A Palace Near the Wind

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.