A review by horrorbutch
A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang

adventurous emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 

Disclaimer: I received an e-book copy by the author. 

This fantasy novella explores the lives of the Feng people, their way of life and their land threatened by human expansion. To stop them, a bridewealth must be taken and Liu Lufeng is the last remaining adult girl in the family, the others having already been sent off. She plans to stop this once and for all by killing the king, but once she gets to the palace new revelations of who’s actually in power, she finds herself pressed to find a new and better way to stop this. 

I really enjoyed exploring this interesting world, it has very fascinating world building, and particularly the Feng people are intriguing (although I would have loved to get some more time in their country so I could learn more about their way of life by itself and not just in comparison to the lives of the humans). I also liked the parallelism found to real life racism, with the ways the Feng people smoothen their faces by shaving off parts of their bark to the way some people use plastic surgery and skin bleaching creams to achieve more “pleasing” (i.e. closer to white-centric ideals) features. The themes of colonialism and man-made destruction of nature also played a big role in the novella. 

The strongest aspect of this novella is the writing style, which is lush and detailed and really paints a beautiful picture of nearly every scene we are shown. This does sometimes make it feel a bit slower than you would expect from a story about killing a king, but I still enjoyed it very much. 

There are also quite a lot of characters, and it was sometimes a bit tough to keep them all straight, since the story isn’t that long and you don’t get to spend a lot of time getting to know the various characters. In general Liu is the most fleshed-out character in the cast and a bit more detail could have helped the other characters stand out more. However, this is something that I hope will be fixed if there are other stories to come. 

All in all, I really enjoyed reading this novella and if you like fantasy that explores the duality of destiny and choice and female MCs rebelling against oppression, I can recommend this story wholeheartedly. 

TW: arranged/forced marriage, environmental destruction, forced eating of meat, murder, vomiting