Story within a story set in fantasy Asia
3 stars
This is a novella in the same universe the author introduced in The Empress of Salt and Fortune. It is propelled by the details of worldbuilding which has been laid down. There are talking polymorphing tigers, mammoth cavalry fighters, ongoing strife between fantasy northern and southern realms, and a reverence for tales told as oral traditions. In this episode, the human characters are cornered by a trio of menacing tigers far from help. To buy time for themselves, they begin a storytelling exchange with episodes from the human point of view immediately rebutted by the same episode from the tigers' point of view. The story within a story is a kind of romance between human and tiger. Emotions ran high as the tale goes on and before the evening is over it is looking precarious for the human characters of the frame story. But ... there was a literal …
This is a novella in the same universe the author introduced in The Empress of Salt and Fortune. It is propelled by the details of worldbuilding which has been laid down. There are talking polymorphing tigers, mammoth cavalry fighters, ongoing strife between fantasy northern and southern realms, and a reverence for tales told as oral traditions. In this episode, the human characters are cornered by a trio of menacing tigers far from help. To buy time for themselves, they begin a storytelling exchange with episodes from the human point of view immediately rebutted by the same episode from the tigers' point of view. The story within a story is a kind of romance between human and tiger. Emotions ran high as the tale goes on and before the evening is over it is looking precarious for the human characters of the frame story. But ... there was a literal mammoth in the room when things all came to a head abruptly.
Good novellas can suggest large arcs without containing them. Since this came out in 2020 four (and soon five) further novellas in the same universe have been written by this author. Will I read any of the others? I might, if one just falls into my hands, but I did not love the outlines of the fictional world enough to want to seek them out intentionally.
