Into the Riverlands

The Singing Hills Cycle, Book 3

De: Nghi Vo

Narrado por: Cindy Kay

Wandering cleric Chih of the Singing Hills travels to the riverlands to record tales of the notorious near-immortal martial artists who haunt the region. On the road to Betony Docks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home, and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chih runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the riverlands than they ever expected to be.

Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story—beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel—bears more than one face.

©2022 Nghi Vo (P)2022 Tantor

Lovely

A sweet and quick audio book. Enjoyable to listen to while Multitasking. Story is very fairy tale like and the narration is so pleasing to the ear

Great story

Could not stop listening to- it was like sitting by the fire in an ancient inn listening to a story teller.

Between Clerics & Cultivators

If you have a Audible account books one through three of The Singing Hills Cycle are free to listen to (for now).

I actually pre-ordered the hardcover of 'Into the Riverlands' in 2022 and got a pin of 'Almost Brilliant' too, sad to say it's taken me so long to get to it. I listened to it and browsed my book at the same time which is partly what I have been doing with the free Audible editions of "The Empress of Salt and Fortune" and "When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain" which I have ebook editions of.

Rejoined by Almost Brilliant (and I have missed the sassy little neixin!) cleric Chih is welcomed to the Riverlands with a shave and a brawl where Wei Jintai's cultivator martial arts shines, traveling with her martial sister Mac Sang they are joined by a elder couple Lao Bingyi and Mac Khanh in a coincidence that leads to travel companionship they all are headed to Betony Docks.

The road is long and the stories they tell full of fighting and loves, but it gets harder and harder to tell what true or not as it might be to make out if someone is beautiful or ugly in the shadow of the Hollow Hand that threatens to rise up over the Riverlands once more...

If you've enjoyed 'The Untamed'/[book:Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 1|58701673] you'll like this too, I especially enjoyed the reunion of Khanh, Lao Bingyi with their Nie.

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This also (because of the mention of Southern Monkey Paw style) put me in mind of a talk Nnedi Okorafor once did ("Global Medievalism into Africanfuturism: A Dialogue with Nnedi Okorafor" on YouTube) where about 40 minutes in she talks about idiok baboons teaching a man Nsibidi, a written possibly magical language (she used this story in "Zahrah the Windseeker").

Another story about monkeys that came to mind was told I think by K-Ming Chang in a video where Cingkrik style, jingkrik meaning agile, legend traces Cingkrik to a monkey style of kuntao created by a woman (Rama Isruna's wife Rama Sukana in silat has a similar origin story) who based the techniques on a group of monkeys she witnessed fighting and later used to dodge the strikes from a stick swung by a drunken husband, or gang of rowdy drunk men encountered on the road.

my favorite so far

My favorite so far, I believe. This was such a fun look into Chih's personality and I had missed Almost Brilliant so much in the previous book. I think there was a great amount of mystery to this one, and also I think this was a fun take on a story unfolding as a story is told sort of thing.