When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
by Nghi Vo
The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.
How many times have I said I expected and wanted a book to be better? Add this one to the list. I enjoyed the first one, albeit in a quieter way. For all that's it's very short, it felt like it dragged in the middle, while also not much happens. The framing storyteller mode is charming, but then everything is filtered through Rabbit, so we're getting a story of a story, and it doesn't really come together until the end, but it feels like more of a "Ah, okay" than a "Whoa, really?!" moment. Anyway, I was interested enough to pick up this one, which I hoped would improve on the series. It did not.
Vo plays around more with the storyteller trope and the unreliable narrator. Here, both Chih the cleric and the Tiger take turns telling the story, which changes (drastically, in some cases) with the teller. And that sounds like a great idea, but in practice, it falls very flat for me, mostly because there didn't seem to be much point. There's a lack of cohesiveness in the way the intertwining parts of the story pull together. For example, what happens in one installment doesn't seem to affect or tie in much with what happens in the other installments. Basically Chih goes, "This is how I heard this part" and the Tiger goes, "No, it was like this." and after you finish reading both parts you're not left with any kind of sense that maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle, it's like you just read two different stories about different things.
Now that I've typed it out, I think that was my biggest problem, that lack of feeling like both stories were self-serving but different reflected versions of the truth. Think of this like a divorced couple (or any couple really) or a lawsuit - both sides have their own versions of arguments and grievances, which present their own protagonist in the best possible light (or the most logical light, etc). So it's a really interesting idea to create this dueling POV. But it just wasn't that successful for me. I didn't finish it and come out with more than the stories themselves, no greater insight for having heard both halves. Maybe Vo should have tried that old chestnut and added a third storyteller: "His side, her side, and the truth".
Vo is part of the new wave of sci/fi/fantasy authors who are including more varied representations of gender/sexuality/etc, which seems like it would be a natural fit for a story about a Tiger and her wife, but again, it just didn't seem to have that much to say about it. I was intrigued enough from the first one (and of course, the length is a bonus - not much time commitment!) to get this one, and I'm still intrigued, but not so anxious for the next one to arrive. We'll wait and see.
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