eBook, 112 pages
English language
Published March 23, 2020 by Tom Doherty Associates.
With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama, Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women.
A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.
Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor’s lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.
At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She’s a northern daughter in …
With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama, Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women.
A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.
Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor’s lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.
At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She’s a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.
4 stars: loved it, would recommend
Copying over from goodreads, read it a while ago so my review is pretty short
A pretty quick read. Great for anyone who likes highly political medieval type fantasy (the time period - it's set in a more Asian-inspired world).
I picked this up as I wanted to contine my reading of Asian-themed books after The Water Outlaws, but wanted something short. Getting talked to by my supe for reading on the job is the main reason I didn't finish this sooner.
Its casually queer, has a rich world, and an interesting story telling method of following Cleric Chih ("Cheech"?) inspecting the items of the place, their own observations, and the Flashbacks from Rabbit gave the whole book a good feel.
Well worth a read.
I had been wondering about this series for a while - how is it possible to read the books in any order? I believe I understand that better now. I this one, a lot of the world is laid out sort of in the background with the help of the framing story and the story told by Rabbit. A lot is left unsaid but still adds layers to the world and the narrative. I especially liked how each chapter began with objects that were then given meaning and context. While I felt that this story was perhaps a bit too short to really get to know the characters I'm interested in reading the other books in the series.
This is a story told through a framing story, bit by bit, so really it is two stories: inner and outer. The inner story I liked quite a bit: both the story itself and the way it's told, which very much requires a framing story, so I like the fact that there is an outer story as well.
Unfortunately I like the framing story itself significantly less. It feels like either too much or too little: the present tense, the dialogue, and the details all make Chih more than a placeholder puppet-figure there to listen and hold the inner story in place. And yet: there's not enough for them to feel like a full character either. I kept grasping for some sort of connection with them and coming up blank.
Regardless, I liked the book overall, and it was certainly worth the read.
Selling points: interesting narrative format; queer representation; …
This is a story told through a framing story, bit by bit, so really it is two stories: inner and outer. The inner story I liked quite a bit: both the story itself and the way it's told, which very much requires a framing story, so I like the fact that there is an outer story as well.
Unfortunately I like the framing story itself significantly less. It feels like either too much or too little: the present tense, the dialogue, and the details all make Chih more than a placeholder puppet-figure there to listen and hold the inner story in place. And yet: there's not enough for them to feel like a full character either. I kept grasping for some sort of connection with them and coming up blank.
Regardless, I liked the book overall, and it was certainly worth the read.
Selling points: interesting narrative format; queer representation; a victory from underneath.
Warnings: misogyny (in the culture, not the narrative), monarchy, forced/coerced pregnancy, lack of autonomy.
I gave this a reread before reading the other two books in this series. (In retrospect, I think these books truly are a "could read in any order" series and so this was unnecessary.) I enjoyed this a lot even on the second read. I am a sucker for anything with a frame story as well as stories about telling stories. The narration being little vignettes based on objects found around the house really worked for me.
It was fun to have reread this so close to Neon Yang's Tensorate series, and especially The Ascent to Godhood. There's a lot of parallel vibes between the two in their story framing, the rough plot arc of an overthrown ruler, but especially the way the emotional and personal is foregrounded while so much action happens off page. What I think works especially well in this book is how all of these details …
I gave this a reread before reading the other two books in this series. (In retrospect, I think these books truly are a "could read in any order" series and so this was unnecessary.) I enjoyed this a lot even on the second read. I am a sucker for anything with a frame story as well as stories about telling stories. The narration being little vignettes based on objects found around the house really worked for me.
It was fun to have reread this so close to Neon Yang's Tensorate series, and especially The Ascent to Godhood. There's a lot of parallel vibes between the two in their story framing, the rough plot arc of an overthrown ruler, but especially the way the emotional and personal is foregrounded while so much action happens off page. What I think works especially well in this book is how all of these details play into the fact Chih is an archivist and is as deeply interested in both personal stories and histories. It makes this personal focus make sense narratively and, even if as a reader I wish some of the details of the world were a bit less fuzzy, I understand what kind of tale is being told here.
Elegante Erzähltechnik, nicht zu viele und nicht zu wenige Informationen, perfekte Länge, guter Schluss, auf den das Buch auch wirklich sorgsam hinkonstruiert ist und nicht so "ich habe einen guten Anfang, der Rest wird sich dann schon ergeben".
I love the basic premise of this book: telling a story about a tough, resourceful woman through the framing of an archivist going through objects in her house and getting context for them as flashbacks. It's beautifully written, and the Empress is a compelling character. But somehow the world didn't manage to draw me in. I'm honestly not sure if that's any fault of the book, or just that I'm a bit saturated with new fictional worlds having read a lot of fantasy this year.
I rather enjoyed that a small team of woman conquered their world. We should all aspire to that.
An interesting story, as told to a travelling monk collecting narratives for an archive at their temple, of a young woman from the North that is 'presented' as a bride to the Emperor of the South. It is there that the storyteller, named Rabbit, gets involved with the foreign empresses who strangely excels in games of chance and strategy.
When the foreign Empress gives birth to an heir, she is summarily exiled to a palace far to the west to live out her days. It is here that the monk later meets Rabbit, now the maid to the Empresses, who tells the monk the story (via objects recorded by the monk) of how the Empresses was part of a scheme for the North to conquer the South. But Rabbit herself would turn out to have an unplanned part in the plot.
Told as a story within a story, the fantasy …
An interesting story, as told to a travelling monk collecting narratives for an archive at their temple, of a young woman from the North that is 'presented' as a bride to the Emperor of the South. It is there that the storyteller, named Rabbit, gets involved with the foreign empresses who strangely excels in games of chance and strategy.
When the foreign Empress gives birth to an heir, she is summarily exiled to a palace far to the west to live out her days. It is here that the monk later meets Rabbit, now the maid to the Empresses, who tells the monk the story (via objects recorded by the monk) of how the Empresses was part of a scheme for the North to conquer the South. But Rabbit herself would turn out to have an unplanned part in the plot.
Told as a story within a story, the fantasy elements remain mainly in the background but are still important by providing some context to the environment the story is set in. Still an interesting start to a series of stories involving the recording monk.
– which, in case you were unsure, is a good thing, because you can enjoy peeling away fine layer after fine layer from the story Nghi Vo so intricately wrapped for you. The experience is, there is no other word for it, exquisite.
THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE unwinds layers of grief and years of confinement amidst luxury into the willing ears of a Cleric sent to record all they can.
The layering of the framing narrative and the tale being told made this feel like it has the scope of a much larger novel while keeping the intimacy of a personal story told by one person to another over an ultimately brief period of time. I loved it and I'm eager to read more in this series.
A beautiful, engrossing, and elegantly written novella.
Chih is a cleric who makes a stop on the way to the coronation of the new empress. Rabbit is an old woman who reminisces about her life serving the former empress.
Some really great world building in not very many pages; the format worked really well for the story being told, but I couldn't help but feel the ending was hedged a bit in favor of over-explaining what had already been pretty clearly laid out in the chapters beforehand (especially for a novella that repeatedly asks "do you understand?" the subtext throughout)
The writing is sooooo good and so flowyyy.
Smart, spare, intriguing.
I guess I'm going to have to accept the trend of "novella trilogies", this stands alone but.
