Into the Riverlands
by Nghi Vo
Genres: FantasyPages: 100
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle #3
Rating:
Synopsis:Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.
Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story—beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel—bears more than one face.
This is an older review that somehow never got posted, unearthed again when I was rereading the series!
I didn’t love Into the Riverlands as much as I loved the second book of this series, but it was very enjoyable all the same. (Though I always want more of the neixin, Almost Brilliant, who travels with Chih and records what they do. Sure, Almost Brilliant is there to record what happens, but there’s a personality there too, and I enjoy that aspect of their interactions.)
This one is full of little details that slowly build up, and you have to keep your eyes open to collect the stories and put them together — just as Chih does. I found that process really enjoyable — though I wish, like Chih, that they’d been able to collect the story in the subject’s own words…
I also enjoy that though Chih is kind and wishes people well, they’re not particularly brave or practical. They sort of comfortably go along expecting that, as a cleric, others will look after them. Which doesn’t sound like something to like, but it is actually enjoyable to follow a character who is flawed like this, but still overall a good person. Lots of us are good more in intent than execution, after all.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
I don’t remember the details of the plot for this one (it’s been a while since I read it) but I think you hit Cleric Chih’s personality spot on. And I think that makes Chih a better protagonist for these stories than if they were less like a normal modern-day person.
Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits recently posted…Mini Reviews: An Astronaut’s Guide, The Hedgehog’s Dilemma, & The Woeling Lass
Yes, I think you’re right! They’re rather relatable.
Chih is definitely a different sort of protagonist aren’t they? In any other series, we’d probably all be yelling about how passive they are. But it fits both Chih’s role in their society very well, and works well for the structure of the series – Chih is almost as much framing device as character, but we get to know them as a person and chronicler more than we would if we were given their chronicles themselves, and that in turn enriches the tales they tell us.
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Thinking of them as a framing device makes a lot of sense — with their curiosity and fascination with stories helping to make us eager to learn the stories too.