Listened to the audiobook with Cindy Kay – good narrator as with the previous instalments.

Finally, Chih returns home!

I’ve been reading the Singing Hills Cycle with a certain level of awe at how Vo is constructing her series of novellas – how she balances the main plot and frame narrative, worldbuilding versus character development and plot.

Mammoths at the Gates is perhaps the best instalment in the Cycle so far. It completes the transition from a series focussed on the stories Chih encounters to a series focussed on Chih’s own story. And of course it does so in a novella focussed on Singing Hills monastery, Chih’s home.

I think this timing is perfect: three novellas into the series, the reader is starting to get really curious about Chih’s background and character. Mammoths at the Gates gives us that exactly that worldbuilding hit that we crave. I especially loved the attention lavished on the until now mysterious neixin, the talking spirit-birds with infallible memory that accompany the clerics of Singing Hills.

What is even better is that Vo uses the opportunity not just to solidify the readers’ understanding of her world, but also of her main character. Chih returning home is the perfect plot device to tell us a little about their upbringing at the monastery. Mammoths at the Gates is also full of little character moments for Chih, like the way they interact with the novices of Singing Hills, that help flesh them out as a character.

The cherry on top is that Vo manages to stick with the formula of the series by perfectly integrating a round of storytelling in the story, even if the emphasis this time around is squarely on Chih’s own tale.

Perhaps Vo’s greatest achievement is how much storytelling she does in so little space. I can’t quite wrap my head around how Vo manages to include so much narrative in a novella format. But Vo is showing us what is possible, and I sure hope this format catches on.

Overall, I think Mammoths at the Gate is both great individually and also does a lot of work for the series as a whole – I am looking forward to the Singing Hills Cycle become a long-running fixture of the speculative genre. If there is any series that should have 15 instalments, it should be this one!