“The Empress of Salt and Fortune” is the first novella in the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo. It is a fantasy, set in a Asian-inspired alternative world. The novella tells the story of the ascent of the titular Empress to the throne of the Empire of Anh. This story is told to Chih, a Cleric of the Singing Hills Temple by an elderly woman known as Rabbit, who was once the handmaiden of the Empress when she was in exile by a magical lake in a forest. Clerics of the Singing Hills apparently seek to acquire historical knowledge from their world with the assistance of intelligent magical familiars that have the appearance of Hoopoe Birds. The story is told beautifully, using objects being cataloged at this remote palace, and the stories that they inspire. These individual tales slowly weave together to form the tapestry that is the main story. The world in which Anh is set resembles a medieval Asia of our world, but has a few supernatural and alternate historical differences. In addition to intelligent Hoopoes capable of incredible feats of memory and human speech, there are the Mammoths. These elephantine animals are used by the northern people as mounts and in war. However, this is mostly a tale that could have come from the historical literature of our world. It focuses on the characters, and their seemingly simple actions that eventually result in major outcomes. It’s a great story, and I look forward to future tales in the Singing Hills Cycle.

There are times in your life when you really need a deeply engrossing story that will take you away from the here and now for the space of a couple hours. One of those times is when you’re sitting in an emergency room waiting for them to confirm your pulmonary embolism. One of those stories in Nghi Vo’s novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune. I don’t recommend the former, but I do recommend the later. A historic fantasy in a China-inspired setting, the story uses a quiet, measured narrative style to build tension with the feel of a thriller. Quite a feat when the action is all in the past and one of the principle characters has just died. The framing story involves the non-binary monk Chih, whose vocation is to collect histories, and whose immediate task is to unravel certain mysteries known to the empress’s handmaiden, Rabbit. The empress is a political hostage, imprisoned, powerless…or is she? There are several delightful twists to the plot, and half the fun is trying to guess what they’ll be from the scraps and clues, in parallel with Chih’s quest. The narrative style is likely to be different from what you expect from a fantasy novel, but I recommend embracing it and letting it lead you, bit by bit, into the story. There’s a second novella featuring another of Chih’s story-collecting adventures and I’m looking forward to equal enjoyment. Oh, and both books have sapphic elements, so there's that as well.