A River From the Sky

Book 2: Natural Engines

by Ai Jiang

Genres: Fantasy; Dark Fantasy; General Fiction; Asian American; Science Fiction; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

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 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.

Release date: April 21, 2026

Publisher: Titan Books

Print pages: 208

Sample

They called her a tamed disaster, a smothered storm, a settled earthquake, a droughted flood, a stilled eruption, stifled wind—The Buried Engine.

*   *   *

I want to tell you of the time I asked the Buried Engine—

Who came first?

Her response—

Hm. A version of us, and a version of them.

Many might not have realized, but the palaces began as places of worship, of religion and faith.

I—

Worship?

She—

Yes.

Everything they had ever created was with the image of the natural gods in mind, as an attempt to become more like them, us.

I—

We? Gods?

She—

Yes.

Can I tell you something?

I—

Yes.

She—

I saw a future where scattered onyx dropped like acid rain.

I saw a future where the world was consumed by a different kind of fire outside of flames, one driven by wind and moisture.

I saw a future where all our homes remained as they once were, and then… one where nothing

remained, one where there were roots splintered, severed, bodies evaporating and turning to steam to join the clouds in the sky, the natural becoming the unnatural and the unnatural becoming natural.

What if you had to destroy one thing to save another? How would you make that choice?

You cannot save everyone. There will always be sacrifices—the question is not when, nor how, but who?

I have seen all the endings, and it seems everyone of them leads to a

single conclusion.

Yet, every dead thing can be reborn, rise from the ashes, and for as long as we are living, we can continue to struggle to survive—for as long as we can.

But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn’t have to wait for death to realize that the blades that drew blood were held within our own hands this entire time?

I—

Then, what do you find in this life that is worth living for?

She—

Sometimes it cannot be placed

into words, but all of it, all of it is worth living, and I want to cherish every breath that leaves and enters, and sensation and experience, every life and death.

I would love to witness for myself, and with all of you, and revel in the fruits of your glory and wither in the destruction of your wars and hope that beneath it all, the seeds of hope will continue to sprout from beneath trampled soils, may persist to grow, bloom, scatter, and take root where it is seemingly barren.

And I shall remain, as long as all of you do, because there can only be gods if there are those who believe and worship them, or else they are those who believe and worship them, or else they are nothing at all.

 

THE OTHER SIDE

Terrified, I swayed atop unpredictable waves, buoyant, if precariously, in a body that was not my own.

My younger siblings nestled against me, anxious—my youngest sister Chuiliu, slenderer than I remember her to be, more so than my youngest brother Changqing, only half Chuiliu’s size, legs dangling rather than pressed against the floor of the Traveler, whose expression was much calmer, almost sleepy, too young to understand our precarious situation. On the other side of the Traveler was the Water Shifter Geyser, ...