skygiants | (no subject)

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, an extremely recent novella by Nghi Vo, is more or less specifically targeted to appeal to me in several ways, being as it is:

- the secret history of an unwanted royal wife's secret rebellion and rise to power
- as told through the perspective of her most trusted handmaiden
- to a historian/archivist who is taking an oral history of the handmaiden's memories around various Significant Artifacts as they catalog them in the empress' home of exile!

'wait,' you may say, at this juncture, 'that sounds like two frame stories? that's a lot of frame story for one relatively small novella?' And: okay, yes, perhaps, but also, if what you're interested in is history and historiography and memory and narratives of empire, in my personal opinion it is fine and OK to have a high frame story::actual story ratio (see also: specifically targeted to appeal to my personal interests and enjoyment. If I could change anything I would add even another frame story and have a layer of scholarly commentary and footnotes and that's probably why I'm not in charge of changing things.)

Anyway, I enjoyed it very much and would absolutely recommend; it's a big scope for a little book but at this time, when I don't actually have much attention span for long and meaty books, I would actually rank the fact that it's a mosaic of a story told in curated glimpses and vignettes as more of a pro than a con. Also, beautifully written!

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Oh BOY this sounds super relevant to my interests!

I don't know how you do it but your reviews always say such USEFUL things about books. It does have a high frame story to actual story ratio! In a very enjoyable way!

I just read this last week! I really enjoyed it for the same reasons you did -- framing devices, the empress and the handmaiden's relationship, every instance of people and traditions unvalued/unappreciated by the empire being used in the rebellion. I *did* wish this was a whole novel instead of a novella, because some events would have hit harder given more page space devoted to fleshing out certain relationships, but it does mostly work and there is a sequel coming, so overall I'm pretty satisfied.

Yay! I just got this and will move it up my list.

if what you're interested in is history and historiography and memory and narratives of empire, in my personal opinion it is fine --Agreed! I'll look for it and perhaps even overcome inertia and actually *get* it.

Edited (correcting strange typo) 2020-05-09 03:39 (UTC)

This sounds delightful!

If I could change anything I would add even another frame story and have a layer of scholarly commentary and footnotes and that's probably why I'm not in charge of changing things.

"The further scholarly discussion of the in-universe academic work": Exchange fic request?

this sounds FASCINATING.

*adds to goodreads*

a.) yeah I think it would be!

b.) hey it's good to see you back on the dw! :D

aw gosh thank you, that is one of the nicest comments I've received!

lol yes I suspect I know the event you are thinking of and more space to making that rellationship significant would perhaps not have gone amiss. I'm so curious about what will be dealt with in the sequel!

I hope you enjoy it! :D

I've actually been doing more impulse-purchasing of books than I otherwise would these days ... "it's supporting local businesses!" I announce cheerfully to myself, placing another giant order (and indeed that was how I acquired this book to begin with.)

I really enjoyed it!

DEFINITELY a worthwhile Yuletide query.

It's taken my adult life to build up to a habit of buying books--I only really started when I started having friends who were writers (before then I only ever read things from the library and only bought things when I loved them Best of All... but I realized as an adult that I had to actually, y'know, support the people doing the writing. Since my own dad was a writer, you would have thought that would have sunk in earlier, but...)

And now, I have a simultaneous desire to support All the Things and then a paralysis of choice. But this seems like a good one!

I hope you enjoy it if you read it!

I think Tor sometimes prices their novellas too high, but other than that I totally agree with you about the trend of series-of-short-novellas.

I seem to be for now! I don't know how long that will last, but it's been kind of nostalgic and comforting, and it's nice to check in on people.

By the way, have you read Jane Yolen's Alta books? I don't remember them super well and I suspect I'd have some frustrations with them now, but I remember them being the first books I read that really played with meta-narrative (folklore) and meta-meta-narrative (scholarly commentary) and different forms of story and that made an impression on me.

I found the novella beautiful and spellbinding, so I'm glad I read the comments to find out there's a sequel!! :D

Considering the broad topics and great sweeps of history, I found the novella's spare but evocative prose perfectly suited. Loved, loved the worldbuilding and the characters.

I see Tor using silkpunk to describe it as well. Which was also used for JY Yang's Tensorate series which I can see has already been recced.

Yeah, I thought it honestly did a really good job telling a large story in a small space, through outlines and anecdotes - much the same way any history is known fifty years later, when you've really only got the edges of it. I also am excited for the sequel!

My general rule to myself has been 'buy it if a.) you specifically want to support the author b.) if you know you're going to want to lend it out to people c.) if you know it's un-library-able; otherwise library it,' which means I still end up library-ing the vast majority of things ... but pandemic time have shifted everything up into Category A!

I read them but ages ago, in college, when I liked frame stories and meta-meta-narratie but did not love them the same way I do now; I'd quite like to give them a re-try sometime and see what I make of them.

I'd be super interested in your thoughts! I should probably reread them myself....

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