When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo
When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain is author Nghi Vo's second novella this year, after The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Review Here). I enjoyed that first novella, as a tale of an empress, cast aside by her husband, taking action into her own hands to take back everything from him, while also being a tale of love and companionship at the same time, with it all taking place in an East Asian-inspired setting (I think Vietnamese-inspired) . I didn't love it as much as others did, but it was pretty well done and worth your time.
Empress was told through a framing device to a cleric, Chih, and this second novella also features a similar framing device, although Chih themself is a more prominent character this time around. The result is a F-F romantic story between a woman seeking to become a scholar and a tiger-woman she encounters on the way, with the story being told both by Chih and a trio of other Tigers who they encounter - in often very different ways. The story within the story, and the different versions told by each party, combine to make this one a real winner that is pretty pretty great.
Quick Plot Summary: Cleric Chih and their mammoth-riding guide Si-yu find themselves caught in a barn by three women who are also Tigers, and who claim the entire mountain range for their own. As an offering for their survival Chih offers to tell the Tigers a story about Scholar Dieu - a woman who trained to be a scholar - and Ho Thi Thao, another tiger-woman she met along the way. The tigers demand that Chih tell the story in the way Chih knows, and if they know the story differently, they will step in and correct it....and if they dislike Chih's version, the tigers will eat them. And so, two similar but significantly different stories emerge of the woman Dieu and the tiger Ho Thi Thao, and how their encounters and love came about.....
Thoughts: Whereas Empress featured Chih as a passive listener to a story, occasionally finding things about that would prompt more details, this novella features Chih as the teller, and as the Tigers occasionally object to Chih's version and providing their own. The result is that we essentially hear the story of the romance between Dieu and Ho Thi Thao from both the human and tiger perspective.
And it's a fun and lovely story, with each version having its own merits in centering the other party. It's a romance that begins one sided and is not simply love at first sight, but one in which ends in at least some way with the other party recognizing that she cannot go on without the other - and then taking action upon that realization. That's all I'll spoil because well, this is a really short novella, but without saying anything more, it's just both tremendously lovely and fascinating in how it points out the perspective of the one telling the story over time can change the focus, and as the reader we get to see both perspectives. Highly recommended, and will join a growing list of novellas I need to absolutely consider for a Hugo Nomination this year.
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