When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, Nghi Vo
Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 8th December 2020
This is a follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, following the cleric Chih on another journey to discover and record stories. I’m a little sad that the book doesn’t contain Almost Brilliant, but in every other way I liked it even more than the first book. I think that despite giving the first book a pretty high rating, it didn’t wholly stick with me; this one, I think, will. Perhaps it’s partly the sense that Chih is not only learning the story, is not just a vessel for the reader to experience it, but is in a story themselves with a beginning and an ending and tension in the middle. That sense was missing from the first book, for me, for all that it was cleverly done.
It’s not that this one was more surprising for me — I mentioned with the first book that I knew where we were going before we got there — but that the frame story kind of supported it better, I suppose. The predictability in both cases is a good thing; it’s like seeing the end result of a puzzle, and then all the intermediate stages as you work towards it; that doesn’t “spoil” getting to the end!
I’m definitely on board for more of Chih and their travels.
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