Really interesting examination of grief and how people change over time, I also really liked the commentary on memory and identity.

Not my favorite of these, but probably my second favorite after the first one.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this novella, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have been absolutely enchanted with this series since I read the first one in quarantine. They're short, beautifully written, and with interesting themes running throughout. It gives enough time to explore the ideas encapsulated in each novella, but always manages to leave me wanting more. The world, the characters, and the stories are fascinating to me.

This is the first time we see the Singing Hills and also the first time we see Chih interact with other clerics. It's a story with exploring grief and legacy with some of our favorite characters returning and nods to previous ones for the eagle-eyed.

Overall, it is a lovely time and I can't wait for the next one. They've become the reading highlight of my year.

Thank you NetGalley and TorDotCom for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Another great installment to the Singing Hills Cycle. This one focuses on grief, loss, and change. Varying people are grieving the death of Cleric Thieh and are finding ways to give remembrance to them. Nghi Vo has finally brought the readers to the Singing Hills Abbey (hence the name of this standalone series). As a reader who has read every installment thus far, I have been looking forward to this and didn't disappoint. We get to see Cleric Chih come back home and reunite with Almost Brilliant while navigating various losses: Cleric Thieh's death and a change in Cleric Ru, their best friend prior to leaving.

Change is a major theme in this installment. While you can read each novella separate and without any order, I think there is something special in reading these novellas in order of publication. I am already invested in how Chih feels in returning home and feeling a little lost when things are different than what they were. I got to learn more about niexins, the species that alway remembers. Myriad Virtues was the niexin who was close to Cleric Thieh and seeing her grief them was interesting to see and quite sad since most of the characters couldn't understand how she grieved.

Overall, I would always recommend this series to most fantasy readers who want to experience a unique world with carrying stories as the forefront of a standalone series.

Content Warnings: grief, death, death of parent, domestic abuse, animal death, animal cruelty, transphobia (minor), ableism (minor), bullying (minor)

If you are a fan of the Singing Hills Cycle series then you’ll be happy to know that a new book is coming out, Mammoths at the Gate. This is fantasy novella series featuring a Cleric who is just traveling the world and gathering stories and this is the newest entry. In this one, they return to a monastery just in time to witness the funeral rights of a teacher and the family who want the teachers remains returned. Moreover, there are two mammoths outside the gates of the Abbey with two riders claiming they are the teachers granddaughters. So lots of extra lore here, more bits to the story that rounded out our development of our Cleric. I’ve read the first 3 of this series and really liked this continuation.

Unfortunately I had to DNF since it's the fourth book in a series and not having red the first 3 books it wasn't making much sense for me to read this. (Didn't know when I requested, my bad).

this is a story about grief and mourning, about what purpose means and how to carry it, about the specific sadness of coming home and discovering the ways it's changed and hasn't in your absence, about carrying loved ones through your life and the hardship and beauty of changing alongside them, and also a sometimes funny sometimes action-packed narrative featuring mammoths and smoke bombs made out of horse sh*t and spicy peppers and talking birds.

also it's 100 pages long.

that all felt shallow at some points and i wish it spent more doing all of it, but it still did more than a lot of books that are twice as long!

** A copy of Mammoths at the Gates was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review **

Another welcome addition to the Singing Hills Cycle - this one filled with love, grief and memory.

Any fan of the Singing Hills Cycle has been waiting to finally see the Abbey. While this could have been a simple story of explaining the abbey, instead we get a powerful story of grief, loss, love and what it means to come home. This is a story I will be coming back to again and again.

This series has been such a joy for me. Each one stands mostly on it's own, and here Chih is back home. At it's heart, this is a story about how we all process grief and loss. And it's a beautiful version of that exploration. Maybe the loss is a person we respected, maybe the loss is a friendship that has changed over time, or maybe the loss is for the person we used to be. Vo continues to tell tales exquisitely, with that same touch that makes everything feel like a dream we collectively had and are just now remembering.

Story-gatherer Chih returns to the Singing Hills in this fourth volume in the series, Mammoths at the Gates, by Nghi Vo. We previously visited Chih and their neixin companion Almost Brilliant on their adventures around the empire. Their mission was to gather as many stories and as much information as they could to bring back to the Singing Hills, to save for posterity. But every journey has to end someday and it’s been years since Chih was home.

Chih no doubt thought that a few things would change in their time away but they never would have pictured returning home only to find a pair of mammoths and representatives of the Empire at the monastery’s gates. Once they sneak make their way through the gates, with no little trouble, they learn why the Singing Hills has been graced with a visit. The imperial officials are on a family errand: to collect the body of their grandfather before Chih’s order inters him in the monastery. Years prior, this grandfather absconded from his family and joined the Singing Hills. Everywhere this elder went, they made an impression. Unfortunately, those impressions—and the elder’s long life—mean that both parties have a good claim to be his resting place.

Chih plays peacemaker for the acting head of the monastery (the official head and most of the rest of the order have taken off on a rare archaeological opportunity) and the imperial visitors, while grieving the beloved elder and also trying to figure out what is going on with the elder’s neixin and the fractious colony of birds. It’s a lot but Chih is no stranger to either diplomacy or dealing with emotions and mysteries.

Mammoths at the Gates is brief (like all the books in this series) and (also like all the other books in this series) packs a big emotional wallop along with a rich history and culture inspired by medieval China and southeastern Asia. I’ve really enjoyed this series; my only complaint is that I want more of everything! Each book makes me wish that I could sequester myself in the Singing Hills archive and read anything I could get my hands on. I very much appreciate the order’s philosophy that all knowledge is worth having.

I don't want to say too much as this is the fourth installment and a novella- but this is probably my favorite yet! It was so beautiful I can't promise it won't have you in tears. How accurately Vo captures the feelings of grief, and change, and friendships, and the effects of time in such a short amount of pages is absolutely remarkable. Chih has literally my whole freaking heart.

Mammoths at the Gates is the fourth novella in Nghi Vo's "Singing Hills" cycle of Novellas. The Singing Hills novellas all follow Cleric Chih and their neixin (a talking intelligent hoopoe bird who never forgets) named Almost Brilliant as they go around this fantasy world and collect and tell stories, whether they be tales or histories. So the first novella (The Empress of Salt and Fortune) dealt with the story of the rise of an outsider Empress through the telling of her companion; the second novella (When the Tiger Came down the Mountain) tells a romance between a tiger woman and a human...but has the story told from both the perspective of humans and from the perspective of tigers; the third novella (Into the Riverlands) was a wuxia tale of martial artists and kung fu tales seeming in the past...but maybe in the present as well? Each tale was really well done, often very fun, and award worthy, as Cleric Chih's encounters with stories allowed Vo to touch serious and fun themes in different genres.

Mammoths at the Gates flips things a little - where Cleric Chih is usually a passive observer, here the novella focuses on events and people Chih actually has experienced: mainly the life of one of their mentors at the Singing Hills Monastery, who has now passed away, and whose body is now wanted by the mentor's blood relatives, who are threatening to storm the monastery with the titular mammoths. But the focus flip doesn't prevent this novella from being a tale about stories, and about a number of fascinating things - grief, how we see people from different (good and bad) lights, and how people change over time in ways others never could have anticipated. It isn't my favorite novella in the series, but it's another very effective one.



Quick Plot Summary:

For the first time in a long time Cleric Chih has come home - to the monastery at Singing Hills. After years of traveling, Chih has returned to record the tales they have gathered...and to reunite with their Neixin, Almost Brilliant, who had returned to the monastery to have a child.

But to Chih's surprise, they find the monastery besieged by a pair of women soldiers armed with a squad of combat Mammoths. The monastery's neutrality and Imperial charter should prevent it from being the subject of such an attack, but the women are here for a personal reason: their grandfather was Chih's mentor and has now passed away, and they demand to take his body back for burial, rather than to leave it in the custody of the monastery. And to make matters stranger, the Monastery is mostly deserted due to the scholars all being away to investigate a once in a lifetime find and Chih's childhood friend Ru is the only one left to be in charge.

To prevent rash actions from leading to disaster, Chih will have to find a middle road between a stubborn young cleric who isn't who Chih remembers, a greiving older Neixin, and a pair of young women with their own memories of a person Chih once considered their cherished mentor....


Thoughts: Usually, Singing Hills novellas deal with the stories people tell in places Chih visits, and the way stories conflict and interact with each other is a center of the novella. Here, in this novella, we see not only stories interacting with each other - as Chih, Ru, the two young women Vi In Yee and Tui In Hao, and the Neixin Myriad Virtues all have their own stories (good and bad) about the late Cleric Thien - but also how the images people have themselves and others interact with those stories.

So for Ru, Chih finds that the cleric who wanted to adventure with them has become a person who wants to be a leader of the monastery in the vein of Thien while in the two young women, one of them wants to honor the grandfather she only knew through a glorious story of triumphant justice, while the other has heard negative things about that grandfather and mostly wants to prevent her sister from doing rash things. In Myriad Virtues, we see how grief has made a neixin wish to stop being who she is, and how to stop remembering...requiring a transformation of her own. And then in Almost Brilliant and her baby daughter, the incredibly cute and excitable Chiep, we see how Chih's own story has impacted others in ways Chih couldn't have expected.

All of this combines to a fascinating story I don't want to spoil or go too deep into about how life events shape people, how grief affects us all in different ways, and how people grow and change in ways both good and bad. This is a story about life and growing up to impact others, and it's very good. Recommended, as usual for this series.

In Mammoths and the Gate, Nghi Vo turns the readers attention to the stories of the clerics themselves. This shift came as a surprise to me. I was prepared to be told a story alongside Chih that would later be entered into the Singing Hills archive; instead, I read a story about the archives as it happened around Chih. While unexpected, the story was incredibly compelling. Vo gave insight into where Chih has come from and why they do what they do. I especially appreciated learning more about the birds of Singing Hills. These "people but not humans" teach the clerics and Interlopers a lesson about grief that they could not have learned on their own.

While the other books in the Singing Hills Cycle spoke more to me, this fourth installment added a depth I didn't know was missing. I look forward to seeing where Chih travels next!

I was very excited to be approved for an ARC of Nghi Vo’s latest installment in The Singing Hills Cycle. This adventure sees the traveling cleric, Chih, return to Singing Hills abbey, and I was all for the change of scenery. It meant getting back to one of my favorite characters, the neixin named Almost Brilliant. And, while the world at large in this series is fascinating, I’ve always kind of wanted a story set at the abbey—since it was a pivotal part of Chih’s background.

This novella was everything I was hoping it would be. It still had the nested story format, but I liked how Chih was far closer to this conflict and some of the history—rather than only an observer—since the focus was on a fellow cleric who they were once close to (who had passed away). It was a messy and sensitive situation, especially where tempers and mammoths are involved. In spite of its short length, I appreciated the emotional depth that was present in the story. It’s one of the aspects that the series has excelled at since its beginning. Again, there weren’t the most pages here. But it wasn’t necessary, since, like the other novellas in The Singing Hills Cycle series, it was easy to care about and understand the perspective of even the new characters that were introduced.

Mammoths at the Gate, has reaffirmed my love for this series, its characters, and the stories within the story.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Tordotcom Publishing) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review!

In this fourth installment of the novella series, The Singing Hills Cycle, Cleric Chih takes a break from wandering and collecting stories to instead return home to the Singing Hills Abbey. When they arrive they learn that their mentor, Cleric Thien, has died and their granddaughters have arrived seeking to claim the body to bury themselves.

All of the entries in The Singing Hills Cycle have come with a distinct feel to them, influenced by the people Chih meets and the kinds of stories they share. While there are still stories to be shared in Mammoths at the Gates, what sets this entry apart is how much we learn about The Singing Hills Abbey, Cleric Chih’s order, and the neixin, the birds who partner and travel with clerics and have perfect memories. As a fan of the series, this made Mammoths at the Gates a particularly compelling read for me. I think it also makes this volume a particularly good starting point for the series as well, especially for readers who might be uncomfortable with how some novellas throw you into complex worlds with less explanations than they are used to.

Imgur Link goes to Instagram graphic scheduled for September 5th
Blog Post goes live September 5th
Youtube Review should be live August 17th or 22nd

**TL;DR:** While not my favorite in the Singing Hills Cycle I still think this is a valuable story in the series, giving us a closer look at the order and it's inner workings

I'm a big fan of the Singing Hills cycle featuring Cleric Chi and their travels gathering stories. The Tiger Came Down the Mountain is one of my favorite novellas I've read in a long time, and the stories are so vibrant that I was super excited to get to Mammoths at the Gates. Perhaps that excitement was a little too much, my expectations too high for this installment as it is definitely the weakest I've read so far in the series.

This is a story about grief in a way. But a removed kind of grief. Chi returns in time to witness the funeral rights of a teacher from the monastery and the family that want their remains returned. The conflict arises in the shared grief, but differing stories the two groups have of the deceased individual. We get snippets of history with Chi and their old friend who is the acting leader. We also see grief over the loss of childhood and the friendships that change and evolve as we age. All this was obvious but it simply didn't click for me. Perhaps a longer story would have carried these themes better? More of the story telling aspect (as we only got that briefly at the end)?

The ending did little to help the story, feeling as if the author had written themselves in a corner. Magic was used as the 'get out of jail free card' solving everyone's problems. Simply not my favorite. I still enjoyed my time with the Cleric, I still loved seeing more of Singing Hills. I think perhaps go into this one prepared more for a quieter, slower, and darker version of these novellas and you'll have better expectations

Mammoth at the Gates is the fourth entry in the world of the Singing Hills by Nghi Vo. Although I have read them in publication order, you can pick up any of the books out of order as they can stand on their own. In this instalment, we follow our main character Cleric Chih as they return to their home of Singing Hills Abbey to find one of their old mentors, Cleric Thien, has passed away. However, more heartache ensues as there are two mammoths outside the gates of Singing Hills Abbey with two riders claming they are the granddaughters of Cleric Thien - and that his body is for them to take away and bury.

This was a strong story about grief, friendship and coming home after a long time to find it completely different. The discussions about grief and mourning were so powerful and unlike anything I’ve ever read before.

This novella stands apart from the others because we aren’t travelling - we have returned back to where Chih came from and we’ve heard about Singing Hills Abbey so much from the previous stories and we finally get to see it here. We learn so much more about the world and in particular about the fantastical birds in the Abbey that record memories; neixins.

I really love this series and I love our gender non-conforming main character Chih and their avian companion. The writing was compelling and magic with a poignant story.

This novella is just as intriguing as the title suggests! It's too lyrical to be adorable, too smooth to be heart-pounding, too richly layered to be easily dismissed. It's a cup of warm tea with a lingering kick of ginger.

What's it about? Doesn't matter. It's so much more than the story.

My new favorite book in the singing hills cycle!

I LOVED this one. We get to follow our favorite cleric as they return home to the singing hills abbey, only to find that there are mammoths at the gates!

Every book in this series has something poignant to say about storytelling, and this book was no different. One of the central themes of this novella is the role that storytelling has in grief. Because our cleric is returning home and we are hearing stories told about their mentor, this book has a very nostalgic feel to it. I loved a lot of things about this book, but mostly I loved how much more we got to know our cleric and the people who are important to them. It really is an intimate understanding of our main character through their relationships with others and the stories and memories that are told to remember one life.

I read this one on a plane and it made the time absolutely fly by. A lot of emotional impact for such a short book in the best way. Can't wait to see what this author does next.

Nghi Vo does it again! Beautifully crafted representation of a gender non conforming lead who is just themselves, living their life. It's not often that we get such simplicity in queer representation, but the fourth installment in this series of novellas is just perfect. You definitely don't have to read them in order either. This is not a coming out story or a face all the -phobias or the -isms. We just have Cleric Chih (they/them) and their avian companion Almost Brilliant in their ventures to witness and record history through collecting and recording stories from those they meet out in the world. Exploring memory, identity, power, cultural diversity, and perspective, these novellas capture the beauty and complexity of oral traditions.

For fans of Psalm for the Wild Built (Becky Chambers) or What Moves The Dead (T. Kingfisher), who write similarly sweet and simple ungendered representation.