The Brides of High Hill

, #5

by

116 pages

Published by Tor.

The Cleric Chih accompanies a beautiful young bride to her wedding to an aging lord at a crumbling estate situated at the crossroads of dead empires. But they’re forgetting things they ought to remember, and the lord’s mad young son wanders the grounds at night like a hanged ghost.

The Singing Hills Cycle has been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award, the Ignyte Award, and has won the Hugo Award and the Crawford Award.

"A remarkable accomplishment of storytelling."―NPR on The Empress of Salt and Fortune

"Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today."―Taylor Jenkins Reid on Siren Queen

2 editions

reviewed Les Épouses de la Haute-Colline by Nghi Vo (Les archives des Collines-Chantantes, #5)

Les Épouses de la Haute-Colline

Avec cette cinquième novella située dans l'univers des Collines-Chantantes, Nghi Vo continue de déployer par petites touches son monde et les différentes facettes de merveilleux qui l'animent. Dans un tel imaginaire ainsi soigné, son format apparaît désormais bien rodé : l'adelphe Chih, sa façon d'être comme son rapport aux autres, constitue une constante que j'ai pris plaisir à retrouver. L'autrice continue d'explorer de façon un peu différente des précédentes histoires son concept : c'est un huis clos qu'elle orchestre au fil duquel elle entreprend de jouer avec, et de déjouer, les attentes de ses lecteurices. Chih est ici acteurice à part entier·e d'un récit construit comme une forme d'enquête. Plus que le thème du mensonge mis en exergue par l'autrice dans ses remerciements, j'ai reçu l'histoire comme une manière de nous inviter à questionner nos biais et les récits que l'on produit spontanément face à certaines situations. Je reste donc …

reviewed The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo (The Singing Hills Cycle, #5)

That escalated quickly...

"Well, that escalated quickly..." - the book That's basically the plot of this latest entry in the Singing Hills Cycle. According to the author it's about lies. Which are also a kind of storytelling and in retrospect it makes sense. But while reading it felt like being about traps and I didnt't figure the traps out until they were revealed. There's also a dreamlike quality to large chunks of the book. The feel is different to the other books in the series but I liked it.

reviewed The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo (The Singing Hills Cycle, #5)

The Brides of High Hill

This Singing Hills cycle novella leans much more into gothic horror. Some of the story framework almost felt like a Bluebeard setup, but it went in fresh directions. Plot-wise, this book feels much more about action than about recording stories; arguably, I think this is a book that deals (metaphorically) about the power of deceptive stories, but I still miss the more literal storytelling themes from previous books.

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