I was hoping to be blown away by this and it was fine but not quite what I was hoping for.

The book follows Zemolai, one of the Winged mecha guardians of Radezhda, after her fall from grace. A parallel storyline illuminates the past of Zenya, a young scholar woman who yearns to become a Winged, as she progresses through her education. These two are of course the same woman.

Zemolai is hardened by her faith and hostile towards pretty much everyone. Nonetheless, she gets drawn into a burgeoning rebellion against the dominance of her own Warrior sect over the Scholar, Engineer, Worker and Farmer sects. The gods in Zemolai's world are real and occasionally interact with their followers, which lends credibility toward anyone who leads a sect. Vodaya, the Voice of the warrior sect, is rigid and righteous and sees conspiracies everywhere. Her repressive behavior has ironically set many people quietly against her. But Zemolai idolizes Vodaya, who trained her.

I thought that the past storyline, while it did serve to show the details of how Zenya was bent to Vodaya's will, was fairly unnecessary. Certainly it didn't need to be half the book. Whenever a book is half flashback, you have to wonder if this structure is really the best way to go.

Most of the characters other than Zemolai never really came alive for me. Zemolai herself was very well-drawn. But she felt alone in her actions the whole book, even when she was with other people.

What an incredible pleasure to sink into a book that's compellingly written and crafted. I had hit a little bit of a slump of books that weren't doing it for me, but this one had me from the first page.

I love the worldbuilding here, the purposeful claustrophobia of it—towers that climb into the sky, but very little sense of a wider world. A class system within and across devotion to different specialized gods. The larger structures of facism, and the smaller, more personal structures of control and abuse. It's a very tense book, but in a great way where I was anxiously rooting for Zemolai to find her way out, not anxiously waiting for something terrible to happen.

And Zemolai! I loved her. I loved the flashbacks to her youth, and I loved her in the present—deeply flawed and hurting and scared, and I wanted the best for her. There were some other lovely characters too, young people around Zemolai who she was leaving behind or drawing nearer to; there was also Vodaya, an explosive and almost irresistible force of control. All of these characters, and others populating this world, were relayed with such delightful nuance and reality!

This book was a real gem, I'm glad to have spent an otherwise stressful week of my life reading it and cathartically crying about it.

There’s a now-classic sketch from comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb called “Are We the Baddies?”. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, but to spoil the bit, it’s about two SS officers having a conversation on the front line in which it gradually dawns on them that they might be the bad guys in this war. Involving Nazis in your comedy is always a dicey proposition, but Mitchell and Webb pull it off: the sketch illustrates how challenging it can be to break the cognitive dissonance required to rationalize one’s place in human suffering on a mass scale. The Wings Upon Her Back does the same thing. Through an intimate story told across two times, Samantha Mills illustrates how it’s harder to stand up to fascism when every step towards that fascism felt logical and just at the time. I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for my review.

Zemolai has spent the past decades of her life as a Winged. She flies through the air on mechanical wings attached to her body via implants. This technology is a gift from the gods, specifically the Mecha god, one of the five who sleep watchfully over Zemolai’s city. At the start of the novel, Zemolai makes a tragic mistake that leads to her downfall. Cast out of her paradise, she finds herself the unwilling companion of the rebels she has spent so long despising. Mills intersperses these chapters with a look back at who Zemolai was before she was Winged: Zenya, a descendant of scholars who dreamed of flying and set her sights on being a warrior who could protect her city.

Mills doesn’t pull punches here. This book is laser-focused, restricting its perspective almost entirely to Zemolai or her younger self, Zenya. The parallel storytelling drives home the central theme with startling clarity: Zenya is idealistic and optimistic, driven to impress Vodaya at all costs, devoted to the mission; Zemolai is bitter, tired, divided, and eventually resentful of Vodaya’s deceit. Like two ships passing in the night, Zenya’s radicalization proceeds apace with Zemolai’s deprogramming. The result is a kind of synergy foreshadowed by one of the city’s scholars: we are who we always were, all our selves across all points of our existence. She is Zemolai and Zenya, even if it takes her a while to recognize this.

You’ve seen elements of Zemolai’s story in plenty of media before. The prisoner who eventually comes around to the side of good, the face turn, is a common enough trope, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. So Zemolai’s gruff, half-hearted cooperation with Galiana and the others feels familiar. However, it has been a while (if ever) that I’ve read this story from the prisoner’s point of view. To have such a direct and personal audience to someone slowly being deradicalized is a fascinating experience. As the cracks appear in Zemolai’s faith in the mission, her desperation becomes palpable. It’s hard to come to terms with one’s complicity in causing suffering.

It’s also hard to write such a flawed protagonist. It’s easy to write a shining hero, someone who’s always trying to do the right thing (even if they misstep occasionally). That’s not Zemolai. She believes that what she is doing is for the greater good, of course. But each chapter, each decision, compromises Zenya’s connection to her past and her community a little more. She is such a sympathetic figure, but it’s hard to call her a good person, and that’s the point.

Few people set out to be the baddie. Zemolai certainly didn’t. Mills expertly depicts how Zenya endures the perfect storm: Vodaya’s manipulations, Zenya’s idealism, the secretive politics of the city’s most powerful, etc. (The nature of the gods lurks in the backdrop, a tantalizing mystery but not one that ultimately matters all that much to the overall plot.) All of Zemolai’s pain, particularly the deterioration of her relationship with Vodaya, is so bold on the page. I was really invested in seeing this story through to the end, and I really like where Mills chooses to end it.

This is a tight, contained novel with an excellent setting and a strong protagonist who can carry this story on her shoulders, much like she carried her wings for twenty years. In a time where we need to reflect more on our own complicity (those of us who live in countries that benefit from companies exploiting child labour in Congo, or countries that fund genocide), The Wings Upon Her Back offers a potent combination of admonishment and hope. You can’t wipe your sins away simply by announcing you’ve had a change of heart. You can’t excuse away your actions by pointing to the influences that shaped you into that person. But it is never too late to make a choice, to turn around, to embrace that past self that has been inside you all along.

I picked up The Wings Upon Her Back because I was intrigued by the idea of mechanical angels protecting a city. I got so much more than I bargained for: a story of fascism and abuse, of resilience and rebuilding, of loss and pain and sorrow. This is a poignant but worthwhile read, one I highly recommend when you are ready for it.

This book was such a treat. I'll admit, in the beginning I found myself wondering why I should care about the main character, but that soon dissipated and quickly enough I was devouring this story. The world building was interesting, the gods fascinating, and the technology both incredible and almost painful.

A story about religion, abuse, and oppression, you never really get the big answers you seek, but Mills writes with just enough certainties that you're left feeling satisfied.

My biggest complaint is that I could have used some sort of appendix to remind myself of all of the places, titles, and roles within the book, but I was able to forge on even in uncertainty and found myself really appreciating this unique novel.

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars--

This book was intense. Set in a dystopian country where the citizens worship gods (who are maybe not gods?) that represent sects--farmers, engineers, scholars, soldiers. etc. Zenya was born into the scholar sect, but always felt destined for the militaristic Winged--a group of soldiers with body mods that give them mechanized wings that allow them to fly. Under the tutelage of her ambitious mentor, Zenya participates in a brutal crackdown on her sect and her family, who claim to have found documents showing that the gods are not divine. Years later, Zenya has the opportunity to redeem herself and uncover the deception at the heart of her adopted sect, who has fascistically taken control.

The world-building in The Wings Upon Her Back was intriguing and unique, but could have used further fleshing-out. I found Zenya's ideological and moral struggles realistic and compelling, but they made it hard for her to be a likeable or endearing main character. This story is ultimately dark and foreboding and cautionary. Even where it offers hope, it makes it clear that this comes with great sacrifice and risk, and without any guarantee of triumph over evil. This one may be for the more pessimistic reader.

Many thanks to Tachyon Publications and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Oddly it paralleled junk going on in my life right now and due to that I felt closer to Zenya/Zemolai than was expected. Usually I find time period flitting back and forth annoying but in this case it actually worked well and flowed naturally. The author writes with a strange clarity that paints a great mental image of everything in the book. Bravo.

If you ever wanted to read a book where the main character/heroine is not a teenager with power and wisdom beyond her years, and have always wanted a seasoned protagonist who has been through some shit and is just starting to realize that everything you believed in when you were 18 and created your identity around may not be who you are anymore.

Now take that protagonist and make it Sci-Fi with fantasy elements add body modification technology, and revolution and you have "The Wings Upon Her Back" by Samantha Mills... the book you always wanted but could not find is here.

Pulls strongly toward the Sci-Fi genre and is a debut so the writing is not as seasoned as some others, but the book is solid.

This is a new author for me. I really enjoyed The Wings Upon Her Back. I really enjoyed the author’s use of fantasy/science fiction with steampunk undertones. I loved the world building as well. This is one of the most original novels I’ve read in ages. I got so absorbed by Zenya/Zemolai’s story I didn’t want to stop reading and didn’t want the book to end. This is well-written and engrossing. This is the author’s debut novel and I can’t wait to read what she does next. I’d recommend this.

For about the first quarter of this book, I thought I might DNF. There wasn't actually anything wrong with it, I just really struggled to get my mental movie playing. But the more toxic and claustrophobic Zenya's story got, and the less confined Zemolai's became, the more I was able to visualize until I was unable to put it down and read the back half in nearly one sitting.

The Wings Upon Her Back has a lot of things going for it but also could be fine tuned.

The cover?? Absolutely beautiful. From far away it seems it could be basic but the more you look at it, the more detail, texture, and colours come out. I also absolutely love the title, the characters names, the idea of the book. There was a lot of love that went into this book and you could tell.

It also felt like a very obvious debut to me and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it did stand out to be that some of the writing style and chapters were a bit disjointed. There was a particular depth I was missing and that may have been from the way the chapters were chosen but it took me out of the reading and kept me from fully immersing myself.

As a whole, this is a lovely debut from an authour I’m interested in keeping track of in the future. I’m excited to see how they develop and what ideas they have going forward.

“Every step forward is a choice, Saint Lemain had written, and every choice is made in the shadow of choices we’ve made before”.

This quote from one of the novel’s final chapters is wonderfully reinforced by the novel’s structure. Two timelines alternating. The first begins in the present with Zemolai, a weary and jaded mechanically modified wing-warrior making a single mistake that leads to personal disaster. The second timeline begins in the past with Zemolai as a strong, yet naïve, young woman striving to earn her wings under the influence of a manipulative and cruel mentor. Both timelines are set in a fascist city infiltrated by rebels fighting a seemingly losing battle to overthrow; and the stakes get higher as the truth unfolds.

I loved seeing Zemolai as an older woman, coming to terms with her past choices, caught between reality and lies, and faced with an increasingly slim chance of survival. A gripping read from beginning to end as the two timelines converge to a denouement that filled me with both dread and hope. Will certainly be looking for more of Samantha Mills's work. Beautiful cover. Loved those wings.

A stunning and achingly relevant tale of devotion, a search for purpose, radicalization, and breaking cycles of abuse and grief, The Wings Upon Her Back is one that will stick in my mind for a while.

The story is told in two main timelines, both from the perspective of Zemolai. The current timeline sees her tired and tested, still devoted but at the point that she can’t quiet the voices that it is all truly right fully anymore. Her loyalty to her commander, who has been a mother figure, a mentor, and her idol, is so ingrained in her. The past timeline sees the previous civil war, and we see the underpinnings of just how Zemolai came to be caught up so thoroughly in the cause of the mecha god.

There’s some fascinating worldbuilding here, even as it is quite a claustrophobic story, only taking place in one city, and for the most part, one sector of the city, but that serves to really give space to examine the dynamics of the religion and how it shaped the city and its people and how it gave rise to both of the situations the novel touches on.

It’s hard to watch Zemolai still feel loyalty and ties to her previous life, even when she’s been cast out fully, but what makes it so resonant is that we do fully see her thought process and how she convinces herself that she’s been in the wrong, that if she just does /this/ or /that/, then she’ll be taken back. It’s very much a story about abusive relationships and how one can get tangled up in one without realizing, so be cautious if that’s a sensitive subject for you, but it’s handled very deftly here.

The Wings Upon Her back is the story of Zemolai’s fight to begin her life again while the actions that led to her fall from grace now force her to question the events of her past.

I really enjoyed this book! I think everyone can find a part of Zemolai’s story that they can relate to. Samantha Mills creates an epic world with Gods, winged warriors, and a volatile revolutionary movement. She uses this vivid world to take a poignant and intimate look at what happens when a person you idolize and emulate turns out to be a monster. How do you rebuild your sense of self when they have helped shape it for so long?

I think this is a fantastic debut novel that will stick with readers long after they finish the book.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills is a sci-fi where humans worship a mecha god and have wing attachments on their back to fly. Winged Zemolai has spent decades rising through the ranks of those devoted to the mecha god, following every order, until she commits an act of mercy by letting a man with an idol go free. As punishment, she loses her wings and is forced back down to the lower levels.

Samantha Mills writes the impact of facism, religious zealotry and religious trauma brilliantly. The way she explores how Zemolai still clings to old beliefs and the hope that maybe she could get her wings back was extremely well-done as was the exploration of the need to justify bad beliefs. It felt real, it felt relevant, and it resonated.

From a young age, Zeomlai wants to become a warrior despite coming from a scholar family, she desires wings of her own and to serve the mecha god despite the gods having left their world alone. The Voice of the gods was very analogous to religious leaders. The mecha elements were woven in a way that felt natural with the religious parts. The five man unit, five limbs with the four limbs and the head analogy, felt reminiscent of 1980s Voltron while also feeding into that greater narrative.

Zemolai is perhaps not the most likable character, but she feels like someone who does exist and is probably in your own life. She didn’t choose to give up her beliefs, she was forced to see that things are wrong and she’s struggling because of it. Many people have their world views upended and struggle to let go.

I don’t think I can say enough positive things about this book. From the brilliant use of prose, to the use of mecha elements, to the things that felt so connected to our world and the trials so many face, I could write an essay on how Mills reflects the world we live in while also creating something wholly new and alive. It’s a fabulous debut.

I would recommend this to fans of secondary world sci-fi, readers looking for explorations of religious trauma in a sci-fi/fantasy context, and those looking for conversations surrounding learning and unlearning dangerous beliefs in a secondary world

Samantha Mills has won Locus and Nebula awards for her short fiction but shows in her debut speculative fiction novel The Wings Upon Her Back that she is no slouch in the long form. The Wings Upon Her Back not only delivers a fascinating and complex world but Mills uses her setting and characters to explore some very real world issues.
The Wings on Her Back opens with Zemolai a loyal and effective warrior in the service of Vodaya, the defacto leader of the city of Radezhda. But a moment of questioning sees her stripped of her mechanical wings and expelled from the tower in which she has trained and lived since joining the warrior order. But Zemolai falls into the hands of a group of rebels and slowly learns that perhaps her misgivings about Vodaya’s fascist rule were not completely unfounded. At the same time, Mills charts the journey of Zenya (who becomes Zemolai) from wide eyed neophyte who always just wanted to fly contrary to her academic upbringing to hardened warrior and the way in which Vodaya shaped her and used her for her own ends.
The world of The Wings on Her Back is a fascinating one. The city is ruled over and divided along the lines of five sleeping gods who float in a strange netherworlds above the city. Each god represents a different discipline but a war between the engineers and the winged soldiers twenty years before was won by Vodaya and she has had an iron boot on the city ever since.
But The Wings Upon Her Back is about more than beguiling world building. This is a book about toxic relationships and the impact that they can have on a life. Of the way those in power use that power to gaslight and manipulate those who serve them and then rise on the unquestioning loyalty of those they have groomed. And then it is about what happens when that control breaks, how someone can reclaim their life and their agency and fight the constant pull that years of unquestioning loyalty can place on them. Zenya/Zemolai is a flawed but relatable protagonist and while readers may not always agree with her choices and actions Mills makes sure that they understand them.
With The Wings Upon Her Back Mills has unique and detailed world building to challenge readers but also provide a safe space to explore important and pervasive societal issues. The exploration of these very real issues is at the heart of The Wings Upon Her Back and gives the narrative plenty of thematic depth.

I finished this and then just had to stare at the wall for a moment. I keep meaning to write a review and just struggling to put together my thoughts.

I absolutely loved this. The writing is just beautiful. There are so many lines that I stopped and highlighted, because I absolutely loved them. The world building is fascinating and I love how it is trickled in as necessary instead of given upfront or info-dumped. This book follows the main character through two different storylines (similar to Witch King by Martha Wells) and is a deep examination on faith, fascism, and the power of indoctrination. every single character is so flawed and yet you really understand why they are making the absolutely awful decisions that they are making (similar to The Unbroken by CL Clark). It's emotional, it's full of pain, it's got TWO absolutely gripping storylines, and I couldn't put it down.

Just, wow.

This is Ms. Mills' first novel, and if her name seems familiar, she wrote the stunning short story "Rabbit Test. This has the perfect blend of what I've liked in her writing (bodily autonomy issues, fantastic characterization) and blends it with a sci-fi world that takes a fantasy bent because of how the mechas are revered within the world, and what happens in the aftermath of the gods broadly abandoning you and your people. I am also a sucker for "what if the thing you wanted wasn't what you thought it was and now you're sitting in the ashes that have resulted". Hopefully this is a start of a fantastic publishing career for her, and I can't wait to read more from her.

How do you recover from being abandoned by the one you love the most?

The Wings Upon Her Back is a compelling sci-fi/fantasy story that resonates with those who have given their unconditional love to someone who didn’t deserve it. The timeline goes back and forth between the past of Zemolai, a 40 year old Winged soldier who serves the Mecha God, and her current life. She struggles as she is abandoned by Vodaya, the charismatic leader of the religious group, and has a complete crisis of faith as she is dragged into a rebellion against her tyranny. It is a wonderfully orchestrated tale of what happens to those who give their whole existence to someone who bleeds them dry of everything.

I really loved the themes covered in this story: it really speaks to anyone who has personally followed their own type of charismatic leader. It doesn’t only show how someone got to that stage but also how they recover from it. In the end, I think its quite a hopeful story that touches on something that is also very timely (looking at you, US elections).

That being said, there were some aspects of the story I didn’t love. The characters were beautifully created but there were some inconsistencies in Zemolai’s character right at the end. She has moments where you think you understand her character but it doesn’t align with her actions somewhat. The minor characters suffer from this slightly, but more than their character isn’t summarized completely. It would have been wonderful to have a bit more dimension to those characters, but I also understand the focus is on one character.

There are dual timelines in this story, which I think was a great narrative choice. You see Zemolai as she deals with being abandoned and her as a child on her journey to joining the sect. However, this did make the plot a little bumpy as far as pacing. It wasn’t necessarily hard to track but the tone shift kind of took me out of the story and made me go “what exactly is going on here”.

I would recommend this to anyone who loves big metaphorical language and themes who is looking for a different type of speculative fiction who love character driven stories. For me, I liked it but the flaws are hard for me to look past.

Spectacular!

I don't read a lot of short stories, so I had never read Samantha Mills before. That being said, this first novel was a fantasy lovers dream come true, and Mills will be a must read for me moving forward.

In this novel, Mills does what fantasy and sci-fi can be so great at doing. She holds up a mirror to real world problems, but she does so in a world that still allows escapism and fantastic elements. Zemolai grapples with fascism, disillusionment, and civil war in a way that reflects the very real tragedies there - all while being a bad ass flying warrior. The characters are so well written, and Zemolia/Zenya's story is a perfect depiction of how someone might slowly become a warrior for the wrong side without even knowing it's happened. Vodaya is the perfect villain, and she flawlessly demonstrates what happens when power is placed in the wrong hands.

The plot is dark and gritty, as it is dealing with Civil War and all the heartbreak that goes with it. I wouldn't say this is your light, fantasy romp, but it is a gorgeously written look at the tragedy of giving power to evil people and allowing them to run rampant with it. Highly recommend.

Samantha Mills nos ofrece una historia futurista sobre abusos y creencias religiosas, muy pero que muy conseguida en el aspecto desasosegante de ser testigos del maltrato psicológico de las figuras de poder, pero no tanto respecto a la propia historia en sí.


La acción se sitúa en una ciudad cuya población está dividida estrictamente en castas según indicaron en su momento los dioses a los que idolatran pero que ahora se han retirado de la escena. Los guerreros, los ingenieros, los agricultores… todos desempeñan una labor clara y no hay apenas movimientos entre grupos, aunque sean posibles. Una sociedad bastante rígida y dividida en estratos que respeta más las tradiciones antes que mirar al futuro, en la que Zenya abandonará a su familia de estudiosos para cumplir su sueño de pertenecer a la casta guerrera y volar con sus propias alas.

Mills nos ha ofrecido una historia incómoda de leer y quizá ese sea su mayor mérito, porque el resto del libro no deja de ser bastante convencional, con dos narraciones situadas en distintos momentos en el tiempo, cuentos de revolución y agitación y luchas de poder tanto internas como externas. Pero la relación de Zenya con su superior, cómo la moldea desde la juventud para adaptarla a sus necesidades como si fuera arcilla en sus manos, cómo se refleja esa situación de abuso de poder es tremendamente realista y, por lo tanto, difícil de aguantar estoicamente. Me costó mucho trabajo seguir leyendo ciertos pasajes cuando vemos que la pupila es capaz de recurrir a drogas para seguir contentando a la maestra, en una espiral descendente hacia los infiernos de la abstinencia y de la necesidad extrema de aprobación por parte de la figura maternal y de superioridad a la vez. Es tremendamente retorcida la forma en que Zenya va madurando, abocada a una vida de servidumbre y constante entrega a quien no lo merece.

También es importante el tratamiento de los fanatismos religiosos en The Wings Upon Her Back, con la salvedad de que los dioses SÍ estuvieron presentes en el origen de la ciudad, pero es su retirada posterior lo que deja sin guía ni consuelo a sus seguidores. Un poco como en “El infierno es la ausencia de Dios” de Ted Chiang, salvando las distancias, por supuesto.

Lo que falla es la historia que cuenta la autora, no los medios utilizados para mostrarla. Y es que las conspiraciones y los planes de sublevación son demasiado inocentes y los personajes bastante banales en sus conversaciones y motivaciones. Es una lástima porque The Wings Upon Her Back tenía los mimbres para ser una mejor novela de lo que ha acabado siendo.