When twenty-year-old glider and wreck-diver Neris Wynn hauls a stormglass astrolabe from the reefs of the Sable Strait, a winged sentinel carved from thunderstone tears through the clouds to claim a debt. Carried in iron harness up to the Windswept Citadel—a fortress knifed into the cliffs above the endless maelstrom called the Riven Eye—Neris learns that her captor, Aerarch Cael Veylan, is not the cruel wind-king sung about in dockside shanties, but a man shackled to an ancient oath that steals his breath at dusk.
As she navigates high courts hung with prayer flags and markets where windchimes speak in code, Neris’s frost of defiance thaws into a heat she cannot outfly. Yet the Citadel is fraying. The Hollow Gale, an old hunger caged beneath the keep, is rising—unbinding weather wards, waking whispering gargoyles, and turning the city of Aeralis toward ruin. To save Cael and the world below, Neris must chart the lost sky-roads etched in the astrolabe, bargain with the tide-witches of Gullspar, and decide whether love is worth breaking the covenant that keeps the storm asleep.
From Evelyn Abernathy comes a sweeping, wind-lashed fantasy that braids slow-burn romance, cliffside intrigue, and skyborne adventure into a tale as intoxicating as salt and thunder.
Feels like Melissa Caruso's The Tethered Mage meeting the cloud-haunted wander of Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads, with sea-salt romance and aerial stakes that will suit readers who like intrigue folded into skyborne adventure.
Debt, consent, and the weathering of power braid through this story. The book keeps circling the cost of rescue, asking what love looks like when tethered to "a vow that steals his breath at dusk." I appreciated how the astrolabe becomes an ethic as much as a tool, charting routes between duty and desire.
Some resolutions feel neat where I wanted moral abrasion, yet the meditation on whether to unmake the covenant that lets the storm sleep lingers. Not a barnstorm of ideas, but a steady wind that holds the theme aloft.
Windswept Citadel of Shadows thrives on atmosphere. The fortress shaved into the cliffs feels carved by centuries of salt, and the Riven Eye below hums like a living engine. Gargoyles whisper along the parapets, weather wards fray, and the Hollow Gale presses at the keep until every corridor sings with pressure. I loved the markets where windchimes speak in code, the prayer flags mapping currents, and the tidal bargains with the witches of Gullspar. The stormglass astrolabe gives the map a logic, so when Neris seeks the old sky-roads the world answers with rules rather than handwaving. Stakes stay anchored to Aeralis, which makes the looming ruin feel personal as well as grand.
Neris begins with crackle, a salvage rat with bite, but her inner life narrows as the stakes rise. We are told she is torn between freedom and oath, yet her choices often feel preloaded rather than wrestled with on the page. Cael, bound to a breath-stealing vow, remains handsome fog. Their banter circles the same grooves, and the chemistry promised by that first capture never quite ignites.
I liked moments with side figures in the markets and in the prayer-flag courts, where dialogue sharpens and hints of humor peek through. Overall, the central relationship lacked the texture I needed to believe that breaking a covenant could be worth the price.
Abernathy structures the book like a series of updrafts: short, salt-bitten chapters that lift into daring set pieces over cliff and sea. The prose has a crisp, mineral tang, especially when Neris glides past the Riven Eye or barters among windchimes that click out secrets. Scenes in the high courts coil with ceremonial detail without bogging the pace, and the alternating beats between wreck-diving memory and Citadel intrigue knit cleanly. I admired how the astrolabe is not just a MacGuffin but a navigational grammar for the plot. A few transitions feel gusty rather than smooth, yet the closing charting of the sky-roads lands with earned clarity.
Aventura aérea con romance a fuego lento y tormentas que respiran. El ritmo se estanca en el segundo acto, pero la brújula del astrolabio de cristal de tormenta y el Riven Eye mantienen el rumbo.
