I don’t think I’ve loved an installment of the Singing Cycle this much since the first one. To be clear, every installment of this series is excellent in their own way, but this one was absolutely captivating and consuming, with Vo’s signature, elegant prose and the unmatched mythological worldbuilding she’s become so well-known for.

Nghi Vo’s become an auto-buy author for me. I honestly can’t take criticism from people about her books. She’s not only one of the most well-read authors in the SFF game, but she’s one of the best researchers and her body of work reflects that. Her sentence structure is dreamy, her pacing is impeccable, and in The Singing Hills Cycle works, she’s a master of the art of economy of words. This carries over into her full-length novels, where she knows that filler and fluff are not appreciated.

The story in Mammoths at the Gates is timeless: Grief and how different people grieve in different ways. Cleric Chih has been gone for four years doing what they do best, which is gathering stories for the abbey’s records. Sadly, during their time away, many events have unfolded quickly, chief among them is the passing of their beloved mentor, Cleric Thien. Cleric Thien had not always been Cleric Thein, however. They had a life before the Singing Hills Abbey, and now the Cleric’s family has come to demand the body be surrendered to them so it can be laid to rest next to the Cleric’s once-wife. Of course, this isn’t something that can be allowed, but there are literal huge mammoths at the gates threatening to break through and take the body by force, if needed. Not only that, but most of the Abbey’s staff is currently away on an archiving mission, leaving Cleric Chih’s old friend, Ru, in charge.

It is a time of change and tumult, and the abbey is vulnerable. It’s up to Chih, Ru, and the abbey’s beloved neixin to try and solve this issue without bloodshed and without having to surrender their beloved mentor’s body.

What I appreciate the most about this book is that it doesn’t go heavily into the psychological aspects of grieving. Instead, it focuses on memories and stories of the deceased. When the people we love are gone, that’s all we’re truly left with. That would’ve been even more important prior to the time of photographs or video. That’s why storytelling was such an important part of life for so long: it was the only way to remember. Nghi Vo showed that, in this case, one side only had old stories told from one person and the other side had both stories and memories. The issue was finding a diplomatic way of giving the side with the disadvantage something to make up for the stories and memories they missed out on without violating the tenets of their order.

This is a touching and emotional book that’s sensitive to the subject matter while not beating around the bush. I loved it.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Book Series/Coming of Age/Epic Fantasy/Fantasy/Fantasy Series/Historical Fantasy/Mythological Fiction/Novella/Supernatural Fantasy

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the advanced copy.

More thoughts coming in a video, but I think this is my favorite entry in the Singing Hills Cycle thus far. I used to recommend this series by saying you could pick up any of them to start, but I will have to change that because this one truly shines if you've already read the rest and understand the dynamic between Chih and their companion Almost Brilliant.

It includes really great world-building, which we don't usually get much of in these novellas (not a bad thing, because Vo writes so well that we don't need much to feel submersed in the setting). Also a really beautiful story about grieving and how we remember the lives of those we love.

The mammoths were also fantastic. 10/10.

Trigger Warning for misgendering. I actually really like how Vo includes and addresses this part by making Cleric Thien's gender identity another facet of their life that is remembered differently by different characters. Chih being patient with the two women who remember Thien as their father, then subtly correcting them after the funeral now that closure has been achieved, just beautifully weaves into the overall theme of accepting and resolving the two lives of Cleric Thien into the one person they all knew and mourned.

Story: A+
Prose: A
Characters: B+
World: B
Theme(s): A+
Enjoyment: A

I'm actually going to stray a bit from my established formula because:
This is the fourth book in the series (although you can technically read them in any order) and the fourth time I'm saying that Vo's writing is both poetic and approachable, her characterization is sharp, and her approach to storytelling within a story clever and enjoyable.
This is a story about grief, and the discussion goes deeper than a list.


In Mammoths at the Gates, Chih returns to–and officially brings the reader into for the first time–the Singing Hills Abbey. Upon return, they discover the titular mammoths: two massive royal mammoths, the breed used to break down gates. They soon learn the reason: Cleric Thien, not only their elder cleric, but something of a personal mentor, has died. But before Cleric Thien was a cleric, they were Thien An Lee, and Thien An Lee's granddaughters have come (with mammoths) to demand Singing Hills hand over the body.

Mammoths at the Gates is about grief, and the passage of time, and the memories we leave others with, and the stories they'll tell. A beloved elder cleric is dead, and with most of Singing Hills Abbey away, Chih finds their best friend, Ru, left in charge at the abbey. There's a lot of emotions at hand: not only do THEY grieve for Cleric Thien, but the cleric's beloved companion neixin (a sort of magical hoopoe bird) suffers from grief so extreme that she's asked someone to cut off her feathers.

At the same time, Chih discovers Ru hopes to be more than just acting leader of Singing Hills one day, and they reflect on how things have changed. Once, Chih and Ru planned to travel together, but Ru permanently damaged their foot. There's a lost future to mourn between them, and a strange new future they're both defining the shape of, and a shared past they can reminisce about, but to which they can never return.

Having lost a close grandparent somewhat recently, Cleric Thorn's death (and the related controversy, unfortunately) struck a chord with me. In the intervening years, my mom's confessed how Grandma was a less-than-stellar parent while Mom was growing up. My grandma was always a place of refuge and unwavering support to me, and these revelations… hurt.

Vo approaches this painful situation with grace and respect. It's awful, because the bad parts are true. It's complex because the good parts are true.

And what does one do with a complicated grief?

It's such a personal thing, and while Mammoths at the Gates isn't an instruction manual, it provides a thoughtful meditation on an upsetting situation.

YMMV:
Established world. The thing about the world developed within the Singing Hills Cycle is that if you grab one at random, you might feel as if there's a huge amount of world building you've missed, because Vo will mention other areas within the Singing Hills world. But besides "they have mammoths in the north," it's all new information. Each book focuses on a small, local area and the stories from that region. So, you might FEEL like you're missing out but you're technically not.

Final thoughts:
Said it before, say it again: I love each entry into the Singing Hills canon even more than the last, and this is a series where the VERY FIRST BOOK Vo wrote for it was already clever and poetic and meaningful.

That said, Mammoths at the Gates is officially my favourite.

Cleric Chih returns to the Singing Hills Abbey and learns their mentor Cleric Thien has died. Cleric Thien is laid to rest among the archivists and storytellers in the storied abbey, but his granddaughters arrive on mammoths demanding his body for burial. Chih wishes to honor their mentor’s wishes and keep the women from destroying the abbey. Cleric Thien’s own companion is grieving, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate.

This is the fourth book of the Singing Hills cycle, following Cleric Chih and their search for the stories and folklore of the land. (Prior volumes are The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and Into the Riverlands) The themes in this novella revolve around grief, family, and home. Everyone in the abbey is transformed by grief, and the usual memorial service in the abbey involves storytelling. The two granddaughters want to reclaim the grandfather they never knew from the place he spent decades, hoping to complete their family after their grandmother's death. The neixin grieve as well, with their long lives and flawless memories. As with prior novellas, what seems like a chance saying as part of a small story becomes the solution to the impasse. This novella is quiet and subdued compared to earlier ones due to its topics, but it's just as beautifully crafted.

This one is for all my cozy fantasy readers. One of my favorite things is discovering a new novella in the Singing Hills Cycle from @nghivowriting All feature the same protagonist, traveling Cleric Chih. As they pass through the countryside they collect stories and record them, sometimes accompanied by Almost Brilliant, their record keeping, talking Hoopoe companion. Mammoths at the Gate tells the story of Chih’s homecoming to Singing Hills Abbe to discover how much they and it have both changed and what of their past persists. I love the intensity of relationships, the depth of worldbuilding and the amount of reflection possible in the short page count. While the protagonist persists across all four volumes, each reads as a stand alone story. Readers can happily dip in anywhere, but I recommend starting with Empress of Salt and Fortune. So far, Empress and Mammoth at the Gate are my two favorites.

So much love for The Singing Hills Cycle series. Nghi Vo knocked it out of the park again with this book. This time, we see Cleric Chih come back home and deal with a grief and loss, which only adds to the beautiful world-building of this entire series and Chih's development as a lovable character. How Vo manages to pack so much emotion and development into these small novellas is a wonder but if I could have one bookish wish granted and have it come true, it would be that she never stops writing these.

CW for death of a loved one, mild mention of domestic abuse, animal death.

"Mammoths at the Gates" fits beautifully into the The Singing Hills Cycle series, while feeling completely unique. In previous installments, we follow Chih on their travels, hearing stories from those they encountered. This book is different.

"Mammoths at the Gates" is about grief and loss. Not only loss in death but also in change. It covers the feeling of coming home, but everything there is different, sometimes even you are different. Vo beautifully captures the grief one can have for what was, but no longer is.

This book also deals with the multi-faceted aspect of people. One person can be many things; they can play many roles in the lives of those around them. Those things can all be one person, yet none of them detract from the others. It touches upon how much you can know and love someone without knowing all of them.

The Singing Hills Cycle is an incredible series. Each book flows together beautifully, while still feeling like an independent story. They build off each other, making references to previous books, but each one is its own and can be read by itself. "Mammoths at the Gates" fits wonderfully into the world build by Vo and I cannot wait to see where Chih's story takes us next.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
This is another enchanting installment in this series. I love getting more of Chih’s adventures, especially with this one being a “coming home” of sorts, with Chih going back to Singing Hills Abbey. There’s meandering on grief and loss, but it’s perfectly woven into an action-packed narrative that feels complete within a hundred pages.

I was so excited to read this new installment in the Singing Hills Cycle! I think this is probably my favorite one yet, too. As always, I'm impressed by how Vo manages to construct novellas with so much depth that explore heavy themes without making the reader feel bogged down and emotionally drained. This particular story covered the impact of grief (both seen and unseen) and provided a really interesting look into Cleric Chih's backstory. I cannot wait for more!

I've read all of the other books in the Singing Hills Cycle, and honestly this might be my favorite one so far. It's really and truly excellent.

In this installment, Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills after many years away travelling and collecting stories. There we meet one of Chih's friends, Ru. I really enjoyed seeing the dynamic between them, and learning more about how the monastery functions. An elder cleric that Chih and Ru were close to has recently passed, so the rest of the story is a reflection of grief, and the tension of returning home when all of you have changed in the time apart. Also, loved the return of Almost Brilliant.

Nghi Vo is a legend, and I am always looking forward to her next book.

I love this series. This was another great story in the Singing Hills Cycle series. Nghi Vo has written a wonderful and hard-hitting story in the one. The main character in the story is coming home after leaving for the different stories in the world. They come home to mammoths at the gate and people with the mammoths wanting to get inside the gate for a reason.

Nghi Vo hooked me on The Singing Hills Cycle with the the wonderful, Hugo-winning, found object epic The Empress of Salt and Fortune. That inspired me to pick up Into the Riverlands, which has more of a “traveling the countryside and picking up folktales” vibe, and both were good enough to send Mammoths at the Gates to the top of my list.

Mammoths at the Gates stars Chih, the same story-collecting cleric from the first three novellas, though like the others in the cycle, it stands alone from a plot perspective. But for the first time in the series, Chih is not traveling in search of stories, but is returning home to the Singing Hills Abbey, only to find their mentor dead and the abbey threatened by the deceased’s family members. They want the body, and they have mammoths.

Like all the Singing Hills novellas, it’s short, and it’s beautifully written, this time with a central theme of grief and remembrance. The chief conflict in the book is between various factions pushing to remember the dead in their own way. The clerics have their memories of a mentor and leader, the family have stories of the man before the abbey, and the cleric’s magical neixin companion has her own memory of her former partner. Intertwined through all of it is the threat of physical altercation between the family and the clerics, internal strife among the neixin, and hints of the uncanny as the the spirit of the dead departs.

When compared to my other two reads in this series, I didn’t think the plot threads in Mammoths at the Gate came together quite as smoothly. There’s still a pretty tremendous climax in which nearly every relevant party comes together to share their stories, in the process finding themselves exposed to facets of the departed cleric that they’d never known. It’s an emotionally intense and generally fascinating reflection on the complexity of individuals, the stories we tell, and the way we remember.

But unlike the other novellas, that climax occurs with major plot points left to resolve, and it leaves the secondary climaxes feeling something like afterthoughts. The final chapters certainly serve to tie the loose threads, but after such a powerful and satisfying scene, the closing of the other arcs just feels a little bit clumsy and lacking in tension—even when the risk of being harmed by mammoths is extremely high! They aren’t necessarily bad endings or bad stories, they just don’t match the incredibly high standard set by what came before.

On the whole, it’s a good book with some elements that are truly outstanding. But it feels a little bit less cohesive than the other entries—even the entries that were just story collecting—which draws attention to the variance in quality among the subplots. It’s absolutely worth a read for the reflections on grief and remembrance alone, and it may have my favorite chapter in the entire series, but I found myself wishing I’d been reading a novelette that focused on these aspects and left the mammoths aside entirely. The other storylines are reasonably good, but they dilute some of the excellence.

Recommended if you like: The Singing Hills Cycle, stories about grief and remembrance.

Overall rating: 16 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.

4.5 stars

“The grief rose up like a tide. Chih let it rise, let it wash over the top of their head and into their mouth, their throat, and their lungs, and then it drained away, leaving them spent and exhausted.”

Returning to the Singing Hills world is always a breath of fresh air for me, and this fourth installment was every bit as wonderful as the previous novellas! This one brings Cleric Chih home to the Singing Hills abbey, where they reunite with old friends and encounter new obstacles in the form of royal mammoths and the empire advocates who control them.

This story, though short, packs a punch with themes revolving around grief, familial vs. professional duty, generational change, honoring traditions, and how bittersweet it is to come home after a long time away. Vo’s writing has continued to engage me from beginning to end, and I look forward to the next Singing Hills Cycle novella!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Tor/Forge for providing this advanced ebook!

A short but very sweet novella about grief and memory and how the stories we tell about the people who mean something to us take on lives of their own. I did not know much about the world going in, but I did not feel lost in it at all and could easily follow the story about a community rocked by a death of their elder who attempt to find some kind of understanding and solace in the aftermath of the loss. Absolutely lovely.

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.