When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
The Singing Hills Cycle, Book 2
Nghi Vo
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Wandering cleric Chih has traveled far and wide, gathering tales and histories from local sources, but this trip may be their last. While traveling with a mammoth rider, they become trapped at a deserted outpost by three hungry tiger sisters. If the cleric and their guide can last until dawn, help may arrive, but until then Chih must distract the trio. They tell the tigers a story of the long-ago relationship between a mighty tigress and a young woman scholar... but the tigers, too, know the tale, and insist on correcting it.
REVIEW: Another freebie download from Tor's ebook-of-the-month club, I didn't realize that this was technically part of a series when I started it; it works fine as a standalone, but that would explain why I felt like there was much more to the world and characters than I was seeing here. The novella is set in an imaginative, Asian-inspired world of shapeshifting beasts and mischievous spirits and domesticated mammoths and more wonders and dangers. Though it's largely a story within a story, the plight of Chih and their guide (and the mammoth, who, though nonspeaking, is a character in its own right) is more than just a frame, with rising tension as the patience of the three tigers wears thin when confronted with human ignorance and their ever-empty stomachs. As for the tale of the tigress and the scholar, it demonstrates how stories diverge, different people telling different versions that skew it in their own favor. Ever the cleric, Chih dutifully records the corrections supplied by the tigers, even knowing that it may be the last thing they ever write if the tigers run out of patience before the dawn. I'll have to track down the first story in the series, as I'm definitely interested in exploring this world further.
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