Updraft by Fran Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I haven’t five-starred many books this year, but I feel like this one deserves it, especially for the latter half of the book. The beginning is pretty standard “throw the reader in the deep end” fantasy–except this takes place in the clouds, not the water. The second part, though, I couldn’t read fast enough.
Can you imagine living in a place where you couldn’t see the ground? Where every house is made of bone? Where everyone dreams of flying but actually has the means to do it? There are no angels here, but there are invisible monsters (which I didn’t actually cotton on to until later in the book, but that could just be me. Besides, how do you describe something you can’t see?). You’ll read about flying, and it’s so well described that it feels right. Sometimes the flying passages get a little bogged down in the physics of things, but the point is that the author did her research.
I loved the setting. There are still questions, like “why are all these people living in the sky, and what sort of animal is providing this ever-living bone?” but you should be able to picture the characters homes, or tiers, very well. The beginning is a little slow, with setting up the story and all, but the action ramps up once our heroine Kirit is forced to join the Spire–the home of those who keep the Laws and punish those who break them. It’s a harsh world, but it’s not so unrelentingly bleak as the post-apocalyptic settings that everyone seems to love nowadays. Obviously something happened to this world to make its people flee to the sky, but it’s been long enough that they have adapted and aren’t scrounging for every morsel of food. Unless you break the Laws, that is.
There are plenty of reversals and betrayals here, so fans of interesting conflict will like it. The action sequences are believable and fantastic at the same time, and actually serve to advance the plot in this world where flying means freedom–but carries its own ominous consequences. Readers will root for Kirit as she learns and becomes a woman. She makes choices that change her, and we don’t know if it’s for the better.
I was so pleased to find a debut author who wrote such a great story. I’m definitely interested in seeing what she’s got in store for us next.
Received as a free digital ARC via Netgalley and the publisher.