paperback, 176 pages
English language
Published Dec. 7, 2020 by Tor.com.
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.
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
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.
