A Palace Near the Wind

(Hardback)

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From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful science-fantasy novella. A story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion that will stay with you long after the final page. For readers of Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Neon Yang's The Black Tides of Heaven and Kritika H. Rao's The Surviving Sky.

Sometimes called Wind Walkers for their ability to command the wind, unlike their human rulers, the Feng people have bark faces, carved limbs, arms of braided branches, and hair of needle threads. Bound by duty and tradition, Liu Lufeng, the eldest princess of the Feng royalty, is the next bride to the human king. The negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop the expansion of the humans so that the Feng can keep their lands, people, and culture intact. As the eldest, Lufeng should be the next in line to lead the people of Feng, and in the past, that made her sisters disposable. Thankful that her youngest sister, Chuiliu, is too young for a sacrificial marriage, she steps in with plans to kill the king to finally stop the marriages.

But when she starts to uncover the truth about her peoples' origins and realizes Chuiliu will never be safe from the humans, she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate.

A powerfully imaginative, compelling story of a young woman seeking to save her family and her home, as well as a devastating meditation on the destruction of the natural world for the sake of an industrial future.

Reviews

Praise for Ai Jiang:

Ai Jiangs Linghun is the ache that follows after every funeral, when the mourners are gone and nothing is left but the haunting of memories. A ruthlessly precise meditation on what grief does to the heart, Linghun is a must-read if you enjoy crying your way through every chapter of a book.
Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author ofNothing But Blackened Teeth

Ai Jiang probes the very notion of ghosts to offer us something far more haunting: it is the living who we should fear the most, where the boundless parameters of our own grief lay down the blueprint for an altogether new Hill House to inhabit.
Clay McLeod Chapman, author ofGhost Eaters

The neighborhood in Linghun is a twisted-neck demon, forever looking backward at the ghosts and ghosts-to-be. Ai Jiang builds an altar of the flawed living and the perfect dead with an unflinching eye for death-cloaked domestic tragedy. A haunting, brilliant debut.
Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author ofQueen of Teeth

A devastating parable of loss, Ai Jiangs Linghun is a meditation on grief, how it changes us, makes ghosts of the living, and keeps us trapped in prisons of mourning. Its a testament to Jiangs ferocity as a lyricist of sorrow and heartbreak that I read this book in one sitting and expect it will haunt me for a very, very long time to come. Truly remarkable.
Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author ofKinandSour Candy

Eerie and palpable with unrequited longing, Linghun is a quiet tour de force, a diasporic ghost story of half-life, family, and deferred dreams. Ai Jiangs writing is fiercely evocative and resounds with meaning and clarity. Linghun is tale that lingers.
Lee Murray, four-time Bram Stoker Award-winner and author ofTortured Willows

A somber, but beautiful story, about grief and the pain of memory. The ghosts stay with us long after Ai Jiangs Linghun is over, but they remind us of the gift we have that is to be alive.
Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author ofChildren of Chicago

Ai Jiangs debut novella Linghun packs an absolute punch. A
reflection on grief, the dangers of not letting go, on the terrible price
of love and why were so willing to pay it. Wonderful, strange and
heartbreaking. Highly recommended.
A.G. Slatter, Award-winning author ofThe Briar Book of the Dead

Mother believes the dead deserve our full attentionLinghun asks us whether thats at the expense of the living. A dark, wise, and heartbreaking examination of grief and yearning, family and agency.
Premee Mohamed, Nebula award-winning author of theBeneath the Risingtrilogy

Linghun will forever wander like a ghost in the halls of my readers heart, its message of grief and loss lingers, the beauty of Ai Jiangs prose a treasured new voice. What a haunting debut.
Sadie Hartmann 'Mother Horror'

Author Bio

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte Award winner, Hugo, Astounding, Nebula, Locus, Bram Stoker, and BFSA Award finalist, and an immigrant from Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, Uncanny, The Masters Review, among others. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop's 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of Linghun and I AM AI. Find her on X (@AiJiang_), Insta (@ai.jian.g), and online (http://aijiang.ca).