Pure Textuality has asked me to write about Kirit and Nat, two of Updraft’s primary characters, their relationship, and their background.
Kirit and Nat are two friends, separated by circumstance and luck. One is downtower, one up. For Kirit Densira, home — and her home tower — is a series of tiers that divide those who have power from those who don’t.
Once, she and her mother Ezarit were part of the lowtower, and she and her friend Nat were raised by Ezarit’s friend Elna as wing-mates.
Now? Everything’s changed. The tower of living bone rising high above the clouds that is their home has grown a new tier, and Kirit and Ezarit’s fortunes with it. Nat’s resentment is barely concealed when he and Kirit see each other again, and their friendship is shaken even further when both are punished for Kirit’s crime against the city in which they live.
This is the undercurrent of their relationship going into Updraft. At the foreground, Kirit is desperate to gain her wingmarker and become a trader like her mother. Nat wants to both uncover the city’s secrets and become a hunter, in order to raise his own fortunes above those of his childhood.
Seen through Kirit’s experience, this conflict is underlying tension. It is something she cannot fix and cannot truly mourn either. And before them both, the risks of the city loom: migrating tentacled predators, the Singers who control the city, and gravity itself.
It is in this setting that Kirit’s adventure in Updraft begins.
Thanks so much to Pure Textuality for having me on the blog!
Fran Wilde’s first novel, Updraft, debuted from Tor Books in September 2015. Her short stories have appeared at Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny Magazine, and in Asimov’s and Nature. Fran also interviews authors about food in fiction at Cooking the Books, and blogs for GeekMom and SFSignal. You can find Fran at her website, Twitter, and Facebook.
About Updraft
Welcome to a world of wind and bone, songs and silence, betrayal and courage.
Kirit Densira cannot wait to pass her wingtest and begin flying as a trader by her mother’s side, being in service to her beloved home tower and exploring the skies beyond. When Kirit inadvertently breaks Tower Law, the city’s secretive governing body, the Singers, demand that she become one of them instead. In an attempt to save her family from greater censure, Kirit must give up her dreams to throw herself into the dangerous training at the Spire, the tallest, most forbidding tower, deep at the heart of the City.
As she grows in knowledge and power, she starts to uncover the depths of Spire secrets. Kirit begins to doubt her world and its unassailable Laws, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to a haunting choice, and may well change the city forever-if it isn’t destroyed outright.
Updraft
by Fran Wilde
Series
n/a; Standalone
Genre
SciFi / Fantasy
Steampunk
Publisher
Tor Books
Publication Date
September 1, 2015
About Fran Wilde
Fran Wilde can tie sailing knots, set gemstones, and program digital minions.
Fran’s first novel, Updraft, debuts from Tor/Macmillan in 2015. Her short stories have appeared in publications including Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, and Tor.com. Her interview series Cooking the Books – about the intersection between food and fiction – has appeared at Strange Horizons, Tor.com, and on her website.
Fran is a fan of the Oxford Comma and is represented by Russell Galen and Rachel Kory of SGG Literary.
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