Tag: author Nghi Vo

Review:  Mammoths At The Gates (The Singing Hills Cycle Book 4) by Nghi Vo

Rating: 5🌈

Through four incredible books, we’ve been with Cleric Chih as they have journeyed through the country, on their mission of collecting stories and memories of those they encounter. Enduring much, Chih has ventured through vast stretches of plains, traveling through haunted woods and eerie misty swamps to meet, or listen of mythical beings, whether it’s a  Pig Man, ancient royal ghostly servants, or deadly Tiger sisters. They’ve been the temporary companion of a group of scouts and their young northern mammoths as they navigated the harsh weather and bandits through the high winter mountain passes.  Each and every trail and story full of cultural references, ghosts, mythical creatures, and historical legends.  Scary, emotional, thought provoking, and moving tales that left Chih moving onto the next road and new destination. 

Chih, along with the hoopoe Almost Brilliant, a neixin, a companion sentient species that remembers everything. A race of beings that author Nghi Vo has done an incredible job in creating and now expands on here with Cleverness Himself, Almost Brilliant, and the unforgettable Myriad Virtues.

Now they’re finally returning home.  After four years journey, Chih has returned home to the Singing Hills Abbey, a place that the reader has only heard about from Chih’s memories, references, and conversations with others. Including those with Almost Brilliant. 

And we are there in what turns from a incredibly joyous anticipatory moment into one of surprise, then unsettled 

Once inside the ancient Abbey, Chih faces momentous challenges and change.  Outside the gates, the secular world is demanding that the clerics submit to immediate demands. Inside those walls, they face the recent death of their Divine(Abbot)Thien, who since their arrival had been everything to Chih, father, teacher, mentor, and leader.

Mammoths at the Gates becomes a beautiful, quietly powerful story about grief, death, and what loss does to one. About mourning, processing grief, and how that very experience can be transformative. 

Its a profoundly poetic story.  In encapsulates within a dramatic narrative, many fundamental truths, that the person one has known can often be someone completely different in another part of their life, that everyone holds within them a variation of truths that effect how others perceive them. 

For each one ,memory layered within their personal beliefs, lives, as well as what they think they knew about that individual. Memories with the ability to wound, to salve, to create a new perspective and a new beginning. 

It’s the deceased Thien, who divides and powers the story. Remnants of his former life are fiercely making demands outside the ancient Abbey gates. Inside the gates and beloved stone walls,are those who were deeply involved in his later clerical years , the clerics and neixin, all who are mourning him and divided over how to handle their grief, loss.  Along with all the warriors at the gates. 

Chih’s emotions, their friend and acting Divine, Ru, the neixins whose deep connections to their clerics is revealed and fully explored here, as well as those fierce women from the deceased Thien’s former secular life. 

Cleric Chih, that gentle nonbinary cleric, is seen in their full present own world for once. In vividly descriptive scenes, the author introduces us to the almost mythical world of the Singing Hills Abbey,from its still war stained stone walls to the old cook handing out the food Chih hopes for and gets to eat upon their return. It’s incredibly believable and richly detailed, from the rooms, kitchen and meals, to the highly imaginative aeries of the neixin. 

The ending was so entirely unexpected and yet so memorable. It’s in keeping with the series, and the spirit of this story and unique universe. 

There’s another tale coming. So like cleric Chih I’ll be enthusiastically venturing forward into the next journey with them and whatever hoopoe they travel with. 

The Singing Hills Cycle and author Nghi Vo have won many awards.  They are richly deserved.  Memorable characters, remarkably emotional and thoughtful storytelling combined with a multitude of mythological and historical elements.

It’s all a must read.

And those covers are incredible.

The Singing Hills Cycle:

  • The Empress of Salt and Fortune #1
  • When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain #2
  • Into the Riverlands #3
  • Mammoths At The Gates #4
  • The Brides of High Hill #5

Buy Link

        Mammoths at the Gates (The Singing Hills Cycle Book 4)

    

Blurb:

The Crawford and Hugo Award-Winning Series 

Finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novella; shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award, the Ignyte Award, the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction; One of Book Riot’s Best Fantasy Debuts of All Time; A Milwaukee Journal Best of 2023 Pick; A Recommended Reading List Pick for Locus; A Powell’s Best of 2023 Pick

“Both tear-jerking and gut-punching. . . . Entirely accessible on its own, it is an excellent place to start if you haven’t read any of Vo’s novellas yet.”—The Washington Post

The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.

Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass–and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather’s body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honoring their mentor’s chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.

But as Chih and their neixin Almost Brilliant navigate the looming crisis, Myriad Virtues, Cleric Thien’s own beloved hoopoe companion, grieves her loss as only a being with perfect memory can, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate. . .

“A remarkable accomplishment of storytelling.”—NPR on The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid on Siren Queen

The Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle

The Empress of Salt and Fortune

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

Into the Riverlands

Mammoths at the Gates

The Brides of High Hill

  • Publisher: Tordotcom (September 12, 2023)
  • Publication date: September 12, 2023
  • Language: English
  • Print length: 123 pages

Review: Into The Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle #3) by Nghi Vo

Rating: 5🌈

The brilliance and beauty of the narrative of Into The Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle #3) by Nghi Vo is the reason I read. It’s the reason I’ll stay up all night, my mind filled with the characters and imagery and possibilities Vo has created within this powerful story.

It’s the reason why I’ll be picking it back up because another thought has just occurred to me about one aspect of the story and I need to see how fluidly Vo has buried the clues I’d missed until now. It’s a never ending treasure of culture, mythology, myth, and life. As told from multiple perspectives in a manner so crafty, so subtle and seductive that the reader is often unaware of all the narrative currents flowing through the story until later on.

I tried to figure out how to explain such a utterly complex yet seemingly simple narrative style. A Chinese nesting doll perhaps? But that too was simplistic. More like a Chinese box structure . A Chinese nesting box structure can refer to a “frame narrative , where a novel or drama is told in the form of a narrative inside a narrative (and so on), giving views from different perspectives.”

This is a format that Vo uses to great effect with Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant. As they travel through to various locations, they gather information, knowledge of every type. They catalog it for transfer back to the Singing Hills Abbey and the other Abbey sites. But it’s not just a myth or story that they here from one person’s perspective but when they can, it’s a story they often have told to them from others experiences. Which often means a shared understanding and a deeper appreciation for the people and events that have happened.

But sometimes it’s something even more. Sometimes it’s a subtle change or something hidden behind the scenes that’s occurring that the reader isn’t aware of until later on that highlights the brilliance of the narrative that’s been building without us noticing it. And when you realize it, it’s everything.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves reading, discovering new authors, myths, the thrill of the beautifully crafted story and a great ending.

Romance? Subtle, look at the clues.

Chih uses pronouns they, them. It’s not understood whether it’s by personal preference or because they are a Cleric. Same sex couples exist and experience the same things heterosexual couples do in this world. That’s not always a happy ending. But sometimes it is.

Singing Hills Cycle:

✓ The Empress of Salt and Fortune #1

✓ When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain #2

✓ Into The Riverlands #3

◦ Mammoths at the Gates #4 – September 12, 2023

Btw, these covers are brilliant.

Buy Link:

Into the Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle Book 3)

Description:

Nghi Vo’s Hugo and Crawford Award-winning series, The Singing Hills Cycle, continues…

“A delicious bonbon of a novella about stories and their unreliable narrators, who wink at their listeners (or readers), fully expecting us to catch on.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid onSiren Queen

Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themself far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.

Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story—beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel—bears more than one face.

The Singing Hills Cycle

The Empress of Salt and Fortune
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
Into the Riverlands
Mammoths at the Gates

The novellas of The Singing Hills Cycle are linked by the cleric Chih, but may be read in any order, with each story serving as an entry point.

Review: When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle #2) by Nghi Vo

Rating: 4.5🌈

“THE TAVERN WAS LITTLE more than a waxed canvas tent, tilted towards the south by the wind that rushed headlong down the mountain. The woman who tended the makeshift bar had a thin wispy mustache styled into pointed wings over her lip, and Chih took down her family history while the mammoth scouts argued outside.”

So begins Nghi Vo’s When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, second novel in the impressive series, The Singing Hills Cycle. With the wandering cleric Chih as our primary narrator, we venture into the frozen northern part of the realm where there’s an entirely different culture to explore. One we’ve heard of before.

Mammoths and their riders played an enormous role in the Empress of Salt and Fortune. Here we get a better understanding of the animals themselves and the culture that surrounds them.

Chih requires aid through a pass and it’s a mammoth and it’s rider that will escort them. Chih is genderqueer, pronouns of they/them. Whether it’s due to being a Cleric or by a personal preference isn’t made entirely clear. It just is. Sexual orientation and gender identity isn’t a issue in the stories. It’s part of who someone is.

The ride, which as with everything Chih experiences, turns into a learning (recording) journey with the mammoth rider Si-yu, an irrepressible force and her special mammoth Piluk.

Then comes the tigers.

Who turn into people who are very much still tigers. Hungry ones.

And it’s Chih’s remembered story, a particular story, that ends up being told from different perspectives, that saves the day. So to speak.

It’s a fascinating concept, and an even more intriguing story. Or stories. As it changes from human perspective to tiger and back again.

One that involves grief, hunger, ghosts, poetry, betrayal, and love.

So textured and beautiful.

I found the ending almost abrupt for all that went into this richly detailed piece and needed to know more past this ending.

And no Almost Brilliant wasn’t in this. Hopefully in the next.

Vo’s stories reminds us that in every tale there’s another perspective other than the one we’re currently listening to. And that for every hunter, there’s a path when they may become the hunted. Nothing is one-dimensional, every being is more than it seems.

I’m highly recommending When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle #2) by Nghi Vo for all lovers of fantasy fiction and magical writing.

No romance herein except in the story that’s being told between the Cleric and the Tigers.

Singing Hills Cycle:

✓ The Empress of Salt and Fortune #1

✓ When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain #2

◦ Into The Riverlands #3

◦ Mammoths at the Gates #4 – September 12, 2023

Btw, these covers are brilliant.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle, 2)

Description:

From Locus and Ignyte finalist, Crawford Award winner, and bestselling author Nghi Vo comes the second installment in a Hugo Award-winning series

“A stunning gem of a novella that explores the complexity and layers of storytelling and celebrates the wonder of queer love. I could read about Chih recording tales forever.”―Samantha Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Dangerous, subtle, unexpected and familiar, angry and ferocious and hopeful. . . . The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a remarkable accomplishment of storytelling.”―NPR

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 When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, a mesmerizing, lush standalone follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune.

The Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle

Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1) by Nghi Vo

Rating: 4.75🌈

I’m not sure how I came across this incredible author and series. Perhaps it was that amazing cover or the hints of cultural magic mixed with references to strong women within an ancient history fantasy setting in the description. The Hugo award helped.

Doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t prepare a reader for the sheer beauty, the quiet cruelty, and vastness of the world found here. Love. Passion, rage , revenge. Lakes that seem benign until the sun lowers and start to glow an ominous red.

Everything revealed in the most powerful and astonishing way.

Our first narrator is the Cleric Chih. Pronouns they, them. Chih, is something of a prodigy within the Abbey, which from the occasional conversational mentions isn’t always easy or welcome. Their job along with the hoopoe, their companion Almost Brilliant is to record everything. The hoopoe , a neixin, is a being able to remember everything, store and then regurgitate the information to a “hive species brain” the entirety of all memory.

Almost Brilliant is a fascinating character with a history of devastating loss. Together they are instructed to catalog, by brush, or by memory, every detail, heard, seen, and more, which will then sent back to their Abbey for logging and recording for all time. They hold the world’s knowledge and secrets, no matter the size. Something not all leaders are easy with.

Our journey starts with Chih and Almost Brilliant on the way to the Capital when they decide on a side trip to the old Empress’s place of exile, the Lake Scarlet with its mysterious red glow and Thriving Fortune, the estate of the barbarian Empress In-yo, recently decommissioned.

There by the shores of Lake Scarlet, they meet an elderly woman, Rabbit, who leads them to Thriving Fortune. As Chih and Almost Brilliant begin to catalog the world of Thriving Fortune, that which remains, a second perspective and tale begins.

Against an almost poetical list of the contents of once alive dwelling, the intricate, powerful story of the Empress of Salt and Fortune, In-yo and her handmaiden, Rabbit, unfolds.

I don’t believe there’s a way to bring the depths, secrets, and power of this story into a review.

It will leave you with many questions about Chih, the Singing Hill Abbey and Almost Brilliant too. I’m hoping that the next books will supply some more information.

Is this a romance? No. Are there love stories? Yes. But not all in the manner of romantic love, although there are some. But this isn’t a book which lends itself to easy descriptions, or narrative boxes.

Much like the characters who defy description themselves.

I highly recommend The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1) by Nghi Vo. It will stay with you, leave you with images and characters long past the ending.

I can’t wait to meet up with Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant once again.

Singing Hills Cycle:

✓ The Empress of Salt and Fortune #1

◦ When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain #2

◦ Into The Riverlands #3

◦ Mammoths at the Gates #4 – September 12, 2023

Goodreadshttps://www.goodreads.com › showThe Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

:

Reviewer’s Note: I find this so simplistic and the description actually leaves so much of the series foundation and story out. It’s a shame, because the gender neutral character of the cleric of the Singing Hills Abbey is the one that ties all 3 books together and is such an amazing character on their own.

——

Description

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.