![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Not-Wednesday Reading: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Usually novels in the form of legends or histories leave me a little cold because the narration style usually draws back from the characters' interior lives. It's not always an insurmountable problem, though. Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea is a book that I learned to love despite the withdrawn, almost cool narrative voice, and it seems that The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo might be another.
When Cleric Chih (along with their intelligent bird companion, Almost Brilliant) comes to inventory the goods of the Imperial residence at Lake Scarlet, they also gradually learns the story of the exiled barbarian empress who most famously lived there. Her teacher is an old woman called Rabbit, who as a low-class girl from the provinces became the servant of the empress In-yo.
The story is built up bit by bit, so that the reader learns along with Chih. The whole thing is a slow enchantment, beautifully built. Each section begins with several of Chih's descriptions of the items they are cataloging, and most of Rabbit's reminiscences end with the question "Do you understand?" Eventually the reader starts to recognize the significance of some, if not all, of the items and begins to comprehend what happened with In-yo and her exile.
The story includes lush descriptions of clothing, food, games, and all the things that made up the live of a wealthy noblewoman in this imaginary empire, but as the story is being told by common, shrewd Rabbit, I wasn't lulled into thinking well of the world she describes. It's as though a rich dish were being lightened by salt or citrus as a contrast.
The fantasy elements, from Almost Brilliant to the fortune-telling and magicians who show up during the course of the tale, are low key and appropriate to the story. The truth about the exiled empress is inevitable and yet enchanting when we learn it, and like each of the other successive revelations, exposes new aspects of the entire tale.
no subject