Fantasy Novella Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a short novella - maybe even a novelette - written by author Nghi Vo, which has gotten a ton of praise from people I respect.  Unfortunately, it took forever for my libraries to get a non-physical copy (and well, libraries haven't been able for physical copies), but recently that changed and I finally got a chance to read it.

And it's a really nice story of memory and queerness and family, told by an old woman (identified only as "Rabbit") to a "Cleric" of an order of archivists, telling mainly the story of the just deceased Empress, from a time in her life when she was in exile.  It's a tale of memory, love, and family and what it all means, as we and the archivist find out about how one cast off woman managed to fight back against a man in power determined to keep her out of his way, and what it cost in the end.


Quick Plot Summary:  Empress In-Yo, the Empress of Salt and Fortune, is dead, and upon her death all the secret places kept "classified" under the Empress' rule are unlocked to all.  Upon hearing that, Cleric Chih, and their neixin, the hoopoe Almost Brilliant, cannot resist the temptation to visit the formerly classified Lake Scarlet, where the Empress spent her years in exile.  For the Cleric's order's task is to catalog history, and what happened during the Empress' exile is the one part of her life unknown.

But to the Cleric's and their neixin's surprise, they find a woman has beaten them to the lake - an elderly woman calling herself "Rabbit."  The woman claims to have once been In-Yo's handmaiden, and as the pair spend time with her, Rabbit begins to tell the truth behind the Empress and what really happened around the time of her exile.....

Thoughts:  This is a really really short novella - like I mentioned above it's probably under the hugo limit for novelettes - and honestly perhaps is too short.  Because this is a story of love - both romantic and familial, straight and queer - and of fighting against patriarchal societies, here shown by an Emperor who tries to cast off the Empress the moment she bears an heir and his powerful Minister of the Left.  The story is told through Rabbit's tales to Cleric Chih, as Chih discovers new things in Rabbit's possessions that Rabbit uses to spin off more of the story, until all of the Empress' - and Rabbit's - story is told.  And it's very interesting...it just goes by too quick, that I almost don't have as much feel or care for the characters as I might otherwise.  It's good writing, but I kind of wish it could've been even ten more pages to build up Rabbit and the Empress and the others a bit more.

A stand alone sequel is coming out later this year and I look forward to it.