August | 2020 | Author, editor, caffeine-addict, wannabe ninja

Wow, where to start with this novella? The easiest part: I fucking loved this tale!

I read The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo over three nights, and I was enamoured with it. There is so much to love about it: the divine prose, the evocative imagery, the characters (both current and historical), but most of all, how it resonated with me both during the reading and afterwards.

Someone referred to the book as a ‘gift’, and they’re not wrong. It reminded me of the party game, ‘pass the parcel’ where each layer unwrapped lay a gift, only this time all the gifts were for me, and there was one on each turn of the page. Each of these a clue to what was coming, taking your mind and imagination to both wonderful and heart-wrenching places. There are lines throughout that will stay with me always.

‘…the war was won by silenced and nameless women.’

It’s a story about war, history, upheaval, friendship, a story about the place (or no place) women have in this world and the strength and courage we all have to forge that path anew. It’s an ode to these strong women, these strong people, who break the bonds that shackle them in the most subtle and powerfully resonant ways.

This is a feminist tale, regaled by the elder, Rabbit (sold by her parents to the palace), to nonbinary monk Chih through a series of vignettes where history is not so much told, but actively learned. Chih and her hoopoe companion, Almost Brilliant, are the living memory of the world, wanderers gathering history before it’s lost amongst the detritus of time. It’s the story of Empress In-yo, forced into marriage for an alliance, then banished after providing the emperor a heir, she refuses to go lightly into that dark night.

‘…angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.’

It’s not just In-yo’s story, but Rabbit’s as well, and the threads that bind both empress and handmaiden was a joy to uncover as Rabbit slowly peels back the pages of her life and that of the woman who changed it and her forever.

I cannot recommend this book enough, and while it is a novella, I would happily have read an entire novel set in this world.

Empress of Salt and Fortune

Eleventy stars.

And that cover? Oh, how I love that cover! This is the sort of cover art that has your books forward-facing on the shelves.

Ah, it’s review time again! Evan Winter‘s African (Xhosa) inspired epic fantasy The Rage of Dragons (The Burning, Book #1) is a story I wish I’d dived into sooner as I am in love with this book and its characters. If you haven’t added this to your TBR mountain, then rectify this immediately!

In keeping with the short reviews (because time and I are still at loggerheads), I’m not going to go into a huge, in-depth breakdown of character and worldbuilding and plot — others do that far better than me, but know that the characters reach into your chest and do both terrible and wonderful things to your heart, that the worldbuilding is unique and beautiful and terrifying, and that the plot arcs with a deft hand through the story.

The journey with Tau is a fraught one, and you can’t help but want him to reach his end goals despite knowing it likely isn’t going to end the way you’d want it to. The secondary characters, particularly Tau’s Scale, are diversely unique, with their own quirks and their own secrets, their own desires too, and the influence they have on Tau and he on them, the building of friendships that start unwanted was a joy to read.

The political ideology of the world, the caste system that’s one of oppression with a baited hook of betterment strung with a poisoned worm hits hard, and continues to hit ever harder as Tau starts to really understand what’s at play and what those in power will do to maintain their hold of it. The ‘Rage’ is real, folks, I felt it through them, for them.

Rage of Dragons

The magic system, holy shit, the magic system. There’s some terrifying shit in the Isihogo, and Winter’s descriptions of the demons within and the destruction they wrought on bodies was top notch. As were all the battle scenes/skirmishes — I love me a good fight scene, and Winter knows how to write them, to give them the speed and believability, the horror of it.

I flew through the last third of this book, reading way past the witching hour — this book is a sleep-thief, and I gladly let it do so. Thing is, I NEED the next instalment because goddamn, that ending… How Aran would have been proud. Hit me right in the feels.

I can’t recommend this enough, and I give it all the stars!

Bring on book two: The Fires of Vengeance. I am so here for it.

Oh, oh, oh! And look at that cover! Like, get your face in it!