Owen Blacker reviewed When the Tiger Came down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (The Singing Hills Cycle, #2)
Review of 'When the Tiger Came down the Mountain' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
These 2 novellas are the first instalments of [a:Nghi Vo|7058667|Nghi Vo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1614060645p2/7058667.jpg]’s Singing Hills Cycle, of which Goodreads has another 3 listed as coming later; while she has had several shorts published in magazines, these are her début books, with her first novel [b:The Chosen and the Beautiful|55169019|The Chosen and the Beautiful|Nghi Vo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1620400751l/55169019.SY75.jpg|84447261], published in the US on 1 June 2021.
The gorgeous covers here are by Alyssa Winans, whose work is pretty popular with queer women writing SFF; you’ll see her work appear a few more times below and there’s a great interview with Winans in Clarkesworld recently.
Both of these novellas see non-binary archivist-cleric Chih as our protagonist; they’re travelling around the empire of Ahn to collect and record stories for their monastery. This sequel again features Chih, this time saving themself and their companions from a band of ravenous tigers by telling — …
These 2 novellas are the first instalments of [a:Nghi Vo|7058667|Nghi Vo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1614060645p2/7058667.jpg]’s Singing Hills Cycle, of which Goodreads has another 3 listed as coming later; while she has had several shorts published in magazines, these are her début books, with her first novel [b:The Chosen and the Beautiful|55169019|The Chosen and the Beautiful|Nghi Vo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1620400751l/55169019.SY75.jpg|84447261], published in the US on 1 June 2021.
The gorgeous covers here are by Alyssa Winans, whose work is pretty popular with queer women writing SFF; you’ll see her work appear a few more times below and there’s a great interview with Winans in Clarkesworld recently.
Both of these novellas see non-binary archivist-cleric Chih as our protagonist; they’re travelling around the empire of Ahn to collect and record stories for their monastery. This sequel again features Chih, this time saving themself and their companions from a band of ravenous tigers by telling — and accepting corrections to — the tale of the sapphic relationship between a scholar and a tiger spirit, with Publishers Weekly describing it as “another lush, sophisticated story of queer love and survival”. The alternation between the 2 different versions of the story makes for a beautiful demonstration of the Rashōmon effect, showing how memory is subjective, not some truth caught in amber. I really liked how Jo Ladzinski put it in their review: “another epic distilled to its finest parts”.
CN for Tiger: murder, cannibalism, animal death, drug use, manipulation.
