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A review by aphelia88
Updraft by Fran Wilde
4.0
This was a book I bought blind off the bargain table, largely because of the mechanical wings on the cover. Updraft is the debut of a very promising author, with a world completely unlike any I've read before. Unfortunately, despite the carefully detailed cover art, it is a world that I found very difficult to envision and a little hard to get a feel for its mechanics.
The City surrounds the Spire, full of eerily secretive gray-robed, silver-tattooed Singers. The Singers are the City's Protectors - they keep it's history and help it prosper. They also administer the Laws, which all citizens grow up learning and singing by heart. Despite the respect they command, the citizens are afraid of the Singers and their mysterious special connection to the City.
The City consists of giant, growing bone towers that stretch far above the clouds below. Each tower is a world unto itself, and its citizens take the tower name as their own surname. The towers are strictly hierarchical, with the "luckiest" - the most powerful - citizens at the top, with the poor, ill and elderly - the "unlucky" - forced downtower with the Lawsbreakers into stinking, damp, crowded tiers.
Kirit Densira is coming of age, and soon to take her wingtest to win adult wings. Densira is a prosperous tower and her family has recently been promoted to their own newly-grown bone tier. Her only thought is being a successful Trader like her legendary mother Ezarit, flying between far flung towers and negotiating beneficial deals for herself and Densira tower.
This is a coming-of-age story, and would probably have been better marketed as YA (EDIT: This is YA, which explains a lot, even though I bought it in the adult fantasy section at Chapters! Oops). The towers are constantly under thread from skymouths - invisible, glass-toothed tentacled man-eating monsters. Yep. You read that right. They are difficult to fight, being as they are invisible and all. Her best friend, Nat, is hoping for a future as one of the flying archer warriors that fights the skymouths and keeps the city safe.
To save herself and her family, Kirit goes to the Spire as an apprentice, and uncovers old secrets that will change her life forever, along with new talents that could change her world.
The descriptions of flying are interesting and vivid - especially the night flying sequences, with special tricks for navigating - and the story feels very cinematic. However, Kirit is a bit of a cipher. Her behaviour early on is inexplicably stupid - she obviously knows better - but she grows up in a hurry and her stubborn determination is admirable, although not always understandable.
The ending is satisfactory and could almost standalone. The mystery of the Spire is very intriguing. I also have the next book, and I'm looking forward to reading more about the world.
The City surrounds the Spire, full of eerily secretive gray-robed, silver-tattooed Singers. The Singers are the City's Protectors - they keep it's history and help it prosper. They also administer the Laws, which all citizens grow up learning and singing by heart. Despite the respect they command, the citizens are afraid of the Singers and their mysterious special connection to the City.
The City consists of giant, growing bone towers that stretch far above the clouds below. Each tower is a world unto itself, and its citizens take the tower name as their own surname. The towers are strictly hierarchical, with the "luckiest" - the most powerful - citizens at the top, with the poor, ill and elderly - the "unlucky" - forced downtower with the Lawsbreakers into stinking, damp, crowded tiers.
Kirit Densira is coming of age, and soon to take her wingtest to win adult wings. Densira is a prosperous tower and her family has recently been promoted to their own newly-grown bone tier. Her only thought is being a successful Trader like her legendary mother Ezarit, flying between far flung towers and negotiating beneficial deals for herself and Densira tower.
This is a coming-of-age story, and would probably have been better marketed as YA (EDIT: This is YA, which explains a lot, even though I bought it in the adult fantasy section at Chapters! Oops). The towers are constantly under thread from skymouths - invisible, glass-toothed tentacled man-eating monsters. Yep. You read that right. They are difficult to fight, being as they are invisible and all. Her best friend, Nat, is hoping for a future as one of the flying archer warriors that fights the skymouths and keeps the city safe.
To save herself and her family, Kirit goes to the Spire as an apprentice, and uncovers old secrets that will change her life forever, along with new talents that could change her world.
The descriptions of flying are interesting and vivid - especially the night flying sequences, with special tricks for navigating - and the story feels very cinematic. However, Kirit is a bit of a cipher. Her behaviour early on is inexplicably stupid - she obviously knows better - but she grows up in a hurry and her stubborn determination is admirable, although not always understandable.
The ending is satisfactory and could almost standalone. The mystery of the Spire is very intriguing. I also have the next book, and I'm looking forward to reading more about the world.