NetGalley Review: Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo
Hey all, Sam here.
Yeah, I definitely planned to have this review up on Tuesday, but things got a little topsy-turvy for a few days, so I had to push back everything on my blog schedule so I could accommodate the fact that I had mostly prepared four posts but then didn’t finish/schedule them. I’ll figure out a work/blog/life schedule that works for me eventually.
Anyway, I definitely wanted to get this novella reviewed, because I have been approved for the next novella in The Singing Hills Cycle, and it comes out next month…although you can honestly read these stories in any order.
So, let’s dive on in.
My Thoughts
The Hugo and Crawford Award-Winning Series!
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. . .
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 entrypoint.
Rating: 4.5 stars
I’ve always been amazed at good novellas. Yes, they have more time than a poem or flash fiction or a short story, but they still have roughly half the length of a novel (most of the time, it seems), and they’re still able to fit in plenty of character depth and growth, as well as intriguing stories and magic systems and plots. It’s amazing and impressive. Being able to pack that much of a punch in only a 100-200 pages is amazing.
Plus, I love novellas for palette cleansers when reading a bunch of huge fantasy books, or just as a way to boost myself up at the beginning of a readathon because I can read them fairly quickly and then I feel accomplished in a short amount of time. It’s the same reason I start my readathons with a few volumes of manga.
Anyway, The Singing Hills Cycle follows Cleric Chih and their talking fantastical bird companion Almost Brilliant, and this particular installment feels like the most emotional of the bunch so far. It was also nice to get to follow Chih back to the abbey where they were trained and get some of those memories, while also confronting fellow clerics who stayed behind while Chih went out into the world.
We get to see this woven tapestry of blood family and chosen family, and the way life paths diverge and reconnect, as well as exploring the nature of grief, while looking at how a person can change over their lifetime and how that can affect those around them and those they leave behind.
For some reason I still don’t own any of the novellas in this series, and I think I need to correct that oversight, because I have been swept away by each of these stories, and I really should have them on my shelves. I also need to explore Nghi Vo’s other works, because I definitely do like her writing style and her plots and characterizations.
All right, that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
