So much love for The Singing Hills Cycle series. Nghi Vo knocked it out of the park again with this book. This time, we see Cleric Chih come back home and deal with a grief and loss, which only adds to the beautiful world-building of this entire series and Chih's development as a lovable character. How Vo manages to pack so much emotion and development into these small novellas is a wonder but if I could have one bookish wish granted and have it come true, it would be that she never stops writing these.

CW for death of a loved one, mild mention of domestic abuse, animal death.

"Mammoths at the Gates" fits beautifully into the The Singing Hills Cycle series, while feeling completely unique. In previous installments, we follow Chih on their travels, hearing stories from those they encountered. This book is different.

"Mammoths at the Gates" is about grief and loss. Not only loss in death but also in change. It covers the feeling of coming home, but everything there is different, sometimes even you are different. Vo beautifully captures the grief one can have for what was, but no longer is.

This book also deals with the multi-faceted aspect of people. One person can be many things; they can play many roles in the lives of those around them. Those things can all be one person, yet none of them detract from the others. It touches upon how much you can know and love someone without knowing all of them.

The Singing Hills Cycle is an incredible series. Each book flows together beautifully, while still feeling like an independent story. They build off each other, making references to previous books, but each one is its own and can be read by itself. "Mammoths at the Gates" fits wonderfully into the world build by Vo and I cannot wait to see where Chih's story takes us next.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
This is another enchanting installment in this series. I love getting more of Chih’s adventures, especially with this one being a “coming home” of sorts, with Chih going back to Singing Hills Abbey. There’s meandering on grief and loss, but it’s perfectly woven into an action-packed narrative that feels complete within a hundred pages.

I was so excited to read this new installment in the Singing Hills Cycle! I think this is probably my favorite one yet, too. As always, I'm impressed by how Vo manages to construct novellas with so much depth that explore heavy themes without making the reader feel bogged down and emotionally drained. This particular story covered the impact of grief (both seen and unseen) and provided a really interesting look into Cleric Chih's backstory. I cannot wait for more!

I've read all of the other books in the Singing Hills Cycle, and honestly this might be my favorite one so far. It's really and truly excellent.

In this installment, Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills after many years away travelling and collecting stories. There we meet one of Chih's friends, Ru. I really enjoyed seeing the dynamic between them, and learning more about how the monastery functions. An elder cleric that Chih and Ru were close to has recently passed, so the rest of the story is a reflection of grief, and the tension of returning home when all of you have changed in the time apart. Also, loved the return of Almost Brilliant.

Nghi Vo is a legend, and I am always looking forward to her next book.

I love this series. This was another great story in the Singing Hills Cycle series. Nghi Vo has written a wonderful and hard-hitting story in the one. The main character in the story is coming home after leaving for the different stories in the world. They come home to mammoths at the gate and people with the mammoths wanting to get inside the gate for a reason.

Nghi Vo hooked me on The Singing Hills Cycle with the the wonderful, Hugo-winning, found object epic The Empress of Salt and Fortune. That inspired me to pick up Into the Riverlands, which has more of a “traveling the countryside and picking up folktales” vibe, and both were good enough to send Mammoths at the Gates to the top of my list.

Mammoths at the Gates stars Chih, the same story-collecting cleric from the first three novellas, though like the others in the cycle, it stands alone from a plot perspective. But for the first time in the series, Chih is not traveling in search of stories, but is returning home to the Singing Hills Abbey, only to find their mentor dead and the abbey threatened by the deceased’s family members. They want the body, and they have mammoths.

Like all the Singing Hills novellas, it’s short, and it’s beautifully written, this time with a central theme of grief and remembrance. The chief conflict in the book is between various factions pushing to remember the dead in their own way. The clerics have their memories of a mentor and leader, the family have stories of the man before the abbey, and the cleric’s magical neixin companion has her own memory of her former partner. Intertwined through all of it is the threat of physical altercation between the family and the clerics, internal strife among the neixin, and hints of the uncanny as the the spirit of the dead departs.

When compared to my other two reads in this series, I didn’t think the plot threads in Mammoths at the Gate came together quite as smoothly. There’s still a pretty tremendous climax in which nearly every relevant party comes together to share their stories, in the process finding themselves exposed to facets of the departed cleric that they’d never known. It’s an emotionally intense and generally fascinating reflection on the complexity of individuals, the stories we tell, and the way we remember.

But unlike the other novellas, that climax occurs with major plot points left to resolve, and it leaves the secondary climaxes feeling something like afterthoughts. The final chapters certainly serve to tie the loose threads, but after such a powerful and satisfying scene, the closing of the other arcs just feels a little bit clumsy and lacking in tension—even when the risk of being harmed by mammoths is extremely high! They aren’t necessarily bad endings or bad stories, they just don’t match the incredibly high standard set by what came before.

On the whole, it’s a good book with some elements that are truly outstanding. But it feels a little bit less cohesive than the other entries—even the entries that were just story collecting—which draws attention to the variance in quality among the subplots. It’s absolutely worth a read for the reflections on grief and remembrance alone, and it may have my favorite chapter in the entire series, but I found myself wishing I’d been reading a novelette that focused on these aspects and left the mammoths aside entirely. The other storylines are reasonably good, but they dilute some of the excellence.

Recommended if you like: The Singing Hills Cycle, stories about grief and remembrance.

Overall rating: 16 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.

4.5 stars

“The grief rose up like a tide. Chih let it rise, let it wash over the top of their head and into their mouth, their throat, and their lungs, and then it drained away, leaving them spent and exhausted.”

Returning to the Singing Hills world is always a breath of fresh air for me, and this fourth installment was every bit as wonderful as the previous novellas! This one brings Cleric Chih home to the Singing Hills abbey, where they reunite with old friends and encounter new obstacles in the form of royal mammoths and the empire advocates who control them.

This story, though short, packs a punch with themes revolving around grief, familial vs. professional duty, generational change, honoring traditions, and how bittersweet it is to come home after a long time away. Vo’s writing has continued to engage me from beginning to end, and I look forward to the next Singing Hills Cycle novella!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Tor/Forge for providing this advanced ebook!

A short but very sweet novella about grief and memory and how the stories we tell about the people who mean something to us take on lives of their own. I did not know much about the world going in, but I did not feel lost in it at all and could easily follow the story about a community rocked by a death of their elder who attempt to find some kind of understanding and solace in the aftermath of the loss. Absolutely lovely.

I just love this world so much???

I actually cried a little bit while reading Mammoths at the Gates. It was a short novella that, as usual, packed quite a punch. It dealt with grief and memories and remembering and those topics hit a bit too close to home this year.

It was lovely to get a glimpse of Chih’s home, how it had changed, and the few conflicts that came with it. That was something I’d been looking forward to, personally, since the first novella and Nghi Vo did a wonderful job with it.

There was also some action and tension, as we’ve come to expect from this series, and the introduction of some new characters that added much depth to this world. This has always been a series so rich with fantasy elements and it was a fantastic reading experience being able to immerse myself in this story again.

Nghi Vo has done it again. I think this may be my second favourite entry in the series (a very close second to The Empress of Salt and Fortune). Unlike the previous three books in the series, we are not following Chih as they travel the lands in search for stories. Instead, they find themselves back home at the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in years, and we get a glimpse into their past.

This novella deals with themes of grief, change, friendship, and as always, the role of storytelling in all of this. I've loved every entry in this series, but I think this is the only one that gives me the same feeling that I felt when I read Empress for the first time. It's emotional and heartfelt, but there's also a sense of melancholy and nostalgia that I can't quite put my finger on.

I won't say too much since it is only a short novella, and the fourth in the series, but I cannot stress enough how incredible this series is as a whole. Each entry is a standalone of sorts, but they all work together to create this beautiful and lush world, and I am so grateful to be able to spend more time in this world. I've said before that I think the first three books can all be entry points into the series (though I do still recommend reading Empress first), but I would say that this is the first book in the series that truly feels like a sequel that you can't really just go into without having read the previous entries. Another absolutely stunning entry into The Singing Hills Cycle, and one that I think will resonate with anyone who has ever had to deal with loss and grief.

The Singing Hills cycle has come full circle and Chih has at last returned to their home of the Singing Hills abbey. And they are, of course, re-united with the sorely missed Almost Brilliant. Between mammoths of a foreign country at their gates and the sudden death of an old and beloved mentor, Chih has to contend with many crises. Nghi Vo adds yet another touching and thought-provoking novella to the Singing Hills cycle. Keeping in line with the overarching idea of stories, Mammoths At The Gates is a beautifully written tribute to grief, loss, and how stories can shape the perception we have of a person. Through the paths of several characters whose stories become unexpectedly intertwined, Vo explores the idea of ‘knowing’ a person, even if that person has only ever existed in stories. Mammoths is a more subdued and introspective novella than some of the others in the series, and certainly one of the most touching. Overall, I rate this book a 4.5/5.

This was a really fantastic read! I've really enjoyed this series, and this latest installment was a fantastic read! That it's stories that are about a person who Chih was close to before their passing, that this was people mourning the loss of the mentor...it was cathartic.

Well, it mostly. Because before he joined the abbey, he was a guy who had a family. And now that he's dead, his grandchildren are coming around and there's conflict between what people from his old life wants, and what his chosen life is supposed to be in death.

This book does give us a little bit of Chih's backstory, of their life growing up, and how things were like at the Singing Hills abbey. We also learn more about neixin, which was really interesting, to really round out this world that Chih lives in.

That ending though? Yeah, I knew something was happening, between events in the story and the bit in the synopsis about sorrow, but I didn't expect that! But I really enjoyed how things all worked out, it was a bit bittersweet, but grief and loss happen.

This was a fantastic story, and I can't wait for more in this world!

Well, Nghi Vo has gone ahead and outdone herself. This is hands down my favorite of the series so far, and that is saying quite a lot because I loved pretty much all of the stories up to this point. But for me, Mammoths had something special, and it wasn't just the aforementioned mammoths. No, our favorite cleric Chih is heading back to Singing Hills Abbey, where they haven't been in six years. That is a long time, and we have, until this point, only traveled with Chih on the road, never to the abbey.

It is amazing to get to see where Chih came from, who their friends and loved ones are, and how those relationships have changed in their absence. One sad bit of news is that Chih's mentor, Cleric Thien, has passed. Chih is pretty devastated, as you can imagine, because many of their memories include Thien, and they never had a chance to say goodbye. But they are reunited with their close friend Ru, who has not been able to travel as Chih has, and instead made themself a fixture and leader at the abbey. Obviously, things are very different from when last Chih visited, and they have to figure out where exactly they fit in to the new order at the abbey.

I loved all the concepts this story was able to tackle in so few pages. Relationships, grief, growing up, finding one's place, moving forward, they all played such a big part, and were handled beautifully. As always, the writing is perfection, but I was so glad to be able to get so much history and insight into Chih's past, and hopefully, their future as well. I think that going forward, the reader will have such a new appreciation for Chih's life, and we will be able to connect to them in a much deeper way.

Bottom Line: Nailed it. My new favorite in a already very beloved series.

I love this series! They are such fun short reads for when I am feeling like diving into fantasy a little. The world and its characters are very inventive and the stories shorter length does not mean that they at all lack meaning or heart.

This is such a comforting series and this fourth installment is no different. Rather than following cleric Chih as they travel the land in search of stories, we instead see them in their home environment at the monastery of Singing Hills. It was fascinating to see the abbey and its workings, to experience more Neixin with different personalities than the inimitable Almost Brilliant and to see how Chih interacts with their long time friends. Focusing heavily on the power of memory and stories to help the grieving process, I had a wonderful time with this one and will continue to read every book in the series as they come out.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The stories Nghi Vo has told in the Singing Hills novellas have all had a conceit, a neat little framing device that shapes the story into something a little more than just a story. It's one of the best things about the series, and means I go into each new one excited not just to know what happens, but how it's told. In the first, it was framed around found objects, the second a story told by different tellers, the third had unconnected tales that turned out to be connected by the people in them. In Mammoths at the Gates, the fourth in the series, it's stories of a person told by the different people who knew them at their funeral, stories from those who loved them, who think of them fondly, their fellow clerics, their companion and their granddaughters, who knew them only as the best they were... and one that isn't quite so flattering, but no less true.

I read this book one week after my grandmother died.

Normally, I'm not so keen to put quite so much of myself into my reviews as this, but the resonance between the story and what has happened so recently in my own life was impossible to ignore.

My grandmother was... a complicated woman. Rarely a nice one, though more often to people who didn't know her well. The legacy she left us, when she passed, was no less complex. Her will makes plain that she cared very much about lifting some of those who survived her above others, showing her favour and her disdain in equal parts. No matter how much one knows about this when the person is alive, it becomes harder to bear when you realise it's the last thing they leave in the world, the message they want to be seen after they've gone, their last word. As I say, complicated. But part of dealing with that complexity is the family that gathers at the passing, who tell their own stories about her. I haven't seen my aunt - who lives abroad - in years, but we sat in the emptiness of my grandmother's house, her and my mother and me, and naturally, what grew out of that emptiness was stories. Stories the others may not have known, or that saw a complex woman from another side than the one the listener had in their mind, or that revealed hurts she caused that the rest of us simply never knew about.

My mother asked me yesterday, did I want to speak at her funeral? I declined. I don't know how I'd even begin to frame that complexity into something appropriate for speaking publically.

Nghi Vo did.

She begins the funeral with the expected stories, the ones that praised the deceased for the things most prized by the speaker. Patience, compassion, cunning, by turns. They reveal the different sides of the person, as person in the world and later as a cleric, to the surprise of those who only knew one part of them. But the greater surprise comes in the story that is not the best but the worst of their life. The listeners all had to then reframe their knowledge of the deceased, around the discovery that they weren't, as everyone had thought, always quite so wonderful.

That sort of story is so rare, in life and in books. We do not speak ill of the dead. We certainly do not speak ill of the fondly-remembered dead, or those who were good and bad in parts*. But as Vo shows, there is incredible power in remembering the truth of a person, the good and the bad together, an emotional impact that cannot be achieved by simply speaking the kind words, the ones that everyone expects to hear. It was an impact I did not realise I would appreciate quite so much, but I felt it all the way down to my bones as I read it. It hurt, and it helped, to have a story reminding me that we can have complex feelings for our dead, in a time when I needed just that. From a personal perspective, I might even say this is the best of the stories in the series, simply because it has hit me so intimately in my own unsettled emotions.

But even if I step outside this personal impact, it's a story whose themes are bittersweet and beautifully crafted. As well as those of death and mourning and the memories of a person left behind - themes made all the more poignant in a setting full of characters whose entire purpose is their perfect recall - it is also a story of how people change, how parting and returning may bring you back to a different person than the one you left behind. And that in discovering that, you realise you too are different from the person who left. All the Singing Hills books are deeply, inexorably rooted in people and their relationships, but Mammoths at the Gates doubly so. We follow Chih, our cleric protagonist, as they return to the Singing Hills Abbey after their travels, hoping to see again their neixin companion who returned before them, as well as their familiar fellow clerics and old tutors. But they find their best friend suddenly serious and grown up, their neixin now a mother of a fledgling, and much of the abbey gone to a nearby situation that requires their attention. Their home is almost empty, and they have to reckon with the changes against the backdrop of a very present threat - the eponymous mammoths at the gate - whose title drop within a few pages of the opening of the story I particularly appreciated.

But like all the other stories, it isn't really a story about Chih, no matter that we continue to learn about (and love) them through how they approach the stories of other people. And it is no different here - we learn about Chih through how they cope with the changes they bear witness to in their erstwhile best friend, and the stories they hear and react to during the funeral. They are the conduit through which we receive the stories, and like any good medium, they bring with them their own personality to the message. For only novellas, for stories that always spotlight other people, Nghi Vo has done an amazing job of giving us such an insight to the person on the fringes of all those stories, a wry, cheerful, thoughtful, ever so slightly rebellious but ultimately dedicated cleric, one who truly yearns to hear what people tell them, and believes in their duty to keep those stories safe, because the things that happen to the people in their world, even the little things, ultimately matter.

We likewise get those tantalising little glimpses into the world, and as in all the books, we continue to dwell particularly on food. In a book about homecoming and comfort, it feels all the more important to have that there, all the more true to life. Cleric Chih has always been quick to describe what they eat - or want to eat - in all the novellas, and so getting back to the green onion buns, the rice and mustard greens, the salted plums of their home, the things that comfort them against the world, makes you yearn for those foods too, even if you've never tried them yourself. Because they're not described in the way food sometimes is, as vivid sensory experiences, full of taste and smell and almost sensual aesthetics. Instead, food reverts to its emotional self - rice as a balm for the soul, a green onion bun or milk candies as nostalgia, a salted plum as a rare treat. We understand food, as we understand much of the story, through the lens of Chih's experience. Whether or not I would like salted plums, here, they are likeable, and that positioning in the story is, for the moment, more important than my own imaginings of what a salted plum might taste like.

If I were to be fanciful, I might say that all the Singing Hills books are a thesis on the importance of bias for the narrator in a story. Because they would not be what they are - which is wonderful - if they weren't constantly coloured by the perspective from which we see them. Whether it is Chih and their experiences, or the framing devices that shift from book to book, each of these stories is as much the medium as the message, the two woven so thoroughly together that extraction would make each meaningless except as part of the whole. And Mammoths at the Gates is no different in that.

But likewise, for me, it is also now inextricable from my own experiences, and my own bias. I cannot but view it through the lens of my own mourning, I cannot but find myself in the story, and be comforted. I declined to speak at my grandmother's funeral, and ultimately, so does Chih decline to speak at their mentor's. I find a form of fellowship in that; I feel seen. And it is a testament to how well the story is told that such resonance is so easy to grasp, and so poignant.

*On twitter, we quite frequently speak ill of the terrible dead, but twitter is its own little microcosm, and I don't want to use it as a pattern for society at large. God no.

3.5 stars

This one felt, to me, lacking in the lyricism that makes this series so special. However, it makes up for that lack mostly by letting Chih finally be a character rather than an avenue for stories. We see Chih confront their own memories and the ways their mind has locked down on past moments, resisting change (even as they themself have changed and grown through their travels). The story is full of themes of never knowing a person truly and also of memories and moments only being a fraction of a whole being- how a person can be many things to many people (or even the same single person).

I liked that the central conflict in the story was messy, and I wish we got to spend more time with the mammoth rider and the advocate, because I think they were very interesting and we saw only a tiny sliver of their characters.

The Singing Hills Cycle Novella series already has its fourth installment. And I think this might be my favorite.

This time Chih returns back to the Singing Hills Abbey. Happy to return to the people that she knows and to Almost Brilliant, she instead runs into mammoths at the gates. A dispute about a death and a body disguising a whole lot of grief.

Because that is what this story is about. Grief. About all the different ways someone meant something to someone else. The good and the bad. Accepting the choices someone has made, even after death. And Nghi Vo manages to pack a lot of feelings into just 128 pages.

But I also loved seeing the abbey, the memories and relationships that Chih has with everyone. Like her childhood friendship. A friendship that was always solid but that has been changed because of their time apart and their change in status. It is something that Chih has to come to grips with.

We also see and learn more about the Nexus. Before we only saw Almost Brilliant. In this installment Chih returns alone from her trip to the abbey. Almost Brilliant was pregnant and gave birth to a new Nexus. We get to see the aviary and their nesting. But most of all the dynamic between the different Nexus' and how they also how their own morals and unwritten rules about how their society should be. What happens when someone responds different?

Like I said, Nghi Vo manages to pack so much in so few pages. These novella's are real gems to read.

4.75 STARS

CW: death (of a loved one), grief, violence, mention of domestic abuse

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I completely and utterly loved this story. It's the fourth installment in a series of novellas in the Singing Hills Cycle about Cleric Chih who returns home to Singing Hills in this volume. It says the novellas can be read in any order but in my opinion it is only profitable to one's reading experience to stick to the publication order.

I can honestly say that while all novellas in this series are amazing, this one is definitely my favorite. It talks about so many things that hit close to home for me and does so in a lyrical, serene but nevertheless interesting and exciting way. It's a perfect mix of philosophical and action-packed. Cleric Chih returns home to Singing Hills for the first time in four years and with this return come a mixture of emotions: grief because their mentor Cleric Thien has passed away in the interim of their travels, grief for friends who have changed and become a different person, joy to be back home. It rang so true to my own experiences of returning home after being away for some time.

I loved the reflection on the person who has passed away, the realization that there were multitudes to the person and that one can have multiple version of themself over the years and in different contexts. That along with the importance and influence of memory on grief was expertly interwoven by the author.

Another highlight was getting to read so much about the neixin. I've loved Almost Brilliant in the other stories as well and I loved seeing the neixin's context within Singing Hills and their purpose there.

Overall, I deeply implore anyone to give this a shot. I'd recommend reading the previous three novellas first but if you don't feel like it, dive straight into this one (there might be some context missing though, so be aware of that). I hope there will be more future releases of this series because I've grown so fond of Chih over the course of these four novellas and I want to see more.