Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!!

Cleric Chih of Singing Hills is on another adventure. This time they are traveling to the river town of Baolin. The town has a story of a famine from years ago and Cleric Chih is itching to hear the story. After arriving, they, along with their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant, a swept away to stay in the magistrate’s home. The only issue is, there is something creeping in the shadows and it’s hungry. Cleric Chih must learn the story of the famine and hope they don’t become food along the way.

THIS WAS WILD!! By far, this is the darkest addition to the Singing Hills Cycle. I LOVED IT!! I even had to put the book down at one point because I got serious goosebumps. Do not read this with the lights off! I think this novella will stick with me for a WHILE. I highly recommend all of the books in the series but if you’re ready to jump in the deep end, start here! 5/5 stars. No notes. Vo really outdid herself on this one!

Another wonderful entry to the Singing Hills series. This one finds our dear cleric investigating the aftermath of a famine demon and collection stories from people who lived through it. Of course there's a mystery involved and someone hiding the true price they paid to get rid of the demon. I think the last book in this series was stronger but this still had some great horror imagery.

Here is another amazing, thought-provoking addition to the Singing Hills cycle of stories. It follows Cleric Chih and their companion, the neixin Almost Brilliant, as they visit the town of Baolin, known not only for the Baolin pork recipe, but also for its famine. The story explores the value of food and how various people react when the food runs out and famine, personified by the demon Houshun, stalks the land. This quote from the story haunts me: "Where there was hunger, there was desperation, and eventually, the belly cried louder than the children, or the elderly, or the dead. . . .There was no doubt that the people of Baolin had eaten one another. It was what people did in the face of starvation." And yet, for all the darkness, there is still compassion, and caring and the ability of Nghi Vo to blend these two contrasting sides of humanity makes this story something truly outstanding. It's another strong entry from a truly talented writer.

Nghi Vo continues with the horror elements in this new installment and I am here for it! Beautifully suspenseful like The Brides of High Hill, but where supernatural and reality are mixed to show the devastation of famine that carries for generations.

Read A MOUTHFUL OF DUST by Nghi Vo if you love family recipes, regional specialties, sweet pork, asking questions, tiny pencils, the stories no one wants to tell, famine, desperation, deterioration, demons, roasted arrowroot, the color green, little cats & doing what you need to survive.

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo is a continuation of the Singing Hills Cycle. This short novella follows Cleric Chih of the Singing Hills abbey and their birdlike companion Almost Brilliant as they travel to a new place to record stories to bring back to the abbey.

In this particular story the pair travel to Baolin, a place famous for its pork and it’s legendary famine. While in the town, Chih is forced to stay at the town magistrate’s home where they discover something strange taking place.

I’m a huge fan of this series and I loved this new chapter of the Singing Hills Cycle. It’s definitely the creepiest of the novellas so far, I could feel myself getting tense while reading certain parts!

Chih is such a likable character that I love reading about all their adventures and the stories they gather. I also love when Almost Brilliant is included, the back and forth between the two is always fun!

Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant are back hunting for more stories, this time in a village where the famine had left deep scars.

An absolutely brilliant addition to the series! A Mouthful of Dust felt like the perfect next step in the Singing Hills series. after Brides of High Hill. It's eerie, and spooky, and borderline horror, with its tragedy much more rooted in reality than fantasy. The lavish descriptions of food side by side with the famine stories translated perfectly the crudeness of the real world into the story.

As always, stories are central to the plot, and it felt so satisfying seeing the big picture come together with each character's tale. This is one of my comfort series, and Nghi Vo's prose is always a pleasure to read (or listen to!).

The story is well written and does a fabulous job of telling a short story in an interesting world without getting sucked into the details. Unfortunately, I think it lacked a single hard hitting moment for me (which I feel like are usually the turning point for a short story). I think this was also complicated by writing that made it difficult to interpret what was truly happening. In a story designed to talk about the worst things a human can go through, I feel like the author shied away when it came time to present a small slice of horror on the page.

As with any short story, there is relatively little invested by the reader (in terms of time) so it may be your cup of tea, but it was not quite my cup of tea.

Thank you for the ARC from NetGalley and Tor!

Imgur link goes to Instagram graphic scheduled for around Oct 4th (subject to movement)
Blog link goes live Oct 3rd
Youtube review will be up 7/25 in Friday reads with tentative plans for a series reread and review in Oct if physical copies can be acquired.
Amazon and Barnes & Noble reviews will go up with available


**TL;DR**: This is an autoread series for me.
**Source**: NetGalley - Thank you to the publisher!!

**Plot**: Chih comes to visit a village to learn about a famine and learns much more.
**Characters**: I love them. I don’t know what to tell you after six books but I love them.
**Setting:** As always the setting is painted in a beautiful way with Nghi Vo’s simple and effective style.
**Fantasy:** Demons, ghosts, and the most fantastical food you’ve ever read about.


**Thoughts:**

We’re six books into the Singing Hills Cycle and we’ve been through some rough times and some violent times. Now we’re back to some simple travel times and I love it SO much. This book felt like a return to the start for Chih and not in a bad way. I loved seeing Chih doing a simple hunt into history and stumbling on a mystery and drama along the way.

The small village that they visit starts with giving us descriptions of some of the most wonderful sounding food, and that’s from someone who doesn’t eat pork. The food descriptions continue (think Ghibli style here but in prose) with different dishes but we see that reflected against descriptions of famine and the horrible things people had to eat during a famine.

The mystery and the drama of the famine ended up making me uncomfortable, sad, and broke my heart. And in the end I was so happy Chih was there to record and bring peace to this story. I’ve read so many of these and put so much love and time into them that they feel real in my mind and that’s how you know it’s well done. All the stars, I love it.

Look, I'm going to love Nghi Vo, no matter what I read of their work.

As with all Singing Hills novellas, this one is loosely structured around a particular genre - mystery. It didn't feel that way at first, but as the story goes on, those elements come out and we see the tale unfold. I didn't enjoy this as much as High Hill or Tiger, but I think it was a solid entry in the series.

Thank you Nghi Vo and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

The plot of A Mouthful of Dust opens up slowly to the reader allowing us to piece together shards character choices and motivations until the last piece slots into place to reveal a full picture. Despite, or perhaps because of, the nature of this story in which Chih contends with the memories of those who survived a famine that forced them into cannibalism, this was an enjoyable read. It was nice seeing more sides of Chih, outside of their persona as cleric and their experiencing mortal terror. Their flirting with Shui, teaching Sunshine the character for dragon, and their temporary adoption of the white kitten further humanizes them in the midst of a suspenseful plot. I'm curious if the kitten is only an unfortunately shaped catalyst for Deiyi's revenge without any ulterior motives, or if it's meant to be the reincarnation of Orchid or her cat.
Vo is a gifted storyteller. With a plot rooted in how the experience of living in famine alters one's perception of life, death, and resources, Vo masterfully explores a vile act of revenge and the utter humiliation it is to be wasted when your death could help others live. The unreliability of the storytellers and the alternate versions that stories take on as they're told from different perspectives and passed down the generations really shines in this book. Especially how the way histories that are intentionally misremembered and shared with inaccuracies have a way of coming back with a vengeance.

As always with this series, I wish the book was longer so I could spend more time with my friends Chih and Almost Brilliant, listening to the stories they collect and envying their vocation.

Nghi Vo's newest installment of The Singing Hills Cycle is an enthralling, spooky, and beautiful read. Vo's power of entwining narratives makes every story a treasure. This is no different.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is another of the novellas featuring Cleric Chih and their astonishing memory bird Almost Brilliant, although Almost Brilliant does not get a lot of page time this go-round. This is mainly the story of hunger, desperation, shame, and unquiet ghosts. It’s about what depths people might sink to when famine comes–in this story, a famine demon, personified, but the shape of the story won’t be unfamiliar if you’ve read about more mundane famines.

The lines between horror and dark fantasy are as always unclear, but wherever you place A Mouthful of Dust, I recommend only reading it when you’re fully prepared for something unrelentingly bleak.

Vo really outdid herself with this one: it's dire and eerie and told in this gorgeous way that kind of made me feel like I was at a campfire hearing a ghost story (those shifts to first person when Chih was taking certain accounts!). Everything from the sense of communal trauma to the famine demon to the various stories of the famine coming together is so, so well-done and beautifully written and paced. My major complaint, as ever, is that I wanted more. (And also to know what was up with the kitten. Like, why was the magistrate afraid of it in the first place? And what happened to it after?)

That said though, you really can't go wrong with anything in the Singing Hills Cycle and this book is no exception. This is perhaps the most unsettling and sharpest of the series yet, and an excellent addition. I can't wait to see where Vo takes Chih next.

This latest installment in the Singing Hills series delivers exactly what I've come to hope for from the adventures of Cleric Chih and their memory-spirit/bird-companion Almost Brilliant: a story that manages to travel the gamut from comfort food to creeping terror. I am always happy to observe the horrors through Chih's gently curious eyes, and this novella does not disappoint.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

5/5 stars
Recommended if you like: fantasy, stories within a story, ghosts and demons

This review has been posted to Goodreads as of 6/30 and will be posted to Instagram 7/31 and to my review blog 8/12.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and it did not disappoint! We're once again traveling with Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant, diving into stories from around the empire.

In this installment, Chih has been purposefully sent to Baolin to record the town's tales from the famine that struck nearly two decades past. Knowing famines are sensitive topics, and taking advantage of the fact that Baolin is also famous for its pork, Chih starts by recording tales of food. And I have to say, it definitely gave me a craving for gua bao pork dumplings.

Of course, few things ever go quite as well as hoped with Chih and Almost Brilliant, and the magistrate of the town essentially forces Chih to remain within his house. Like most government officials, he wants to ensure that his version of the tale is the official (and only) one. But Chih is trained for this sort of thing, and I enjoyed seeing them work around the magistrate and utilize some sly sidewise questioning to get at the heart of the matter.

The stories Chih collects in Baolin are definitely sad ones. They're famine tales as old as time, with different variations depending on the area, but nevertheless carrying the same thread of desperation and death and, eventually, the need to do anything to survive. Chih is good at seeing the humanity in everyone's actions, and is excellent at understanding people's motivation for things. Because of this view, we as readers also see the famine victims, both alive and dead, in a sympathetic light, when it could've been so easy for them to be portrayed negatively.

This novella has threads of that female friendship and desire for more that we also saw in Empress of Salt and Fortune, so in some ways the two books feel similar theme-wise. That being said, like the rest of the books in the Singing Hills Cycle, this one has its own feel and voice, and it's an excellent edition to the series. The one downside of reading this early is that now I want the next one!

It’s always a joy to return to Cleric Chih, whose good intentions and boundless curiosity get them in way more trouble than they deserve. I think overall this one was pretty subtle, up until the final act, which was a clever way to play the way people talk about a tragedy. It was also very interesting to see Chih alone and frightened in a way they haven’t really been before (frightened yes but alone no).

Also reading about the Baolin pork made me hungry, which was obviously the point but still.

And Vo’s comment in the Acknowledgements about the timing of publication definitely made me laugh

This is the first book I've read by Nghi Vo, but will not be my last. At the very least, I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the Singing Hills Cycle. This short, reflective novella follows a cleric named Chih as they collect stories from villagers about a famine that had affected the area. The stories are tragic and heartbreaking, but give a lot of insight into the village life and mythology. The stories are heavy and stick with you, so keeping the book novella-length is a good choice; if it was longer it might be too overwhelming and depressing. The writing is excellent, and the elegance of the storytelling drew me in from the beginning.

Food is power, it's history, and resistance.

Another dark installment to the Singing Hills Cycle where we reunite with Cleric Chih entering Baolin, a town once ravaged by a deadly famine. Exploring the depths of human survival, Vo once again leaves us hungry for more.

I have deeply enjoyed watching Vo explore different genres within the Cycle from fantasy to gothic horror, she continues to stretch her wings within the series. For those who love short, dark, and haunting stories - 4/5 swords!