Review: the Brides of High Hill

This story starts quite abruptly, a change from the usual Singing Hills novellas. I noticed, but figured it was Vo wanting to try something different fore the 5th entry. I should have paid a bit more attention.

This story seemed to me to be a mix of a European folktale and asian mythology, but there are also a lot of themes that seem to be universal among humans. For example, I just learned today of a historical myth around one of the big samurai families that involves a swordsman meeting a monk at a bridge and engaging in battle that is reminiscent of Robin Hood. As usual, it’s hard to talk too much about the story or themes of these novellas without ruining the twist (they almost all have a parallel story structure to a mystery story). I would say that another clue things are off within this narrative is that Chih doesn’t quite ever get the stories she seeks.

A couple more tidbits:

• if you haven’t read this book yet, October would be a good month to read it
• I always love bilingual bonuses in stories. For example Spanish or Latin (or Latin-inspired as is often the case with magic words) in a story can sometimes be a tip off to me in the story. I noticed the characters Chih is with had Vietnamese names - Nhung, Pham, etc. So I asked my wife if Doi Cai (the name of the estate they arrive at) means anything. It was hard without accent marks, but a bit of creative thinking and double-checking her guess against an audio-based Google translate revealed that Doi Cai means High Hill. Neat!
• I KIND OF guessed at the twist. Or rather, based on a certain nighttime scene, I guessed that the incense things had to do with warding off spirits or some kind of asian mythological creature. I also guessed on step further than that, but I didn’t quite get to the final implications of the twist until the end and it was delightful!

• Nghi-Vo
• Singing-Hills