14,5 x 20 cm, 128 pages
French language
Published May 11, 2023 by L'Atalante.
[Résumé éditeur] Des tigresses métamorphes amatrices de poésie, des mammouths de guerre aussi impressionnants que placides, une jeune lettrée tiraillée entre son cœur et sa raison, fantômes, goules et esprits-renards à l’affût, aventures baroques et amours libres… Dans cette aventure de l’adelphe Chih, Nghi Vo nous convie à un étonnant voyage, inspirée tant par les contes et la poésie de l’Asie du Sud-Est que par les combats sociaux qui l’animent. Aucun carcan ici, aucune frontière, seul importe le récit, porté par une plume légère et des images d’une originalité folle.
Storytelling layers and drama packed so neatly, but this didn't have the depth of the first one for me.
I enjoyed this one a bit more than Empress of Salt and Fortune, I think because the tension between the tellers and the listeners adds a hint of excitement that I was missing in the first one
In this East-Asian influenced world, be wary if you meet three tigers, they might ask you to tell them a tale, and if you tell it badly, they'll eat you.
Nghi Vo keeps embellishing her world where tigers and foxes can turn into humans, to court them, marry them, or more prosaically to eat them. The same tale is told from two points of view, with two different sets of values, and makes us ask ourselves what we miss when we hear only one side of a story.
I like the short format of these novellas, the worldbuilding happens during the story and there's no infodump or long intro.
