The Empress of Salt and Fortune

What a beautiful novella. Vo creates an entire world in just 87 pages. Elegant, quiet, and yet ringing with stories as yet untold in this universe and with these characters. For a story told primarily in flashbacks with the endings of most of the characters known in the first few pages, it's also surprisingly suspenseful. Thanks for my book club for introducing me to this author.

Short and beautiful and lovely and lyrical and sad and sweet and excellent.

Honestly, this novella was maybe a 3-star read but it all came together very nicely around the last 25%, so I'd bump it up to 3.5 to 4 stars. I enjoyed the setting, which is a sort of amalgamation of East Asian cultures (primarily Chinese/Vietnamese, I think), thought it was a little bogged down by an overwhelming amount of details and a slight excess of flowery prose, but ended off satisfyingly with a tinge of melancholy and optimism.

Chih is a cleric (using the “they/them” pronoun, which I have so far found to be sadly lacking in the books I've read) traveling with a hoopoe (a kind of feathered bird) named Almost Brilliance. They meet an old lady in the town of Thriving Fortune, who introduces herself as Rabbit, and begins to tell them snippets of her memories as a young serving girl waiting upon the late Empress In-yo. Also known as the Empress of Salt and Fortune, In-yo was married to the Emperor Sung as a young girl but later sent into exile in Thriving Fortune and kept under close watch by the Minister of the Left. Despite the adverse circumstances, she plots an uprising and takes down her enemies.

This novella isn't so much concerned about the actual action of the plot. If you're looking for military strategy or actual details on how In-yo managed her coup, you'd probably be disappointed. Instead, it presents In-yo's apparently quiet life in exile presented through the eyes of a trusted and personally close maidservant, and you are invited to piece together the puzzle of the politics from there. There is more focus on the relationships built within In-yo's precarious personal circle than there really is on the coup that eventually changed the course of her dynasty.

There is a clear feminist theme to the book as well. We see the indignities that In-yo had to put up with, despite being an Empress, simply because she is female, therefore always secondary to the Emperor and his male line, and also a foreigner, therefore always secondary to everyone else. Her story is as old as time - foreign empresses, despite their royal status, have barely been treated as actual personages in most of human history.

The book also acknowledges that though empresses are quite often a mere footnote in history (if they are even recorded at all), how many more nameless and unknown women have been through worse, or sacrificed more for the greater good? There is almost an optimistic revisionist element to the book, where the author imagines an alternative when a patriarchal monarchy is overthrown by a matriarchal one, and that the throne remains stably in the hands of an Empress.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is the story of an exiled bride who became a conqueror, as told by her closest confidante. It is simply but poetically told. I think what's important to impress is that while this is about a woman overthrowing a regime, if you're looking for either exciting military fantasy or even a tightly wound court drama, you should go elsewhere. This is more of a quiet character study, it's about the strength of relationships that are formed between people who are discarded by those in power, and it's about how often the most important element to claiming power is patience.

I liked it well enough. But it felt like something more to fill the time than to get lost in.

I think I want to dig into more novellas after reading The Empress of Salt and Fortune. I've only read a few novellas before but this one felt above and beyond a lot of other longer length books. Even though the setting felt really familiar to other time period fantasies, it was still really evocative and the main locations felt lived in. The format of the story was also excellent with the story of the Empress dropped through the items Rabbit remembered her by. I couldn't help but wonder what the story would've been like if it had been told during the events rather than after but I'm happy with it either way.

Took me a little while to adjust to the structure of the story but once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. A remarkable amount of story in so little space, and nothing feels cut or skipped.

3.5 stars

An interesting novella that explores the tale of two empresses through the medium of oral histories passed down from an older generation to a younger one. As a story this could've easily filled a whole novel with deception, intrigue, revenge and a splash of magic here and there.

It borders a little on being an info-dump - and if this were a preface to a full novel or series then it certainly would qualify as one - which made me feel it was, at times, a little dry. Cleric Chih is the protagonist but they aren't really developed; they just listen, which is their purpose, yes, but I would've like to know more about them as opposed to looking over the shoulder of this very passive character.

3 ⭐️

Obviously are reviews are subjective, but I want to emphasize that all my ‘issues' with this book are purely personal preference. I think this was well-written and it is clearly beloved by many! I just didn't really jive with the writing style, it's very much a story-inside-a-story and I had trouble parsing it all out. The prose is truly beautiful though, and the characters are all distinct and interesting. I did feel like a lot of the relationships were implied rather than spelled out; I tagged this as ‘polyamorous' and don't even know if that's canon but it is how I read it personally.

I'll definitely be recommending this even if it didn't quite work for me, and while I don't intend to continue the series I'll still be keeping an eye out for Vo's future works.

Lyrically odd and engaging. This was a quick read but the story is one that will stick in my mind.

This little novella felt very whimsical from the start in its storytelling and atmosphere - Cindy Kay's narration in the audiobook no doubt amplified these feelings. I was immediately drawn in by the interactions with the mysterious Grandmother, but the tale turned into something unexpected. The book introduces you to three characters and intersperses other stories in between their interactions - the tones somewhat felt like it was two different books. While being swept away by some beautiful storytelling in between the interactions of the three characters, I really just wanted more of the latter. The end was surprisingly satisfying to me however and I plan to read the next one, even if it follows the same formula of the first, which I suspect it will. Highly recommend as an audiobook.

This small book packs a lot into it's 118 pages. The story unfolds the way a mystery does, reads like a fantasy book, and contains the lyrical prose of contemporary fiction. I really enjoyed how the story was told; an old woman to a younger person whose job it is to collect stories and histories.

I didn't read this digitally, so here are some quotes I tabbed:

“You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.”

“Sometimes the things we see do not make sense until many years have gone by. Sometimes it takes generations. We are taught to be content with that.”

“Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.”

“The Abbey at Singing Hills would say that if a record cannot be perfect, it should at least be present. Better for it to exist than for it to be perfect and only in your mind.”

“Submission but only to the truth.”

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.”

Very disappointed because the book description piqued my interest. The book is basically someone recalling events to a cleric. That took all the intensity and all the urgency out of the story. How wonderful and thrilling would it have been if we could have read about the events while they were happening, all the twists and turns and political machinations? Then again, I guess the story itself didn't have much meat to it so it would probably wouldn't have worked, but I'm still sorely disappointed that we got this lukewarm retelling rather than a novel of fantastic politic intrigue. It would have been nice to marvel at the intellect and wit of a character who must navigate a pit of enemies.

Enjoyable on the first read, but really rewards re-reading.

אולי זו לא באמת נובלה של 4 כוכבים, אבל אין לי לב לתת לה פחות, לא כשהכתיבה כל כך יפה ועשירה. יש הרגשה שמאחורי ההצצה הקצרה שמאפשר לנו הספר, מאחורי כל מילה שבו, מסתתר עולם חי וקסום עם היסטוריה ומיתוסים שחבויים בו בכל פינה ומחכים שרק נגלה אותם. ממש יכולתי לדמיין את האגם שבוהק באדום, ואת קוראי העתידות ומשחקי הקוביות בשווקים ההומים, ואת המגע של בגדי המשי של הנשים בהרמון.

אז למה בכל זאת קצת פחות? כי יש תחושה של החמצה. כי יש כל כך הרבה אלמנטים מסקרנים שמוזכרים במילה ואז פשוט נעלמים, אבל יותר מכך, הסיפור מסונן ומנופה עבור הקורא. זה לא סיפור שאנחנו שומעים, וגם לא הסיפור של הדמות הראשונה שאנו פוגשים, וגם לא סיפור על דמות אחרת שהדמות הזו פוגשת, אלא הכל twice removed - סיפור בתוך סיפור בתוך סיפור, אנחנו קוראים על הנזירים שפוגשים את המשרתת שמספרת להם על הקיסרית. זה מבנה מעניין שתורם לתחושת האגדתיות בספר, אבל מקשה מאוד להתחבר לאירועים באופן רגשי, והדמויות מוגדרות רק לפי התפקיד שלהן. היה רק קטע אחד, אולי, שבו הסיפור גרם לי לתחושה עזה כלשהי, ואני יכולה רק לדמיין כמה עוצמתי זה היה יכול להיות אם היינו מסוגלים לחוש את הדמויות לעומקן ובאמת להבין את הכאב, העבר, האופי שלהן.

בכל מקרה, זה ספר קצר וקסום, ועדיין מומלץ.

I seem to have a new found love for novellas and when I saw the cover for this one, I was completely blown away and purchased it immediately. And if there's one thing I can say, it's that the book is as gorgeous as it's cover.

The writing style of this book took some getting used to but once I got the hang of it, I felt lost within the beautiful words. It's very atmospheric and I loved how the author was able to evoke such wonderful images in my head through her words. The story is also told like snippets from history, each event corresponding to an object from the time; and I found this style to be very unique. This is also the story about a long dead empress told by one of her servants, and I loved the way it highlights the important roles played by forgotten women during a revolution.

True to it's promotions, this is an exquisite Asian inspired fantasy tale about royalty, feminism, friendship and empire; written beautifully and with great representation and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves feminist fantasy. Don't be disheartened if you are unsure initially - just push through a bit and I have a feeling you'll fall in love with it as much as I did.

This one was a little hard to get into at first because the world was so unfamiliar, but in the end, it was beautiful. It really drives home both the strength of women and the value of history - even of objects that don't initially seem important.