Another installment in the continuing adventures of cleric Chih and their companion bird, Almost Brilliant; in this volume Chih wanders into the violent Riverlands seeking tales of the folk heroes (and villains) whose fights became legend. As usual with Chih, they find out that there is more to the story than is generally told. I loved the Riverlands characters introduced in this story, and how their interactions with Chih added depth to their stories.
Tag: author-nghi vo
Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo
In the gilded age of cinema, as beautiful men and women make sacrifices to the occult powers that control Hollywood in a bid for literal stardom, a young Chinese-American girl yearns for fame… but she knows the kinds of roles that Hollywood has in mind for people who look like her, and the extra problems that face people who are queer like her, and she is determined to find her own way through. It’s old conflicts dressed up in magic, racism and sexism and the powerlessness of young women amplified by blood sacrifice and hungry monsters and the addictive, dangerous thrall of the Wild Hunt. Readers who love beautiful language and exotic magics will love this book; readers who want their magic to be logical, and their characters to be transparent about their motives, may be disappointed.
The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo
This was amazing, a treatment of The Great Gatsby which recasts socialite Jordan Baker as a queer adoptee from Vietnam. As a visibly Asian person in white spaces, her character traits from the original — her avoidance of attachment, her blithe dismissal of others’ opinions — all make sense from someone preemptively protecting herself from racism. As if that weren’t enough, there is also magic, beautifully and lyrically presented: the weather responds to Daisy Buchanan’s emotions so that she moves through the world as literal pathetic fallacy; Jordan cuts paper dolls that come to life; Gatsby plies his guests with crystal glasses of literal demon’s blood. As for Nick Carraway… well, I won’t ruin it, but I will say this book had one of the best, most well-developed endings I’ve read in a while; it also contained delightful surprises, which was quite a feat considering that this book actually follows the original quite faithfully. Oh, and the writing was stunning.
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo
It’s One Thousand and One Nights, except Scheherazade is Chih the nonbinary story-gathering cleric, King Shahryar is a trio of hungry tigers, and as long as Chih keeps telling a sufficiently interesting story, the tigers will not eat them or their mammoth-riding companion. The story that Chih tells is a historical one where a scholar and a tiger fall in love, except that the story as Chih knows it is not the one that the tigers tell to one another; the tension between the narratives that the different cultures tell each other, alongside the very different tension of whether or not Chih’s version will annoy the tiger enough that the tigers will finally just eat them, moved the story along really well.