TBR Pile Review: Mammoths at the Gates, by Nghi Vo

Description

The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to be met with both joy and sorrow. Their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died, and rests among the archivists and storytellers of the storied abbey. But not everyone is prepared to leave them to their rest.

Because Cleric Thien was once the patriarch of Coh clan of Northern Bell Pass – and now their granddaughters have arrived on the backs of royal mammoths, demanding their grandfather’s body for burial. Chih must somehow balance honouring their mentor’s chosen life while keeping the sisters from the north from storming the gates and destroying the history the clerics have worked so hard to preserve.

But as Chih and their neixin Almost Brilliant navigate the looming crisis, Myriad Virtues, Cleric Thien’s own beloved hoopoe companion, grieves her loss as only a being with perfect memory can, and her sorrow may be more powerful than anyone could anticipate. . .

The novellas of The Singing Hills Cycle are linked by the cleric Chih, but may be read in any order, with each story serving as an entrypoint.

My Review

Chih comes home to Singing Hills to find their mentor dead, their neixin companion, Almost Brilliant, a parent, and two literal mammoths at the gates. The mammoths are ridden by the granddaughters of Cleric Thien, lately dead. They want the body and are threatening to hammer in the gates and trample the archives if they can’t get it.

Chih is unsettled and distressed by the news and tries to find solace in work, going through all of Cleric Thien’s personal library, a mammoth task! At the same time, Myriad Virtues, neixin, and Almost Brilliant’s great aunt, is deep in mourning for her companion, Cleric Thien. After decades together, first as travelling companions and then in the archives, the two have rarely been apart, and have many stories. And now Thien has gone somewhere Myriad Virtues cannot follow. And Myriad Virtues wants to die. Almost Brilliant is desperate for help, while many of the other neixin think Myriad Virtues has gone mad with grief and should be allowed to die.

Chih’s oldest friend, Ru, is temporarily the Divine, while the rest of the Clerics are away at a drained reservoir studying the remains of a drowned town. Ru is disabled, although they once dreamed of being a travelling cleric with Chih, they have now spent three years as the Divine’s assistant and they have changed. Chih doesn’t realise how different they have both become in their three years away from the abbey. Holding off the mammoths and the accompanying humans has been Ru’s biggest task and they feel undermined by Chih stepping in to negotiate with the granddaughters of Cleric Thien.

The granddaughters constantly misgender Thien and misname them. They are stuck in one perception of their grandparent, whom they never met and knew only from their grandmother’s stories. The Clerics are stuck in their understanding of Cleric Thien, as they knew them, an elderly, caring archivist, who taught and mentored them. Who Thien was before coming to Singing Hills is a mystery to them.

During the funeral for Cleric Thien, each gets to tell their story, except Chih, who gives up their seat to Myriad Virtues. During the ceremony each see the others’ perspective, but it doesn’t go down well with anyone, and Myriad Virtues, deep in her grief is ignored entirely. Things don’t go so well after that. Mammoths and alcohol do not mix. They don’t mix well with chilli bombs either…

These novellas are little masterpieces. They tell epic stories in miniature. They explore complex ideas and situations through stories. Here we see a couple of different things.

Firstly, death and the things we leave behind. Our stories are often forgotten, except in the ephemera left after we’re gone, and the stories other people tell about us. Since we don’t have archives and niexin, we’re stuck with photographs and bits of paper found down the side of the settee, old diaries and social media posts. Half remembered stories, that may or may not be true. And sometimes we discover things we really don’t want to know about the dead.

Second, this novella explores family relationships. The mammoths riders want the body of their grandfather, but legally, Cleric Thien gave up that title before they were even born, by becoming a Cleric. They have never met them, but the women feel they have a right to their body because of blood. It’s about honour and kinship and letting their grandmother rest. The Clerics feel they have the right to Cleric Thien’s body, because they chose the abbey and the choices of the dead, made while living, outweigh the choices of the living. The compromise is fantastical, and impossible, but both get what they want.

Third, is the habit of families who don’t accept the choices of their family members deadnaming and misgendering people. It’s unfortunately common for trans and non-binary people to be buried under a name and gender they no longer want, because their families refuse to honour their wishes and choices, out of a stubborn belief that they know better than the person themselves. In the end Cleric Thien’s granddaughters accept their decisions, but only when they have their compromised solution. Bollocks to that. Accept you trans family members, arseholes.

I really enjoy these novellas, they have excellent Queer representation, which normalises non-binary characters, they are imaginative, and they bring all the punch of a full novel in a tiny package.