The Palace of Winds
Where Winds of Destruction left off
A summary
For those who have waited a while for WINDS OF DESOLATION to come out, or need a refresher anyway, here’s a short summary of the key points to keep in mind going forwards. Obviously, it contains spoilers for WINDS OF DESTRUCTION, so if you have not read that yet, you’ve been warned!
Literra is a land of elemental magic. The Spirits of Water, Fire, Earth and Wind are the gatekeepers to manipulate the elements and children of the omnipotent force, Life.
Elementals, people capable of hearing the Spirits’ whispers, can use the elements and are divided into Water Shifters, Fire Kindlers, Earth Turners, and Wind Changers. The strength of which a person can bend the element depends on their ancestry and personality.
Inelementals are people unable to hear the Spirits’ whispers and are rare throughout the land.
The Spirits and Life have been trapped within Life Stones: Green crystals which gave whoever possessed one the ability to draw strength from Life’s power and control the Spirits. Life Stones were gifted by the Lord of Life to Masters, who made up his personal army.
The Lord of Life has governed Literra for a millennium. As the legends go, he was the one to capture Life and was thereby granted immortality and power. He and his children are called The Ancients due to their long life, and are Masters of Fire, Water and Earth. However, the Wind is out of their grasp. It was passed to the Brissé family; the Wind Changers, in a pact that sealed Life and the Spirits to be trapped as long as the two families upheld their end of it.
The Brissés have resisted the Lord of Life’s rule for centuries, claiming that Life and the Spirits should be freed of their bonds. Their latest attempt culminated in the Great War where twin-siblings, Mareau and Derimar, rallied Literra under their cause and challenged the Lord of Life. It ended with a battle on the Misty Slopes where Mareau and Derimar were defeated at the age of 16.
Mareau spent the following twenty years hiding in the village of Black Dam at the edge of Literra in shame of his defeat and mourning his sister whom he assumed died on the Misty Slopes. He’s a broken alcoholic with little to live for, but when he meets his niece, Storm, he finds hope to redeem himself and avenge his family. He joins her to finish the war their ancestors started and along the way, he realizes the pact upheld for a millennium has been broken and is now no longer just the Ancients he’s fighting, but Life itself.
Finding the Wind Rebellion, he soon learns that the war has kept going despite him not participating for twenty years, and his return comes with the expectation of him rising as Lord of Winds. However, with the help and love from Jodea, the powerful Lady of Earth, Mareau braces himself for the challenge.
Storm is the child of Derimar Brissé and the Lord of Life. She’s born in captivity in the Palace of Winds, but her mother flees to live in hiding in the wilderness. Broken by torture and Life’s wrath, Derimar raises Storm to be a weapon to free the Spirits from the Life Stones. Born as the pact was broken, Storm hears and feels Life inside her and must do as It commands if she and her little brother, Gust, are to be free of It. They travel through Literra to find the homes of the Spirits and crush the Life Stone’s one-by-one with help from Jodea and her little sister, Samerra. Samerra and Storm are already an established couple when we meet them in Winds of Destruction.
Storm gets captured by the Lord of Life and his oldest son, Panmar. In an attempt to lure Mareau to come to her rescue, she is tortured and whipped. But it backfires as instead, Literra rises in rebellion against the Lord of Life. Storm manages to get to the final Life Stone she needs to break in order to free Life, but her mission is thwarted by Remar, her older brother born by Derimar. As they fight, Storm claims the Spirits instead of freeing them and is ordered by Life to destroy the world. Gust helps her calm It, but as they are about to be freed, the Lord of Life pierces them with a spear. Storm retaliates, and with the power she gets from Life, finally kills the Lord of Life. As she’s dying, Gust forfeits his own life in place of hers and tragically dies in her arms. Storm’s shock and grief stops the world.
She disappears, bearing no mind to the damage she made, and leaves Mareau to gather up Literra after her and fill the gap which the death of the Lord of Life left.
WINDS OF DESOLATION picks up in the immediate aftermath. A month or so (who knows when the sun doesn’t set) has passed, Storm is still missing, and Mareau sits as Lord of Winds and ruler of Literra with the help from the former Wind Rebellion.
Index of Characters
Major and minor characters in book 1 & 2
As the cast of The Palace of Winds keeps growing, I've made a table with their name, relation, and respective Elemental power.
This website format really despises tables though, so I had to upload it as a pdf file to make it readable.
You can download it right here: