Today, we’re thrilled to welcome Kritika H. Rao back to the Hive!

First of all, here’s the official blurb:

High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity-plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. In these living cities, architects are revered above anyone else. If not for their ability to psychically manipulate the architecture, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below.

Charismatic, powerful, mystical, Iravan is one such architect. In his city, his word is nearly law. His abilities are his identity, but to Ahilya, his wife, they are a way for survival to be reliant on the privileged few. Like most others, she cannot manipulate the plants. And she desperately seeks change.

Their marriage is already thorny-then Iravan is accused of pushing his abilities to forbidden limits. He needs Ahilya to help clear his name; she needs him to tip the balance of rule in their society. As their paths become increasingly intertwined, deadly truths emerge, challenging everything each of them believes. And as the earthrages become longer, and their floating city begins to plummet, Iravan and Ahilya’s discoveries might destroy their marriage, their culture, and their entire civilization.

Nils’ Review | Nils’ Interview with Kritika H. Rao

Hmm. At its foundation, the world was inspired by Ahilya and Iravan, though it exists very much independently of them. But that was the genesis of the story and the book–this married couple who are at odds with each other. Who loved each other but were so DESPERATELY angry with each other. Rage is a big part of the book. The climatic phenomenon is called an earthRAGE. The trilogy is The RAGES trilogy. There’s anger here, but there is logic too. There is passion, but it isn’t unseeing, unweighing, or innocent. These are adults, calculating their moves within the rationalizations of their own mind. Their emotions and complexity informed the complexity and emotion of the world.

I always think of The Surviving Sky as a book steeped in philosophy and not mythology. There are concepts within this book that are derived from the Hindu concepts of samsara, of karma and cyclical time. The book is deeply steeped in yogic philosophies of consciousness if you only know to look for them, and Ahilya and Iravan personify the duality of the subjective and objective world, the observed and the observer, neither of them any one of those, but both of them a part of those. Shiva, the Lord of Destruction, and Adi Yogi, is EVERYWHERE in the book, but again, only if you know to look for him. There are creatures in The Surviving Sky called yakshas that Ahilya studies; those are traditionally jungle and forest spirits, and that’s where that part of the book came from. But still, while these elements exist, I would say The Surviving Sky is a philosophical book. Not a mythological one.

Sungineering! In many ways, the Moment and Ecstasy too. The fact that it’s a floating city above jungle storms. Plant magic. Earthrages. I had a lot of fun with all of those, and it only gets more exciting in Book 2.