premise I ended up being more disappointed than I would otherwise have been. I cannot, however, entirely put my finger on what it is that didn't work for me. A lot of it was really imaginative and beautifully written so on that level of craft, all was good. Structurally, however, I felt like there were issues. For example, the amount of time passing was unclear to me. Jiang uses different terms for days, weeks, and years, something I actually love from a world-building perspective, so that wasn't the issue. Rather, there was an urgency to some moments, a tension of things needing to happen ASAP, and then days would pass almost without comment? I also struggled a little with the characterisation, especially of Lufeng. She is oddly naive, I feel, for the position she is meant to have within the novella. Part of this is also the writing, which seems to insist on laying out, literally, what is intended. Either Ai Jiang doesn't trust the reader to work this out for themselves or this is part of her writing style. Lufeng, for example, will have realisations and spell them out for the reader and, for me at least, it robs these moments of a certain depth. It is overt telling, rather than showing. Because I enjoy the world Ai Jiang creates here, I will be reading the second novella of Natural Engines when it comes out. For that reason, that despite the issues I'm still intrigued, I've upped by rating to a three.
I give this novella...
3 Universes!
A Palace Near the Wind is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it is beautiful and stunning, full of interesting ideas, themes, and images. On the other, however, I had issues with how it was structured and some of the writing.
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