A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang

Lufeng has been married to the King of the Palace, the third daughter of her line, and their mother all sacrificed to The Palace's unending expansion into Feng, their marriages bargaining tools to gain a few more years. Adapting to life in the Palace before the wedding is difficult as a tree wearing clothes, using outside light sources, and even eating is foreign to her. She knows she must at least appear to assimilate if she wants to save her people. Finally, her wedding day comes and Lufeng learns just part of the truth regarding the sacrifices the women of her family have had to make over the years and she decides that she will be the last sacrifice no matter the cost. 

Honestly, didn't even read the synopsis again before I started reading it so truly went into this with no expectations and discovered I had picked perfectly for tonight's read as this was just a different aspect of the issues Tsai discusses in The Memory Hunters. 

I'm not going to delve too deep into characters here, Lufeng is an excellent MC in that her reactions to learning that her entire life has basically been a lie are understandable. She doesn't dwell or get overly angry about it, she begins to plan, and she uncovers more allies within the Palace she's willing to take more risks, which honestly given the circumstances I have to agree with this borderline reckless behavior. Regardless of the threats to her home moving to protect those she can makes sense to me. 

The world-building in this is wonderful as well, and this world is truly unique. You have this land that's separated by unique ecological zones with beings that exist there that are unique to those zones. Feng is forest so of course Lufeng's people resemble trees, Glace is a water zone with lakes and waterfalls so Geyser is made of water, so on and so forth. It's a super simple idea and since we have beings who are a part of these zones we don't have a magic system as much as we have an ability-based system. The Palaces which are owned by an evil corporation are "technological marvels". Truly some of the machines that they introduce are completely unique while others resemble things like smartphones and typewriters. It was interesting to see that the Palaces are truly almost to today's level of tech in some aspects but seem more steampunk-esque in others. But truly what I think I love the most is that it's all really simple and easily identifiable. 

Where this shines and is a perfect follow-up to The Memory Hunters is that this is a conversation on not just technology encroaching on the natural world but how this impacts the cultures of the people that live in these areas. I think we tend to forget in our modern time that the technological advances that lead to our easy lives marked the end of numerous cultures and peoples. Death of course being the worst consequence but traditional systems are disappearing. These small deaths can range from simply the loss of an innovative tool that genuinely needed no upgrade to whole languages disappearing. Climate change and simple abuse of our natural environments doesn't mean just hotter summers, it means the erasure, no the destruction of people's culture and in turn their history. 

Highly recommend this. For being as short as it was it made a poignant statement that one would be foolish to ignore.

As always thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for the eArc!