I just love this world so much???

I actually cried a little bit while reading Mammoths at the Gates. It was a short novella that, as usual, packed quite a punch. It dealt with grief and memories and remembering and those topics hit a bit too close to home this year.

It was lovely to get a glimpse of Chih’s home, how it had changed, and the few conflicts that came with it. That was something I’d been looking forward to, personally, since the first novella and Nghi Vo did a wonderful job with it.

There was also some action and tension, as we’ve come to expect from this series, and the introduction of some new characters that added much depth to this world. This has always been a series so rich with fantasy elements and it was a fantastic reading experience being able to immerse myself in this story again.

Nghi Vo has done it again. I think this may be my second favourite entry in the series (a very close second to The Empress of Salt and Fortune). Unlike the previous three books in the series, we are not following Chih as they travel the lands in search for stories. Instead, they find themselves back home at the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in years, and we get a glimpse into their past.

This novella deals with themes of grief, change, friendship, and as always, the role of storytelling in all of this. I've loved every entry in this series, but I think this is the only one that gives me the same feeling that I felt when I read Empress for the first time. It's emotional and heartfelt, but there's also a sense of melancholy and nostalgia that I can't quite put my finger on.

I won't say too much since it is only a short novella, and the fourth in the series, but I cannot stress enough how incredible this series is as a whole. Each entry is a standalone of sorts, but they all work together to create this beautiful and lush world, and I am so grateful to be able to spend more time in this world. I've said before that I think the first three books can all be entry points into the series (though I do still recommend reading Empress first), but I would say that this is the first book in the series that truly feels like a sequel that you can't really just go into without having read the previous entries. Another absolutely stunning entry into The Singing Hills Cycle, and one that I think will resonate with anyone who has ever had to deal with loss and grief.

The Singing Hills cycle has come full circle and Chih has at last returned to their home of the Singing Hills abbey. And they are, of course, re-united with the sorely missed Almost Brilliant. Between mammoths of a foreign country at their gates and the sudden death of an old and beloved mentor, Chih has to contend with many crises. Nghi Vo adds yet another touching and thought-provoking novella to the Singing Hills cycle. Keeping in line with the overarching idea of stories, Mammoths At The Gates is a beautifully written tribute to grief, loss, and how stories can shape the perception we have of a person. Through the paths of several characters whose stories become unexpectedly intertwined, Vo explores the idea of ‘knowing’ a person, even if that person has only ever existed in stories. Mammoths is a more subdued and introspective novella than some of the others in the series, and certainly one of the most touching. Overall, I rate this book a 4.5/5.

This was a really fantastic read! I've really enjoyed this series, and this latest installment was a fantastic read! That it's stories that are about a person who Chih was close to before their passing, that this was people mourning the loss of the mentor...it was cathartic.

Well, it mostly. Because before he joined the abbey, he was a guy who had a family. And now that he's dead, his grandchildren are coming around and there's conflict between what people from his old life wants, and what his chosen life is supposed to be in death.

This book does give us a little bit of Chih's backstory, of their life growing up, and how things were like at the Singing Hills abbey. We also learn more about neixin, which was really interesting, to really round out this world that Chih lives in.

That ending though? Yeah, I knew something was happening, between events in the story and the bit in the synopsis about sorrow, but I didn't expect that! But I really enjoyed how things all worked out, it was a bit bittersweet, but grief and loss happen.

This was a fantastic story, and I can't wait for more in this world!

Well, Nghi Vo has gone ahead and outdone herself. This is hands down my favorite of the series so far, and that is saying quite a lot because I loved pretty much all of the stories up to this point. But for me, Mammoths had something special, and it wasn't just the aforementioned mammoths. No, our favorite cleric Chih is heading back to Singing Hills Abbey, where they haven't been in six years. That is a long time, and we have, until this point, only traveled with Chih on the road, never to the abbey.

It is amazing to get to see where Chih came from, who their friends and loved ones are, and how those relationships have changed in their absence. One sad bit of news is that Chih's mentor, Cleric Thien, has passed. Chih is pretty devastated, as you can imagine, because many of their memories include Thien, and they never had a chance to say goodbye. But they are reunited with their close friend Ru, who has not been able to travel as Chih has, and instead made themself a fixture and leader at the abbey. Obviously, things are very different from when last Chih visited, and they have to figure out where exactly they fit in to the new order at the abbey.

I loved all the concepts this story was able to tackle in so few pages. Relationships, grief, growing up, finding one's place, moving forward, they all played such a big part, and were handled beautifully. As always, the writing is perfection, but I was so glad to be able to get so much history and insight into Chih's past, and hopefully, their future as well. I think that going forward, the reader will have such a new appreciation for Chih's life, and we will be able to connect to them in a much deeper way.

Bottom Line: Nailed it. My new favorite in a already very beloved series.

I love this series! They are such fun short reads for when I am feeling like diving into fantasy a little. The world and its characters are very inventive and the stories shorter length does not mean that they at all lack meaning or heart.

This is such a comforting series and this fourth installment is no different. Rather than following cleric Chih as they travel the land in search of stories, we instead see them in their home environment at the monastery of Singing Hills. It was fascinating to see the abbey and its workings, to experience more Neixin with different personalities than the inimitable Almost Brilliant and to see how Chih interacts with their long time friends. Focusing heavily on the power of memory and stories to help the grieving process, I had a wonderful time with this one and will continue to read every book in the series as they come out.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The stories Nghi Vo has told in the Singing Hills novellas have all had a conceit, a neat little framing device that shapes the story into something a little more than just a story. It's one of the best things about the series, and means I go into each new one excited not just to know what happens, but how it's told. In the first, it was framed around found objects, the second a story told by different tellers, the third had unconnected tales that turned out to be connected by the people in them. In Mammoths at the Gates, the fourth in the series, it's stories of a person told by the different people who knew them at their funeral, stories from those who loved them, who think of them fondly, their fellow clerics, their companion and their granddaughters, who knew them only as the best they were... and one that isn't quite so flattering, but no less true.

I read this book one week after my grandmother died.

Normally, I'm not so keen to put quite so much of myself into my reviews as this, but the resonance between the story and what has happened so recently in my own life was impossible to ignore.

My grandmother was... a complicated woman. Rarely a nice one, though more often to people who didn't know her well. The legacy she left us, when she passed, was no less complex. Her will makes plain that she cared very much about lifting some of those who survived her above others, showing her favour and her disdain in equal parts. No matter how much one knows about this when the person is alive, it becomes harder to bear when you realise it's the last thing they leave in the world, the message they want to be seen after they've gone, their last word. As I say, complicated. But part of dealing with that complexity is the family that gathers at the passing, who tell their own stories about her. I haven't seen my aunt - who lives abroad - in years, but we sat in the emptiness of my grandmother's house, her and my mother and me, and naturally, what grew out of that emptiness was stories. Stories the others may not have known, or that saw a complex woman from another side than the one the listener had in their mind, or that revealed hurts she caused that the rest of us simply never knew about.

My mother asked me yesterday, did I want to speak at her funeral? I declined. I don't know how I'd even begin to frame that complexity into something appropriate for speaking publically.

Nghi Vo did.

She begins the funeral with the expected stories, the ones that praised the deceased for the things most prized by the speaker. Patience, compassion, cunning, by turns. They reveal the different sides of the person, as person in the world and later as a cleric, to the surprise of those who only knew one part of them. But the greater surprise comes in the story that is not the best but the worst of their life. The listeners all had to then reframe their knowledge of the deceased, around the discovery that they weren't, as everyone had thought, always quite so wonderful.

That sort of story is so rare, in life and in books. We do not speak ill of the dead. We certainly do not speak ill of the fondly-remembered dead, or those who were good and bad in parts*. But as Vo shows, there is incredible power in remembering the truth of a person, the good and the bad together, an emotional impact that cannot be achieved by simply speaking the kind words, the ones that everyone expects to hear. It was an impact I did not realise I would appreciate quite so much, but I felt it all the way down to my bones as I read it. It hurt, and it helped, to have a story reminding me that we can have complex feelings for our dead, in a time when I needed just that. From a personal perspective, I might even say this is the best of the stories in the series, simply because it has hit me so intimately in my own unsettled emotions.

But even if I step outside this personal impact, it's a story whose themes are bittersweet and beautifully crafted. As well as those of death and mourning and the memories of a person left behind - themes made all the more poignant in a setting full of characters whose entire purpose is their perfect recall - it is also a story of how people change, how parting and returning may bring you back to a different person than the one you left behind. And that in discovering that, you realise you too are different from the person who left. All the Singing Hills books are deeply, inexorably rooted in people and their relationships, but Mammoths at the Gates doubly so. We follow Chih, our cleric protagonist, as they return to the Singing Hills Abbey after their travels, hoping to see again their neixin companion who returned before them, as well as their familiar fellow clerics and old tutors. But they find their best friend suddenly serious and grown up, their neixin now a mother of a fledgling, and much of the abbey gone to a nearby situation that requires their attention. Their home is almost empty, and they have to reckon with the changes against the backdrop of a very present threat - the eponymous mammoths at the gate - whose title drop within a few pages of the opening of the story I particularly appreciated.

But like all the other stories, it isn't really a story about Chih, no matter that we continue to learn about (and love) them through how they approach the stories of other people. And it is no different here - we learn about Chih through how they cope with the changes they bear witness to in their erstwhile best friend, and the stories they hear and react to during the funeral. They are the conduit through which we receive the stories, and like any good medium, they bring with them their own personality to the message. For only novellas, for stories that always spotlight other people, Nghi Vo has done an amazing job of giving us such an insight to the person on the fringes of all those stories, a wry, cheerful, thoughtful, ever so slightly rebellious but ultimately dedicated cleric, one who truly yearns to hear what people tell them, and believes in their duty to keep those stories safe, because the things that happen to the people in their world, even the little things, ultimately matter.

We likewise get those tantalising little glimpses into the world, and as in all the books, we continue to dwell particularly on food. In a book about homecoming and comfort, it feels all the more important to have that there, all the more true to life. Cleric Chih has always been quick to describe what they eat - or want to eat - in all the novellas, and so getting back to the green onion buns, the rice and mustard greens, the salted plums of their home, the things that comfort them against the world, makes you yearn for those foods too, even if you've never tried them yourself. Because they're not described in the way food sometimes is, as vivid sensory experiences, full of taste and smell and almost sensual aesthetics. Instead, food reverts to its emotional self - rice as a balm for the soul, a green onion bun or milk candies as nostalgia, a salted plum as a rare treat. We understand food, as we understand much of the story, through the lens of Chih's experience. Whether or not I would like salted plums, here, they are likeable, and that positioning in the story is, for the moment, more important than my own imaginings of what a salted plum might taste like.

If I were to be fanciful, I might say that all the Singing Hills books are a thesis on the importance of bias for the narrator in a story. Because they would not be what they are - which is wonderful - if they weren't constantly coloured by the perspective from which we see them. Whether it is Chih and their experiences, or the framing devices that shift from book to book, each of these stories is as much the medium as the message, the two woven so thoroughly together that extraction would make each meaningless except as part of the whole. And Mammoths at the Gates is no different in that.

But likewise, for me, it is also now inextricable from my own experiences, and my own bias. I cannot but view it through the lens of my own mourning, I cannot but find myself in the story, and be comforted. I declined to speak at my grandmother's funeral, and ultimately, so does Chih decline to speak at their mentor's. I find a form of fellowship in that; I feel seen. And it is a testament to how well the story is told that such resonance is so easy to grasp, and so poignant.

*On twitter, we quite frequently speak ill of the terrible dead, but twitter is its own little microcosm, and I don't want to use it as a pattern for society at large. God no.

3.5 stars

This one felt, to me, lacking in the lyricism that makes this series so special. However, it makes up for that lack mostly by letting Chih finally be a character rather than an avenue for stories. We see Chih confront their own memories and the ways their mind has locked down on past moments, resisting change (even as they themself have changed and grown through their travels). The story is full of themes of never knowing a person truly and also of memories and moments only being a fraction of a whole being- how a person can be many things to many people (or even the same single person).

I liked that the central conflict in the story was messy, and I wish we got to spend more time with the mammoth rider and the advocate, because I think they were very interesting and we saw only a tiny sliver of their characters.

The Singing Hills Cycle Novella series already has its fourth installment. And I think this might be my favorite.

This time Chih returns back to the Singing Hills Abbey. Happy to return to the people that she knows and to Almost Brilliant, she instead runs into mammoths at the gates. A dispute about a death and a body disguising a whole lot of grief.

Because that is what this story is about. Grief. About all the different ways someone meant something to someone else. The good and the bad. Accepting the choices someone has made, even after death. And Nghi Vo manages to pack a lot of feelings into just 128 pages.

But I also loved seeing the abbey, the memories and relationships that Chih has with everyone. Like her childhood friendship. A friendship that was always solid but that has been changed because of their time apart and their change in status. It is something that Chih has to come to grips with.

We also see and learn more about the Nexus. Before we only saw Almost Brilliant. In this installment Chih returns alone from her trip to the abbey. Almost Brilliant was pregnant and gave birth to a new Nexus. We get to see the aviary and their nesting. But most of all the dynamic between the different Nexus' and how they also how their own morals and unwritten rules about how their society should be. What happens when someone responds different?

Like I said, Nghi Vo manages to pack so much in so few pages. These novella's are real gems to read.

4.75 STARS

CW: death (of a loved one), grief, violence, mention of domestic abuse

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I completely and utterly loved this story. It's the fourth installment in a series of novellas in the Singing Hills Cycle about Cleric Chih who returns home to Singing Hills in this volume. It says the novellas can be read in any order but in my opinion it is only profitable to one's reading experience to stick to the publication order.

I can honestly say that while all novellas in this series are amazing, this one is definitely my favorite. It talks about so many things that hit close to home for me and does so in a lyrical, serene but nevertheless interesting and exciting way. It's a perfect mix of philosophical and action-packed. Cleric Chih returns home to Singing Hills for the first time in four years and with this return come a mixture of emotions: grief because their mentor Cleric Thien has passed away in the interim of their travels, grief for friends who have changed and become a different person, joy to be back home. It rang so true to my own experiences of returning home after being away for some time.

I loved the reflection on the person who has passed away, the realization that there were multitudes to the person and that one can have multiple version of themself over the years and in different contexts. That along with the importance and influence of memory on grief was expertly interwoven by the author.

Another highlight was getting to read so much about the neixin. I've loved Almost Brilliant in the other stories as well and I loved seeing the neixin's context within Singing Hills and their purpose there.

Overall, I deeply implore anyone to give this a shot. I'd recommend reading the previous three novellas first but if you don't feel like it, dive straight into this one (there might be some context missing though, so be aware of that). I hope there will be more future releases of this series because I've grown so fond of Chih over the course of these four novellas and I want to see more.

Really interesting examination of grief and how people change over time, I also really liked the commentary on memory and identity.

Not my favorite of these, but probably my second favorite after the first one.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this novella, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have been absolutely enchanted with this series since I read the first one in quarantine. They're short, beautifully written, and with interesting themes running throughout. It gives enough time to explore the ideas encapsulated in each novella, but always manages to leave me wanting more. The world, the characters, and the stories are fascinating to me.

This is the first time we see the Singing Hills and also the first time we see Chih interact with other clerics. It's a story with exploring grief and legacy with some of our favorite characters returning and nods to previous ones for the eagle-eyed.

Overall, it is a lovely time and I can't wait for the next one. They've become the reading highlight of my year.

Thank you NetGalley and TorDotCom for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Another great installment to the Singing Hills Cycle. This one focuses on grief, loss, and change. Varying people are grieving the death of Cleric Thieh and are finding ways to give remembrance to them. Nghi Vo has finally brought the readers to the Singing Hills Abbey (hence the name of this standalone series). As a reader who has read every installment thus far, I have been looking forward to this and didn't disappoint. We get to see Cleric Chih come back home and reunite with Almost Brilliant while navigating various losses: Cleric Thieh's death and a change in Cleric Ru, their best friend prior to leaving.

Change is a major theme in this installment. While you can read each novella separate and without any order, I think there is something special in reading these novellas in order of publication. I am already invested in how Chih feels in returning home and feeling a little lost when things are different than what they were. I got to learn more about niexins, the species that alway remembers. Myriad Virtues was the niexin who was close to Cleric Thieh and seeing her grief them was interesting to see and quite sad since most of the characters couldn't understand how she grieved.

Overall, I would always recommend this series to most fantasy readers who want to experience a unique world with carrying stories as the forefront of a standalone series.

Content Warnings: grief, death, death of parent, domestic abuse, animal death, animal cruelty, transphobia (minor), ableism (minor), bullying (minor)

If you are a fan of the Singing Hills Cycle series then you’ll be happy to know that a new book is coming out, Mammoths at the Gate. This is fantasy novella series featuring a Cleric who is just traveling the world and gathering stories and this is the newest entry. In this one, they return to a monastery just in time to witness the funeral rights of a teacher and the family who want the teachers remains returned. Moreover, there are two mammoths outside the gates of the Abbey with two riders claiming they are the teachers granddaughters. So lots of extra lore here, more bits to the story that rounded out our development of our Cleric. I’ve read the first 3 of this series and really liked this continuation.

Unfortunately I had to DNF since it's the fourth book in a series and not having red the first 3 books it wasn't making much sense for me to read this. (Didn't know when I requested, my bad).

this is a story about grief and mourning, about what purpose means and how to carry it, about the specific sadness of coming home and discovering the ways it's changed and hasn't in your absence, about carrying loved ones through your life and the hardship and beauty of changing alongside them, and also a sometimes funny sometimes action-packed narrative featuring mammoths and smoke bombs made out of horse sh*t and spicy peppers and talking birds.

also it's 100 pages long.

that all felt shallow at some points and i wish it spent more doing all of it, but it still did more than a lot of books that are twice as long!

** A copy of Mammoths at the Gates was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review **

Another welcome addition to the Singing Hills Cycle - this one filled with love, grief and memory.

Any fan of the Singing Hills Cycle has been waiting to finally see the Abbey. While this could have been a simple story of explaining the abbey, instead we get a powerful story of grief, loss, love and what it means to come home. This is a story I will be coming back to again and again.

This series has been such a joy for me. Each one stands mostly on it's own, and here Chih is back home. At it's heart, this is a story about how we all process grief and loss. And it's a beautiful version of that exploration. Maybe the loss is a person we respected, maybe the loss is a friendship that has changed over time, or maybe the loss is for the person we used to be. Vo continues to tell tales exquisitely, with that same touch that makes everything feel like a dream we collectively had and are just now remembering.