When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo is a standalone sequel novella to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, which I read and reviewed earlier this year. It features the same cleric seeking stories, but everything else about the book is quite different.

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

The framing narrative in this novella ends up being unexpectedly tense. Chih and their escort run into some tigers (the shapeshifter kind) during a mountain crossing. To avoid being eaten, Chih tells them a story. But unlike Scheherazade trying to entertain her audience, Chih's tiger audience scoffs and interjects when they perceive the story to be told wrong and/or with too-human values. It made for a delicate interplay between framing and framed narratives, that kept me interested and turning pages.

The framed narrative is a love story about a scholar and a tiger and all sorts of misfortunes that befall them. The story itself would be interesting enough, but having it deconstructed from a tiger perspective while still being told was excellent. I really enjoyed how this poked holes in the biases of the human story tellers.

I highly recommend When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain to fans of fairytales and asian-inspired fantasy stories. I hope Vo continues writing about scholar Chih or other people in the same world, because I'm really enjoying the collecting of stories and learning about the magical (and non-magical) beings of this world.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: December 2020, Tor.com
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle book 2 of 2 so far (but they stand alone)
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

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

Short stories 36 to 40

Continuing the trend, another mix of short stories. My favourite in this batch is definitely the JY Yang, although the two flash pieces (Pinsker and Vo) were interesting, just not that meaty, what with being flash.


The Sewell Home for the Temporally Displaced by Sarah Pinsker — A cute flash story about inadvertent time travel and lesbians. Source: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-sewell-home-for-the-temporally-displaced/

One Saturday Night, with Angel by Peter Ball — Angels are walking the Earth and, while know one knows much about them, it doesn’t look good. The protagonist of this story is being stalked by one, which has a very strong, caustic smell. OK story but didn’t grab me. Source: Sprawl edited by Alisa Krasnostein

Auspicium Melioris Aevi by JY Yang — A really interesting look at cloning and extensive training as a means of duplicating past wisdom to sell. I guessed the shape of the ending but the choice of historical figure to clone (in the case of the main character — there were multiple sets) and the attendant historical details were fascinating. As was the brief interrogation of some of his life choices. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/auspicium-melioris-aevi/

The Psychology Game by Xia Jia — An interesting concept but the way it’s explored is a bit too pedagogical/preachy for my taste. I would have enjoyed a more plotted take. But not a bad exploration of AI and where we would (or wouldn’t) draw the line at giving them tasks. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/xia_10_17/

Twelve Pictures From a Second World War by Nghi Vo — Snapshots from a WWII in which various fairytale/folk/mythical beings took part alongside the ordinary humans. An entertaining but very short story. Source: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/twelve-pictures-from-a-second-world-war/

A second batch of stories

It's possible that I need to think of a better blog post naming scheme for these series of posts, but since they don't pertain to a specific challenge, I don't have any ideas. I do have an update on my short story recording/organisation, however. Now I have a script that will automatically extract story details (title, author, mini-review, link) from my spreadsheet so that I can copy the output directly to a blog post. All I have to do is add the bolding (which might become automated too...). This was easy enough to do inside the spreadsheet itself, but for reasons I won't bore you with having a script is less fiddly, especially as I tick stories off as being blogged about. (This setup works using Apple's Numbers and Applescript, so it's probably not for everyone.)

My favourite story in this batch is hands down "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E Lily Yu, which was apparently short listed for ALL the awards, and I can see why. Definitely recommend reading it if you haven't already. The longest story in this batch, which actually took me a few days of reading (in between novel reading) to get through. I didn't actively dislike it, but it didn't really grab me and is probably my least favourite Greg Egan read to date. Oh well.


Waiting Out the End of the World in Patty's Place Cafe by Naomi Kritzer — A story about the imminent end of the world at the hands of an asteroid, and the friendships made along the way. A mostly good story, but the science was silly; they kept complaining that they couldn’t map the trajectory because Arecibo got defunded, but that is entirely the wrong sort of telescope for asteroid tracking (and even if it wasn’t, it’s also not the only telescope in the world). Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_03_17/

Dragon Brides by Nghi Vo — A story about a queen who, in her youth, had been rescued from a Dragon by her now-husband. A nice story but a little slow and I saw the end coming. Source: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dragon-brides/

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E Lily Yu — A delightful story about educated wasps who can make paper, write in Mandarin and make maps. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yu_04_11/

Uncanny Valley by Greg Egan — A long story about a realistic android made in the image of a Hollywood screenwriter with all his memories loaded in after he died. Or almost all his memories, which is where the story lies. An OK read but I didn’t love it nor connect with the protagonist. Source: http://www.tor.com/2017/08/09/uncanny-valley/

An Age of Ice by Zhang Ran — A story about a near future when cryonic freezing and thawing have become reality. Thoughtful but not excessively so. (And not as extreme as, say, Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold, but certainly tending in that direction.) Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/zhang_07_17/