Cloudbound Uncovers the Secrets That Support a Towering Fantasy World

We start low, in the wake of revolutionary change, and with a new point-of-view protagonist: Kirit’s childhood friend and wingbrother, Nat. We join Nat and Kirit as they rappel through the crumbling Spire, searching for evidence to explain why it grew differently than all the other towers—why it was hollow in the middle (the better to shield its secrets), and why it is now dying. They uncover truly tantalizing artifacts, and wing to Kirit’s home with other Spire refugees. Their relationship is tense and unspoken, as the wounds of the last couple months—when friends and siblings fought almost to the death—have not yet healed. Nat and Kirit are emblematic of their society as a whole: not quite on two different sides, but also not in harmony. They are too proud and too hurt to engage meaningfully with one another.
Nat is the apprentice to politician and blowhard Doran, and hero-worships him the way only the naïve can. Since the people of the Spire had to leave their home, they’ve been bound to the lower levels of the other towers, which are dark, undesirable, and cramped. The entire group is paying for the sins of its leaders—infuriating, though not terribly surprising. The people of the bone city, Spire and Tower dwellers alike, have always practiced collective guilt and punishment, though it used to be the Spire’s role to mete out justice. Despite Nat’s futile wish that it not be so, Doran and his fellow counselors have the kind of plans for the Spire refugees that are often justified by the cynical with words like “what’s best for everyone.” Turnabout, as they say, is fair play.

It doesn’t take long for Cloudbound to sail lower, dropping down below the cloud line. Towerfolk have always been superstitious about clouds, and the downbelow, where they drop their refuse and their dead, tossing everything they do not care to think about below the memory line. The clouds function as the subconscious of the people. Nat, Kirit, and a truly ragtag group of survivors are forced down, desperate to divine the lost origins of the towers and those who grew them, while simultaneously trying to prevent a war between towers. The city’s hierarchy has always held higher as better, stronger, and more powerful, and that does not change: Nat and his people have become the lowest of the low, working from a place of abject powerlessness.
This would all be a massive bummer if we weren’t also treated to Wilde’s vivid description of a fascinating world, and the slow blooming of understanding as to the true nature of the towers. The world below the clouds is just as tactile and inventive as the one above. Cloudbound takes you down, down below the bodies of the fallen and discarded, below the strata of lost cities, below the monsters of legends and nightmares, below everything, right down to the root of it all. And lower. What we find down there, whoo boy, now that is a doozy. While Updraft seemed like a complete story, Cloudbound ends on a massive detonation, and it will take the next book to see where the debris falls.
Cloudbound is available now.