The Wind That Sweeps the Stars: Often utterly fascinating

The Wind That Sweeps the Stars by Greg Keyes

Greg Keyes’ The Wind That Sweeps the Stars (2024) is a book that while it has its issues I’d say with pace and structure, is often utterly fascinating thanks to the underlying mythos that serves as the sub-structure of the story. That mythos, combined with several action-packed fight scenes and several engaging and likable characters makes it an easy recommendation despite my few quibbles.

The story itself is relatively simple. We open in a tall tower in the center of an Empire’s fortress capital, where we’re introduce to Yash, just married to Chej — a minor, oft-ignored prince — in a marriage of alliance between the Empire and her homeland of Zeltah. Unbeknownst to Chej, the marriage is a façade, as the Empire has already sent its armies in to conquer Zeltah. What the Empire doesn’t know, however, is that Zeltah has foreseen this, and Yash is not some blushing bride but a weapon of her people, sent into danger to try and kill the nine Tower Masters (powerful sorcerers protected by monsters) and the apparently immortal Emperor himself. All of this becomes clear very early in the book, and the rest of the present-day action unfolds over a single day and night as Yash battles to survive the day and save her people, entangling Chej in her fight against the Empire. The single-day action is interrupted by a series of flashbacks filling in the background story, mostly of Yash but also of Chej, as well as the history of this world and its peoples.

Usually, I like to start with the positives, but here I’m going to switch things up and begin with the few issues I had with the book, mostly because they are greatly outweighed by the positives and I’d rather those are what you carry away from this review. I noted in the introduction that my issues centered around pace and structure, and the two are actually linked. While I enjoyed most of the flashbacks in their own right, they felt a little unbalanced in their importance to story and character, and their placement or timing sometimes felt like they threw the book’s pace off. And if I sometimes wondered if I needed a particular flashback, other times I wished I’d been able to spend more time in one. The concept was fine, mostly they worked, but overall they felt like the execution was just off a bit here and there, like they needed just a little more fine-tuning.

Greg Keyes

Beyond the flashbacks, the book also suffered from a little bit of plot repetition: Yash enters a tower, confronts its monster and its master, defeats monster and master (not necessarily in that order), Yash moves on to another tower, repeat. I want to stress that it feels just “a little” repetitive.” I did worry at one point that we were going to move through all nine towers one at a time, but Keyes breaks the pattern early enough, and the engagements themselves are well executed and different enough, that the impact is relatively minor.

As for the positives. To follow up on that last point, the fight scenes are vividly and entertainingly detailed: nicely choreographed, always clear in their logistics (often a pet peeve of mine), different enough from each other that while the pattern repeats the details do not. Those shifting details include how Yash enters the tower, how the Masters differ from each other with each having a particular power, how their unique guardian monsters differ, and the ease (or not) with which Yash deals with all these obstacles. One fight scene in particular is absolutely wonderful in how I imagined it, and I’d love to see a cinematic treatment of it, but I won’t ruin it by detailing it here.

The two main characters, Yash and Chej, are both likable and easy to root for but for wholly different reasons. Yash gains our sympathy of course via her fight to save her people, long oppressed and currently being brutally killed in a genocidal attack. The “one-against-many” story also affords an automatic entry into the “root for the underdog” club. Beyond these more structural elements, Keyes also gives us a character who changes throughout the course of the story. As righteous as her task is, as necessary as it is, Yash wrestles with the death and destruction she causes, particularly to those less directly involved in the ill treatment of her people. She has trained to be the weapon of her people but is at times a reluctantly wielded one. Keyes handles this shift in a sophisticated, nuanced fusion, with Yash going back and forth over the issue rather than simply “transforming” from one stance to another due to plot magic.

Chej, meanwhile, wins us over for wholly different reasons. He’s as lost, dismissed, befuddled, and ignored a character as one will see. As one of the Masters tells him: “Why would you have been informed? It would only have given you a chance to botch the whole plan … There are those, Chej, that believe you are worthless in every way. But they overlook how amusing you can be at times.” He has no idea of the Empire’s planned invasion, was entirely unaware of the deceptive nature of his own marriage, is shocked to learn of Yash’s many strengths (let alone her goal to kill the Masters and Emperor), has his own will taken from him, is captured, suffers more than his share of injuries, and holds (or thinks he does) apparently the worst-kept secret in the Empire. But like Yash, he too undergoes a shift as surprising to himself as it is to others, finding an inner strength and an outer calling, and his journey is just as rewarding and heartwarming as Yash’s.

Through the two characters, and the plot of course, we’re introduced to a multiplicity of themes. Imperialism and colonialism are two clear ones given the war, and the description of plans to “kill every last one of those barbarians [and] then move loyal subjects onto those lands.” Identity is another one, explored down multiple paths via multiple characters: Chej’s queerness and Yash’s gender fluidity (literally, as she her body periodically morphs form) are overtly discussed in conversation with Chej confused by Yash’s spectrum and Yash equally confused by the Empire’s view of Chej’s homosexuality as an abomination. The role of women in the Empire is considered through the Emperor’s daughter, also often overtly, this time mostly through interior monologue. Through action as well as dialogue, Keyes also reflects on vengeance and its price, the role of mercy and compassion, justice versus retribution. These create some of the more moving moments in the novel, as well as some of the most lyrically crafted.

As exciting as much of the action is though, as thoughtful and moving as the themes are, and as enjoyable the ride is with our two main characters, I think my favorite element of The Wind That Sweep the Stars is the mythos that lies at its core, which has a strong indigenous people’s echo to it, is built about the idea of place and spirit and stewardship, and drives those themes of mercy and justice. It’s also incorporated into a fascinating backstory of the various people and how they arrived in this world.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wind That Sweep the Stars, despite the niggling issues noted above. I found it taut, thoughtful, moving at time, exciting at other times, wryly funny at moments, and I would happily have spent more time with the two main characters. While the story absolutely works as a stand-alone, Keyes allows for the possibility of more to come with these two. I for one am hoping that will be the case.