The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo is a standalone novella set in a fantasy-tinged world based on imperial China. I picked it up because the blurb seemed interesting and also because it was a novella.

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.

This story is told in two timelines: a framing narrative set in the "present", in which a cleric, Chih, is investigating the titular Empress, and a series of flashbacks as Rabbit tells Chih about slices of her life with the Empress. As we gradually learn throughout the story, the Empress was pretty awesome, as were the people she chose to associate with. I liked the way in which the story was revealed in discrete chunks that furthered our understanding of the underlying story and the worldbuilding.

Honestly, the only negative thing I have to say about this novella is that I read it during the initial intensifying part of the pandemic (for where I'm living) and as a result I found it very hard to concentrate on it properly. I am pretty sure this wasn't the book's fault, since I very much enjoyed it when I was able to focus on it better. I think this will be one I'll have to reread at some point in the future. I feel confident that I'll enjoy it even more the second time around, for spotting the foreshadowing as well as my improved concentration.

I recommend The Empress of Salt and Fortune to readers who enjoy intrigue but don't feel like reading an entire epic fantasy trilogy for their fix. Also to readers who enjoy Chinese-inspired fantasy settings and/or framing narratives and/or are excited by the idea of war mammoths. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Vo's future work.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: March 2020, Tor.com
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Songwoman by Ilka Tampke

Songwoman by Ilka Tampke is set during the time of the Roman invasion of Britain, around the 40s AD. It is technically a sequel to Skin, but actually both books stand alone fairly well. They follow the same protagonist, but the two stories are separate, if sequential. I read Skin during a blog hiatus, so there is only a mini review of it, alas.

Haunted by the Roman attack that destroyed her home, Ailia flees to the remote Welsh mountains in search of the charismatic war king, Caradog, who is leading a guerrilla campaign against the encroaching army.

Ailia proves herself an indispensable advisor to the war king, but as the bond between them deepens, she realises the terrible role she must play to save the soul of her country.

Set in Iron-Age Britain, Songwoman is a powerful exploration of the ties between people and their land and what happens when they are broken.

I started reading Songwoman after a day trip to northern Wales, during which a friend and I visited a few castles (built more than a millennium after this book was set), and drove through Snowdonia with some breathtaking views, even in winter. So I was excited to start reading a book set in roughly the same area. The setting of Songwoman did not disappoint. The plot, however, was a little slow.

The bulk of the story involves Ailia being part of the inner circle of Caradog's resistance army. Her personal journey is split between learning the mystical arts, her relationship with Caradog, conflict with some of Caradog's other advisors, and the actual war. The war is mostly a series of small skirmishes and recruitment negotiations, and hence felt like it moved slowly, but in a realistic way. I actually found the relationship with Caradog the most drawn out. I don't want to spoil too much, but I will say that it was interesting that he was portrayed in a way that could be read as bipolar, but that was the most interesting thing about him. I did not quite understand Ailia's emotional attachment to him, especially since I spent a chunk of the start of the book hoping a key character from Skin would make an appearance (he did not).

So on the one hand, Songwoman was a little slow — though not unpleasant to read, aside from a few brief atrocities — but on the other hand, I was actually surprised at how little time was covered in the book. Near the end, there's a scene in which Ailia returns somewhere and notes that it's been a year since she was last there, at the start of the book. I was honestly shocked that only a year was supposed to have passed. This is maybe because, as the author mentions in the afterword, a few years of historical events were compressed  into one year for expediency. However, given my other reaction, I'm wondering whether that was the best choice. That said, I actually liked certain events around the ending a lot. (Being vague to avoid spoilers.) It added an extra dimension to the story, confusing timing aside.

Anyway, I mostly enjoyed Songwoman, even though it took me a while to get through. I recommend it to fans of historical fantasy and, particularly, Welsh settings. While it makes sense to read after Skin, it's not entirely necessary. While I don't expect a sequel, I am broadly interested in the author's future works.

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2018 Text Publishing, with US edition March 2020
Series: sequel to Skin
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via Edelweiss

The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold is another Penric and Desdemona novella, this time directly following on from Mira's Last Dance. This review and the blurb contains minor spoilers for Mira's Last Dance and possibly also Penric's Mission, which is the start of this little subgroup of novellas.

In this sequel novella to “Mira’s Last Dance”, Temple sorcerer Penric and the widow Nikys have reached safety in the duchy of Orbas when a secret letter from a friend brings frightening news: Nikys’s mother has been taken hostage by her brother’s enemies at the Cedonian imperial court, and confined in a precarious island sanctuary.

Their own romance still unresolved, Nikys, Penric, and of course Desdemona must infiltrate the hostile country once more, finding along the way that family relationships can be as unexpectedly challenging as any rescue scheme

This was another fun read. I enjoyed the story, which sees Penric hatching an elaborate rescue mission to rescue Nikys's mother, while continuing to woo Nikys. The point of view switches between Penric and Nikys, so we get some interesting scenes between Nikys and her mother, as well as the usual conversations between Penric and Desdemona (also a great scene between Nikys and Desdemona).

Overall, this was a fun read and pretty much the sort of thing I've come to expect from Penric novellas. I don't especially recommend this as a starting point to the series, though I think it works better that way than Mira's Last Dance did. My general recommendation from my previous review stands: I recommend reading Penric's Mission and Mira's Last Dance before The Prisoner of Limnos, and probably also Penric's Demon to introduce Penric and Desdemona's unique relationship. There's still one more novella I haven't read, which I plan to get to at some point soon, and hopefully more to come in the future.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2017, Self-published
Series: Penric & Desdemona book 6 of 7 in publication order
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Apple Books