The Singing Hills Cycle

When I joined the Storygraph “Read the World” challenge in January and saw that Vietnam was on the list of countries, I thought What am I going to be able to find that’s interesting from Vietnam? I had never heard of a single author from Vietnam, and I was scared that even when I did find something I wouldn’t be able to understand or fully appreciate it because it would have so many cultural details that were vastly different from my own culture that I wouldn’t be able to understand or appreciate the story fully. But then on the Vietnam page of the challenge I saw The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. The first book in The Singing Hills Cycle, this is a story about a monk in a fantasy version of Vietnam who travels around collecting stories, and it was tagged LGBTQ, so I decided to give it a go. The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo is now my comfort series. Each of the books is around the 120 page mark, so it’s a quick read, and they can be read in any order. The setting is so queer and calming that any time I have one of those nights where everything seems to be crumbling around me, I pick it up for a reread. The final book Into The Riverlands has just been released, so here is my full series wrap-up.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune

I read The Empress of Salt and Fortune in an afternoon. To my complete surprise, when I opened the first page it turned out that the monk in question, Chih, uses they/them pronouns. This was the first time I had seen a character like me represented in a book, and especially the fact that it such a non-issue to the people in this world that no one mentions it at all was so comforting. In this first book, Chih arrives at an abandoned palace, once called Thriving Fortune, on their way to watch and record the coronation of the Empress. However, there is one person still living at Thriving Fortune, a servant named Rabbit on account of her buck teeth, who Chih decides to stay with for a few days as they record Rabbit’s story of the previous Empress. Each chapter starts with a detailed description of an item that Chih finds while helping Rabbit to clean and each one is linked to that chapter’s section of the story of the Empress In-yo. The way Vo moves seamlessly from Chih and Rabbit’s conversations to the story of Rabbit and In-yo and back again lent the story a dreamlike quality which complimented the fantasy setting Vo has created beautifully. I also really enjoyed the addition of Almost Brilliant, Chih’s hoopoe bird who has a perfect memory and is instrumental in remembering all the stories Chih collects. She’s a very insightful and intelligent creature and I really enjoyed the lore about these birds in this world. Upon reread realising that the empress in the palanquin carried by six floating men in the opening pages of the book is actually Rabbit’s daughter was such a delightful detail.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

When I picked this up, I was nervous that it wasn’t going to hold up to the magic of the first one for me, but to my delight it was even better. In this story, Chih is travelling up a mountain on their way back to the Singing Hills monastery and makes a deal with Si-yu to take them through a mountain pass by mammoth through a snow storm. The chemistry between these two characters, although quite subtle, is one of my personal favourite aspects of this story. When they get to their stopping place for the night, they find out that Su-yi’s fellow mammoth rider who they were meeting there is wounded as three tigers have arrived there first and tried to eat him. Su-yi does some clever mammoth riding and manages to put Piluk the mammoth between the tigers and their wounded friend, while Chih tries to diffuse the situation. It becomes clear that the tigers are in fact spirits who can change between tiger form and that of a beautiful woman (although from the descriptions of them, they don’t conform to western beauty standards which I loved). Chih remembers that they know the story of another one of these tiger spirits, Ho Ti Thao, and her marriage to a human woman Dieu, and decides to play Scheherazade and use telling the story to the tigers as a way to delay further tiger attacks. The tigers already know this story, and my favourite part of this book is when the tigers correct Chih and force them to retell parts of the story, as the human version of the story unfairly villainises Ho Ti Thao, in a way that mirrors the adage ‘history is told by the victors’ in our own world.

Into the Riverlands

This book breaks the format the previous two have of having a story within a story, save for one chapter. Chih meets a group of travellers on their way back to the Singing Hills Temple, a pair of sisters called Sang and Wei Jintai, and a husband and wife named Kahnh and Lao Bingyi, as they travel through the notoriously violent Riverlands region. The unlikely group all exchange stories on their journey, but none told in the same level of rich detail as the main focus stories of the other books. Although I enjoyed the different style, I was confused as to why Vo had chosen to deviate from her signature format and in all honesty for most of the book I was a bit disappointed at this change. However, in the penultimate chapter the reason for this deviation is revealed. I won’t reveal it here so you still have something to look forward to, but in my eyes it was a satisfying reveal and I look forward to doing a reread with this knowledge in mind. As Vo says in the acknowledgements, “Sometimes, I think it’s a little sad that it’s impossible to know all of a person, no matter how long you’ve known them or how well you love them. That’s what Into the Riverlands is about, I think, about how many moving parts go into making a person, and how the stories you’ve been told only get you half way there.”

All in all, I obviously love all the books in the series, but my personal favourite is definitely When The Tiger Came Down The Mountain, both the inner story and the framing story to me are so beautiful and the device of having the tigers correct Chih was really interesting and different (to me anyway). I really hope you'll pick one of these books up, like I said they can be read in any order.

That’s it from me! Thank you so much for reading, if you want to find me elsewhere, you can check out my Instagram and Storygraph, both under jeannareadsbooks