THE GODS OF WIND

A complex SF yarn about death and regeneration.

At the beginning of Stadtmiller’s novel, Hurricane Logan is heading toward a bar called Rosalie’s and its environs, prompting talk of evacuation. The potential weather emergency is the furthest thing from young teacher and part-time bartender Darren Abington’s mind at the moment, though, as he’s worried about whether his wife Mary’s cancer is in full remission and, if it is, whether they want to try to have a baby together. So at first, he doesn’t pay much attention to the high-spirited group of storm chasers at his bar—until later, when it increasingly seems as if they’re drawn to him personally. But as the storm blows and night falls, the plot takes a hard turn: Darren wakes up on another world. The planet is Pryeana, a rocky world that’s far, far from Earth and has, for mysterious reasons, been the destination of humans for many years—specifically, redheaded humans who’ve recently died on Earth. The natives of Pryeana refer to these additions as “Alfreds”; they only comprise a small fraction of Pryeana’s 2 billion people, but their appearance has sparked a planetary interest in biological regeneration technology. The offspring of Alfreds and regenerated people are called Surge Omegas, a rising power demographic on Pryeana. Darren learns all of this with a certain amount of impatience since he’s mainly concerned with his wife and whether she’s on this new world. From this sudden and unpromisingly expositional shift, Stadtmiller steadily develops an intriguing world—and its long connection with Darren and his family. Too much of this elaboration is simply told to Darren (and the reader) at the expense of more edge-of-your-seat drama, but the worldbuilding in these pages is satisfyingly detailed. Darren himself remains a frustratingly one-note character throughout; the story, too, has a certain stiffness that’s characteristic of allegories. Fortunately, however, Pryeana gradually comes to feel like a very real place, and the high-stakes story that develops there will please readers with its mounting tension.

A readable and elaborate, if somewhat didactic, novel about a man finding his true destiny on a faraway planet.