eBook, 176 pages
English language
Published Aug. 24, 2020 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.
The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.
Nghi Vo returns to the empire of Ahn and The Singing Hills Cycle in this mesmerizing, lush standalone follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune.
A perfect read for an automn evening with a cup of tea. Nghi Vo is an incredible storyteller, who never loses the reader in her stories of stories told by storytellers as well as tigers. In her world, tigers fall in love in young humans, or sometimes eat them, and sit around the fire listening and re-telling their side of the old stories... It is quite magic.
I wasn't sure at all where the rest of this series was going to go, but I was pleasantly surprised that rather than aiming for some continuity in the story of the world, or even in character development, instead this book was a continuity of theme. This second (and third book) are both also stories about telling stories, although each of which comes with their different own framing and perspective.
This story is more adjacent to a classic Scheherazade setup, but there's more depth in the layering of the frame story here. I really enjoyed this book's negotiation over the truth of stories; there isn't one privileged truth, but rather different storytellers with their own audiences, as well as disagreements over what makes a good tale. Rather than this creating an unsatisfying ambiguity, I felt like the back and forth over how to tell the story created characterization and made …
I wasn't sure at all where the rest of this series was going to go, but I was pleasantly surprised that rather than aiming for some continuity in the story of the world, or even in character development, instead this book was a continuity of theme. This second (and third book) are both also stories about telling stories, although each of which comes with their different own framing and perspective.
This story is more adjacent to a classic Scheherazade setup, but there's more depth in the layering of the frame story here. I really enjoyed this book's negotiation over the truth of stories; there isn't one privileged truth, but rather different storytellers with their own audiences, as well as disagreements over what makes a good tale. Rather than this creating an unsatisfying ambiguity, I felt like the back and forth over how to tell the story created characterization and made the frame story more enjoyable.
Storytelling layers and drama packed so neatly, but this didn't have the depth of the first one for me.
Wieder sehr gute Erzählkonstruktion, eine ganz andere als im ersten Band. Außerdem geht es darum, wie Legenden aus der Sicht der anderen Beteiligten aussehen, nämlich ganz anders. (Ich will nichts spoilern, aber man kann es sich ein bisschen wie die vom Wolf korrigierte Version von Rotkäppchen vorstellen.)
I enjoyed this one a bit more than Empress of Salt and Fortune, I think because the tension between the tellers and the listeners adds a hint of excitement that I was missing in the first one
A great follow up to the first entry, certainly left me wanting more...but that's also the point.
An interesting and entertaining story involving a travelling monk who goes around collecting stories and records for their temple. In this story, he gets a ride on a mammoth to get over a mountain pass. But it goes awry when tigers attack them, forcing them to hide in a shelter on the mountain.
The tigers turn out to be magical tigers who can transform into human form and talk. When they discover the monk is recording stories, they ask the monk to tell them the human version of a story involving another magical tiger and a scholar (before they will probably get eaten).
As the story progress, the tigers interject and present their own version of events in the story. While this very entertain back-and-forth of storytelling is going on, the monk and the mammoth rider also have to think of a way to avoid getting eaten. Things would come …
An interesting and entertaining story involving a travelling monk who goes around collecting stories and records for their temple. In this story, he gets a ride on a mammoth to get over a mountain pass. But it goes awry when tigers attack them, forcing them to hide in a shelter on the mountain.
The tigers turn out to be magical tigers who can transform into human form and talk. When they discover the monk is recording stories, they ask the monk to tell them the human version of a story involving another magical tiger and a scholar (before they will probably get eaten).
As the story progress, the tigers interject and present their own version of events in the story. While this very entertain back-and-forth of storytelling is going on, the monk and the mammoth rider also have to think of a way to avoid getting eaten. Things would come to a head at the end when conflicting versions of the way the story ends are presented: violence would ensure, but with some good fortune, the monk gets rescued and now has another story to add to the temple archives.
As with the previous tale, this is a story within a story, but told in an entertaining way. The magical and fantastical elements are more prominent in the form of magical tigers but also with the introduction of mammoths and their riders, which were instrumental for the North defeating the Empire of the South in the previous tale.
This is great. Clih was the only returning character, and they had a more active role this time, both telling and receiving the story in a high-stakes cultural exchange/hostage scenario as they and they companions try to please three tigers until help can arrive.
The tigers’ version of events was interjected at moments where it complemented (or occasionally contradicted) the version Clih knew. These moments are well-chosen, and serve to tell much about the tigers conveying them. The actual story is exciting, romantic, and poignant by turns, the pacing works well (even when interrupted by the tigers).
It as much to say about stories, who tells them, and whether telling them imperfectly is a price worth paying to preserve them. Clih begins with a story recorded, but recorded imperfectly, set against the tigers’ corrections and their demand for a perfectly told tale that will be Clih’s last.
This is technically …
I wasn’t quite sure how Nghi Vo would continue after her Empress of Salt and Fortune – after all, her main character Chih, the recording monk, is hardly fit to carry sustained narratives. I needn’t have worried: this never tries to burden them with that task.
Instead, we are treated (and what a treat it is) to another take on the magic of storytelling and the nature of truth. If Empress was all about the true story lying hidden, this is about how the truth of stories is negotiable. Formally consistent with, and sharing the same rich world building as its predecessor, this second instalment is as enjoyable as the first, a wonderful feat of complex storytelling happening without any of the usual fanfare.
I want more in this world
In this East-Asian influenced world, be wary if you meet three tigers, they might ask you to tell them a tale, and if you tell it badly, they'll eat you.
Nghi Vo keeps embellishing her world where tigers and foxes can turn into humans, to court them, marry them, or more prosaically to eat them. The same tale is told from two points of view, with two different sets of values, and makes us ask ourselves what we miss when we hear only one side of a story.
I like the short format of these novellas, the worldbuilding happens during the story and there's no infodump or long intro.
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.
This cover is so beautiful
A beautifully written and just as good follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune full of similarly evocative descriptions and memorable characters. Just a joy to read.
