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 honoring 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.
CONTRIBUTOR(S): Cindy Kay (Narrator)
PUBLISHER: Tordotcom
YEAR: 2023
LENGTH: 128 pages (2 hours 54 minutes)
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy
RECOMMENDED: Highly
Queer Rep Summary: Genderqueer/Nonbinary Main Character(s).
Holding space for grief, memory, and transformation, MAMMOTHS AT THE GATES finds the cleric Chih back at Singing Hills, right as tensions rise after the death of a beloved cleric who lived the first forty years of their life as a very different person. In their grief, the cleric’s granddaughters are at the Abbey to demand their grandfather’s body, no matter what the cleric would have wished in life.
The Singing Hill Cycle seems to take place chronologically in the order they have been published, but each book is written to be able to stand on its own and can easily be read in any arrangement. I was concerned that the fourth book would not manage this quite as well as the first three, but I need not have worried. While I think it's more satisfying to read a story of Chih returning home after reading three books with them elsewhere, it just creates space for a different feeling across the books to read them in a different sequence. The fungible nature of these stories means that it will still make sense, and be differently impactful but no less meaningful.
This also gives a fuller accounting of the Nation, the sapient birds who are the living recorders of stories at the Abbey, accompanying the clerics on their archival travels. Almost Brilliant was present in two of the previous books, but this time there are several other Nation who are important to the narrative. I like how this finally gives a sense of Chih’s home, and some of their childhood, as shown through conversations, memories, and stories. Beginning with the other cleric's death, it’s an exploration of grief, of leaving space for someone to have been many things to many people, not requiring any of them to be a lie. The granddaughters with their army and mammoths have understandable reasons to want something which they can never be granted: a way to reclaim their sense of connection to this person who has been a story all their life, and which an Abbey they do not really understand has claimed in death.
If you like this you may like:
- Night Shine by Tessa Gratton
Moderate CW for grief, violence, death.
Minor CW for self harm, war.
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