Fantasy Novella Review: Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo

 

Into the Riverlands is the third book in Nghi Vo's fantasy series of novellas, the Singing Hills Cycle, which follows Cleric Chih of the Singing Hills Monastery as they, along with their talking bird Almost Brilliant (who has a perfect memory), go around this East Asian inspired queer fantasy world in search of stories and histories to memorize/memorialize. The series, which won a Hugo for its first installment The Empress of Salt and Fortune, is made up of entirely stand alone novellas, with each novella kind of placing Chih in the place to hear a story of a totally different kind of genre - in the first novella, it was an epic story of Empire, sexism, and fighting back; in the second novella (which I LOVED), it was a romance between a Tiger-woman and a Woman, told in two different styles. Each installment does feature similar themes of how tales can be changed by the perspectie of who tells it, but otherwise, they're very different in tone and kind.

And Into the Riverlands is no different, with this time finding Chih and Almost Brilliant involved in a Wuxia story (Chinese/East-Asian Kung Fu Story), as they hear stories of legendary kung fu fighters dealing with bandits in a dangerous area of the world, and find themselves getting caught up in those very same stories. It's wonderfully done and a lot of fun, and even if where part of the story is going becomes fairly obvious pretty quickly, it's really executed well and the novella is short enough that you never feel frustrated at how things are turning out. Fans of Wuxia will really enjoy this, and those who haven't read Wuxia will find a great introduction here, as Chih encounters a young Kung Fu master and an elderly couple with stories of their own of those in the past. This is another winner and a likely Hugo/Nebula nominee for next year.

Note: I read this as an audiobook, and the reader is the same as in the past novellas, Cindy Kay. She's very enjoyable and I like her, although I'd previously heard her narrate more of a YA story and I had some trouble dealing with what felt in those stories like a very bubbly narrator using the same voices here, where that didn't seem what was what the story called for. This is more a problem with reading the same audiobook reader in different genres than it is any problem with the narration, which is very good, but I just figured I'd point it out.

Quick Plot Summary:  Scholar Chih, cleric of the Singing Hills monastery, and their loyal companion, the neixin and hoopoe Almost Brilliant, are on a trip through the Riverlands, a land known for its legendary martial artists, its bandits, and the danger lurking throughout.  On their journey, they connect with four others: two young women, including a very talented martial artist with a taste in stories of legendary heroes/martial artists taking on bandits, and an elderly couple with a bit more disdain for such stories.  But as Chih and Almost Brilliant travel with their new companions, an hear the stories they know of the heroes and villains of the Riverlands, they soon find themselves caught up in one of those stories themselves, where the peril is very real.....

Thoughts:  As with the other Singing Hills novellas, this is a story focusing upon other stories told by characters in-universe: in this case, the stories are Wuxia stories told by Chih's companions and feature legendary fighters and bandits who once haunted the Riverlands, featuring implausible tales of kung fu and fighting, as well as princesses who might be beautiful or ugly.  The stories are really enjoyably told as usual, and fit really well with the style of Wuxia I've read elsewhere.  

But what makes Into the Riverlands so good, just like its predecessors, is how it plays with the idea of truth and history behind stories, as Chih discovers themselves when they find themselves in a Wuxia story of their own, with their companions being martial artists (or maybe not) and bandits styling themselves as the bandits from the stories show up to try and attack them along their journey.  And so we see from Chih and one of their companions the terror of being caught up in one of these stories, with dead bodies, threats of serious harm, and more coming very close.  And we also see how much these stories tend to have morphed away from the truth, as characters from the stories seem to possibly appear around Chih and Almost Brilliant, in not quite the same forms as the stories they have heard.  

And so we have one character talking about how they will not get her own story from her, as it belongs only to her, resulting in that story morphing through others' eyes, while we get another character referring to herself as "ugly" while another refers to her as "beautiful", and a dialogue about how characters in stories are either one or the other.  It's some really interesting stuff, dressed up in a fun, somewhat queer (and polyamorous in one case) kung fu filled novella, and it's just really really good.  Highly recommended.