Natural Engines Series

From the Nebula and Bram Stoker Award®-winning author comes the lyrical and moving science-fantasy follow-up to A Palace Near the Wind, as Lufeng and her sister Sangshu fight to protect their culture and their world. For readers of Nghi Vo, Amal El-Mohtar and Kritika H. Rao.

Fleeing from the bone palace and crashing into the waters below its steep walls, Lufeng and her siblings reach Gear, with its huge deadly water wheels, where their sister Sangshu is waiting for them. In the chaos of the enormous waves, within moments they’re snatched away and taken into rebel territory, where they learn more of the deadly experiments Zinc has wreaked upon the people.

Loyal to Copper now, Sangshu herself is a victim of Zinc’s experiments. Desperate to find her family, she races through Gear to Engine, ruthless Zinc’s industrial heartland, where she burns with a desire to fix her own mistakes and those of others and find a way to save her world.

This powerful, beautifully told novella explores the bonds of family, the pain of leaving all you have known behind, and the terrible price of our industrial future.

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.

Liu Lufeng is the eldest princess of the Feng royalty and, bound by duty and tradition, the next bride to the human king. With their bark faces, arms of braided branches and hair of needle threads, the Feng people live within nature, nurtured by the land. But they exist under the constant threat of human expansion, and the negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop— or at least delay—the destruction of their home. Come her wedding day, Lufeng plans to kill the king and finally put an end to the marriages.

Trapped in the great human palace in the run-up to the union, Lufeng begins to uncover the truth about her people’s origins and realizes they will never be safe from the humans. So 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.

From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion.