Fantasy Novella Review: The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

The Brides of High Hill is the Fifth Novella in Nghi Vo's wonderful award winning Singing Hills Cycle of novellas. The novellas follow Cleric Chih and their Neixein (sp?) Almost Brilliant (a bird who remembers everything) as they go around collecting and telling stories around an Asian-inspired world. It's a formula that has allowed Vo to tell a wide variety of sub-genre stories, from a Wuxia story (Into the Riverlands) to a Romance story (When the Tiger Comes Down the Mountain) to a story filled with grief and memories (Mammoths at the Gates) etc.

The Brides of High Hill is Vo's take, kinda, on the gothic horror subgenre, specifically a horror modeled after the classic Bluebeard story. Here we find Cleric Chih, alone without their trusted companion Almost Brilliant, accompanying a young noble girl from a relatively poor family and her parents as they go to meet her older promised husband...who has secrets of his own. It's a well done story, that doesn't play things straight and features great atmosphere (and the audiobook reader is excellent), but it also seems less interesting than some of the prior Singing Hills stories by comparison. More specifics after the jump:

Plot Summary:  

Cleric Chih finds themselves - lonely without Almost Brilliant - on the road accompanying a young bride Pham Nhung and Nhung's parents to the estate of Doi Cao, where Nhung is to meet her betrothed, the older widower Lord Guo. Chih finds themselves almost besotted with Nhung, and so when Chih and Nhung find hints that something isn't as it seems in Doi Cao, beginning with the cryptic warnings given by Lord Guo's locked away son, Chih and Nhung go investigating to find out what's going on. But Chih will soon remember one of the most important lessons of the Singing Hills monastery: that in some stories, there may be monsters where you least expect it, and one needs to be listening carefull to the story being told....

Quick Thoughts: The Brides of High Hill is basically a gothic horror with Cleric Chih acting as the protagonist in the horror discovering what awaits their beloved victim girl. Naturally, Vo takes the story in a very different direction eventually, but does so in a way that makes you realize that the hints and clues of what is really going on were there from the beginning. It's really well written and Chih is an excellent protagonist as usual - and the story is short enough that in both audio and in writing it never outstays its welcome.

At the same time, the Singing Hills series has reached some really high heights with some really great stories that hit some really great themes, or that really hit their genre so well (like its take on the Wuxia genre) that this novella can't help feel maybe not quite up to expectations compared to its predecessors. There's a theme here about land stolen from one's ancestors and what it takes to get that back that's there, but really this isn't a novella hammering serious themes; similarly, this is a solidly done gothic horror but isn't really anything completely unique or special. Mind you, I've liked gothic horrors but am not the biggest fan always (although at least one has made some of my favorite book lists before), so maybe some of that's on me.

But in short, The Brides of High Hill is very good, but not amazing and Vo has set that super high standard for herself.