War mammoths, legendary empresses, wandering clerics…
Nghi Vo’s Mammoths at the Gates, a standalone adventure in the Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle, arrives September 12, 2023 from Tordotcom Publishing.
The Hugo and Crawford Award-Winning Series!
“A remarkable accomplishment of storytelling.”—NPR on The Empress of Salt and Fortune
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. . .
“A remarkable accomplishment of storytelling.”—NPR on The Empress of Salt and Fortune
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Mammoths at the Gate
The Singing Hills Cycle:
- The Empress of Salt and Fortune
- When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
- Into the Riverlands
- Mammoths at the Gate
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.
Nghi Vo (she/her) is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas Into the Riverlands, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and The Empress of Salt and Fortune, a Locus and Ignyte Award finalist and the winner of the Crawford Award and the Hugo Award. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.
