Windhaven by George R.R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle
Windhaven is a storm-wracked world consisting of a vast ocean and a small scattering of islands, home to the descendants of survivors of a spacecraft crash centuries earlier. The most efficient way of passing messages between islands is by the flyers, specially-trained men and women who can use strong-but-flexible 'wings' salvaged from the wrecked spaceship to ride the winds from island to island. Tradition has it that a flyer's wings are passed from parent to their eldest child, but this order is upset when Maris of Lesser Amberley, the adopted daughter of a flyer, is required to give up her wings to her adopted father's trueborn eldest child, who has no interest in flying. The establishment is opposed to any opening of the flyers' ranks to the 'land-bound', but the winds of change are blowing on Windhaven, and these changes will be difficult and potentially bloody. Windhaven , originally published in 1981, is a 'fix-up' novel, consisting of two sho...