An interesting meditation on how humans interact with the natural world, environmentalism and society. I wanted to rate this higher, but I really struggled through it, and it was less than 200 pages.

The first person narrative is immersive, telling the story of tree-like beings who are being encroached upon by the Palace. While interesting, I sometimes found the perspective to be hard to track - a lot of nouns are capitalized by the narrator, and while something have sort of obvious references to our modern world ("the Typer"), others were harder to place. The references to modernity seemed all over the place - the people travel in what I envision as more steampunk style stilts, yet there was also a reference to "online megashops", without any mention of the internet.

The actual narrative moves really slowly and felt very stilted. I think some of my issues with it were the writing style, but it made it hard to connect with the narrator and feel any sort of tension. This is the first in a duology, but I am unlikely to continue with this series. Readers who are into more speculative scifi or creative narrative storytelling might enjoy this book, I just didn't think it was for.

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the eARC of this novella.

i just loved this. yes, the villain dialogue is over the top and corny. yes, this could’ve stood to be longer to flesh out the characters better. but i just do not care. i was HOOKED, attached to our fl, and i wanted to know what would happen so badly. the world is so beautifully unique, too, i truly felt transported. like a ghibli film put into a novella! definitely not for everyone, with much less wide appeal than jiang’s previous work linghun, but if you find something to appreciate in its pages you’ll have a great time with this.

cool short novella w interesting world building. enjoyed a lot, but the language was a bit too distant for my taste.

Lu Feng is a girl who comes from a sort name, Feng. They have the livelihoods of coaxing with nature. For a cruel lie she wedded Geyser, who was referred to as king, but he is actually someone else, and during her stay in a so-called palace, she found secrets, like her father, mother, and brothers, and why their people want to leave Feng. The purposes of their grandmother, never told, but it's really ominous; some hurtful truths, and some sacrifice. All the information may be a big spoiler since the book is actually pretty short.

I'm speechless. From a lousy marriage, we suddenly reach a point where everyone wasn't the same. They made an impression, and the level of not having a choice in this book is so high it could make it uncomfortable. The story is from Lu Feng's perspective, and it talks wholly about her caring about her youngest chiuliu. She has 2 other sisters, but she acts like she doesn't have anything to do with them, and she has a mother apparently, but that woman got simply wedded to someone else because it's a contract to save their people (grandma's said), but in fact it was all a lie. It's kind of a foreign thing, especially when you marry your own father when you don't know that yet.

I don't like that book at all. First, I don't know which era I am reading. And second, I don't have any clue why all this marriage happened to the Fengs, because the Fengs have to wed the King, but why and how, and there has to be a reason, and there is, but the point Until the end, you don't know why, and you have to reach the end to understand the whole setup. I especially don't like the reasoning Lu Feng uses for her actions because all the time I have the feeling she's doing the right thing at the wrong moment, and it ruins everything, so 99 percent of the time she pissed me off. The author's way of describing the scenes is ridiculous and so wrong. There was a time I thought I was reading an ancient Chinese book, but her description of the middle of the modern era, like there is a machine named Traveler, which I think means cars, but the author really twists the modern slang to make it mysterious or something. I don't like that at all, and the fact is the story focused on unnecessary things a lot, like telling me all the things around except the plot, and suddenly the author decided to make some mystery and, by haste, decided to close the story without anything properly started and more unproperly finishing it. It's so unsatisfying and so incomplete.

Sorry, but from the setups to the story or even character development, I can't rate anything good; even the plot sounds so wrong, and I don't like that book at all, so by respect to the author and all her readers, it's just 1 point for the book and 1 for whatever you can name it for the genre, because the book really did a bad job for fantasy, and I didn't appreciate it at all.

First, I need to know if there is going to be a sequel of this book!! The ending has me so invested. I was intrigued by A Palace Near the Wind when I read reviews likening it to Princess Mononoke, though some were positive and some were negative in the comparison. While I can definitely connect the two, I think it’s important to note the two stories are very different from each other, and this book should not be rated by similarity to another story.
I happened to really love the story of Liu and the people of Feng. Liu’s dedication to her family and her people led her on a perilous journey to the Palace, where she learns secrets about the world around her that make her question everything she was raised to believe. I enjoyed the characters, and felt like there was enough world building that I could picture what I was reading, but not so much that pages and pages were just descriptions of places. The length of the story read like a novella, it was a quick read but with enough depth that you really feel connected to Liu and some of the other characters. I also found myself surprised as secrets were revealed throughout the story, Jiang did a wonderful job not giving things away too soon or making it obvious. I found myself guessing at who characters were and trying to unravel riddles as I read.
This is a great, moderately fast-paced read that was filled with mythological beings, adventure, family secrets, and difficult decisions!

This novella has such a promising concept and cover, but it didn’t land for me.

The first half of the novella was slow and didn’t keep attention. However, too much happened in the second half, and there wasn’t enough time to fully explore all that was included. Upon finishing the novella, I was left with many unanswered questions as character decisions and histories were not explored or explained. I appreciate that some of those questions may be answered in the second novella planned for in this duology, but I’m not sure I’m invested enough in the story to return to this world.

The writing style also differed remarkably from the first to the second half. That may be deliberate to align with the story’s locations and progression. But again, with such a short story, the change in the writing was very jarring and uneven.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

***eProof gifted by UK Publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review/reaction. Read as part of NetGalley November 2024***

I had such hopes for this novella. I mean, look at that cover!

And yet, I came away from this feeling disappointed and a tad underwhelmed. The first chapter was a real slog and very overwhelming with infodumping that I very nearly DNF. It was the second chapter that kept me going as this world felt quite unique: a strange mix of fantasy, sci-if, dystopian and there were elements that felt really interesting and quite unique.

But the execution was this book’s biggest weakest. This story would have been better served if it was a novel or if elements were removed from the story. But because of the novella’s length, it felt overstuffed with ideas but nothing stuck the landing and this affected the pacing, the emotion to care for these characters, understanding why the characters behaved and reacted the way that they did.

If this is the start of the series, maybe the elements that this touched on and be explored further, but this felt a little (in the words of the Great British Bake Off): “underproved, over baked.”

a palace near the wind is a beautiful fable about a young princess of her people navigating arraigned marriage and the destruction of her homeland. it is magical in places and tragic in others, but always full of wonder, and frankly it leaves the reader with hope and unanswered questions.

it is worth your time. i rarely say that, and i stand by it.

Overall very inventive story and profoundly moving. Would like to see a little more character development and multiple well-rounded characters but did enjoy this one.

This is a fascinating first installment in what's clearly meant to be a series, but it's one I want more of. We have a princess of a people trying to save them by marrying into the royal family, but they attempt cultural subsumation on her, and more sinister implications of what they've been doing to others in her family besides. The thwarted plots and ending are incredibly intriguing, and I'm in for the next installment, which we hopefully get soon!

the character arcs went nowhere. the descriptions were good and created an inventive world, but many were hard to try to understand and might have been better animated. and the plot was a little flat. still, fairly good. 3.25, rounded down. tysm for the arc.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This is the first of Jiang's works that I have read, and unfortunately I came away from this feeling dissatisfied. While I understand that this is a novella and there's less time to develop characters, I felt like the main character in this just got no development at all. There was a dearth of characterisation and growth, and the naivete of the main character and her family was just excessive in the end. It was clear from the start that certain parties did not have her best interests at heart, and I was disappointed that there was no strength in her.

I found the world-building and the story interesting, with some really beautifully described segments, like the market. I did think that the twist at the end could be seen a mile away, which was disappointing. I thought there could have been so much more put into this novella. I also found that the book jumped so much sometimes that there was no clarity on what we should be focused on, and there were a lot of questions left unanswered.

I can see how there would have been so much more potential for a beautiful, sweeping story, however, this didn't reach the finish line for me. I can see so much potential in this book, but it just fell a bit flat with the structure and vibe.

I read this book in its entirety to write a proper review, but I have to mention that I seriously considered DNFing it at the halfway mark.

Genre : This book’s genre was very confusing. It was marketed as sci-fi/fantasy, but I struggled to find any sci-fi elements. At best, it leaned towards steampunk fantasy, but even that felt inconsistent.

Characters : The characters left a lot to be desired. They felt devoid of personality and didn’t undergo any noticeable development throughout the story—there were no clear character arcs to follow. Additionally, I found it hard to picture them. Even the main character’s description was vague. While I appreciated the attempt to use her own perspective to describe herself, the lack of "human" comparisons made it difficult to visualize her. The only detail I could grasp was that she had bark-like skin, but even by the end, I was still wondering what her hair was supposed to look like.

Plot : This story needed at least three times the number of pages to fully develop - the plot barely moved forward. The world-building was both confusing and insufficient to support the story's events. The overarching message of the book was also quite heavy-handed, and the ending was particularly frustrating. I went in expecting a standalone novella but finished what felt like the first third of a potentially interesting fantasy series.

Pacing : The pacing was poor. I struggled to follow the sequence of events and understand the passage of time between the main character’s actions.

Prose : One of the few redeeming qualities of this book was its prose. The writing style was elegant and easy to read, even when other aspects of the story fell short.

Overall Feeling : While I can appreciate the author’s intentions and the beauty of their writing, this book ultimately left me disappointed. It had potential but failed to deliver on multiple fronts, from character development to plot and pacing.

Great ideas, but terrible execution. Sadly, what could've been a really unusual and interesting book was hampered by confusing worldbuilding and extremely poor characterization and pacing. Considering what the author was going for, this book needed at least double the amount of pages. I'm still not quite sure where half the races came from, what the baddies' motivation was, what the secret baddies' motivation was, why any of the technology is the way it is, who's genetically manipulating who, where most of the nations are in relation to each other, or even what a "Palace" really is.

Not only was a lot of the fairly dense and complicated worldbuilding never explored, but characters' emotions and relationships also felt very underdone. Lufeng spends all her time dramatically mentally whining about how evil and gross the humans are, but then only spends 10 seconds thinking about jaw-dropping revelations about the creation of her entire race. She also has weirdly muted reactions to those around her, but that could be because the other characters are so poorly drawn. For example, her youngest sibling only says one word and as far as I can tell never even has a notable facial expression, despite about a quarter of the book supposedly focusing on them.

A Palace Near the Wind had a fascinating premise, which is what drew me to read it. Unfortunately, it didn't quite deliver. Firstly, the 'message' of the book was too overpowering and it felt like it was being forced upon me on every page. Not that the message itself was bad; it's simply that it was too overt and something more subtle would have worked better. The world building was extensive, but in the space of a small novella it felt unbalanced with character development, which was, in turn, severely lacking. The main cast never felt like more than cardboard cut-outs to me, and even the plot got lost in the long sections of description and message pushing, especially when more and more plot content suddenly came in a big rush towards the end. I struggled to decide on a rating for this, but in the end I am giving it three stars. It had a lot of flaws, but the main story idea was interesting, and with a greater number of pages and further development of the characters and the plot, it could have been good, and I wanted to acknowledge that in my rating.

(As per your preference to hold review until release month, the above review will go live on my blog and Goodreads at the links below on 7 April 2025. I will then also share on social media.)

Lufeng is part of a race of tree people called Wind Walkers whose way of life is threatened by modern life. Alone in her family, manipulated by her grandmother, Lufeng enters into a marriage, a business relationship, with the King to save her people, or so she believes. She comes up with a wild idea to kill the King, but is soon trapped in a world far darker than she ever imagined.

I liked the concept of the worldbuilding but I felt this book was so in love with the dense worldbuilding that the story and the characters took a backseat. I didn't emotionally connect with the characters and the pacing was extremely slow; the first five chapters were Lufeng's journey to the palace and she still felt inscrutable to me. I had a hard time caring about the story after that, didn't understand anyone's motivations and I had trouble visualizing what these beings looked like based on the awkward descriptions. It was meant to be immersive but I found myself frequently confused.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Very engaging book. Pace perfect. Storyline captivating

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me a chance at reading this.

One of those: I understand the story you're trying to tell but what on earth are these visuals.

I also can't get a beat / hold / understanding of the visuals. What time period does this take place in? Why does it feel like one moment a fantasy world and then the next minute were on some construction lot in the middle of Vancouver?

I do not doubt there is a story here, but if I'm a visual person - I create movies in my head while reading - and I can't create this in my head? There will be issues.

This is for those wanting abstract ferngully meets princess mononoke.

This was an interesting novella, the blurb immediately caught my attention. The worldbuilding was really cool and unique and I liked the concept of technology mixed with nature, however, I found that since this was quite short, there wasn't always enough explanation for things. I wish the author had dived deeper into the worldbuilding because I didn't really find the plot that captivating. The characters were also all a bit two dimensional, the main character was fine but really passive and the story overall didn't hold my attention. I enjoyed the writing style though and it was just the right length that it didn't feel like a chore to get through.

This novella follows Liu Lufeng, the eldest princess of the Feng royalty and the next one who will have to marry the human King, as tradition requires. All of her sisters, except the youngest Chuiliu, have already been married to the King, and the negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop the expansion of the humans and for the Feng to keep their lands intact. But Lufeng has a plan and wants to stop the King for good and protect her younger sister from an imminent marriage.

I really enjoyed reading this novella and the themes it explored. The pace was good and it was nice to discover things with Liu Lufeng, our main protagonist, as she has to navigates a whole new world and is face with different challenges. I liked how the world building was done and it was very impressive considering that this book is a novella. I also loved reading about the family dynamics and how sisters with the same upbringing can have very different takes on things, issues and visions of what the future should look like.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an e-arc of this book.