In The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo brings us back to the world of Ahn, and the adventures of the cleric Chih, in a story that takes place in the days leading up to a grand wedding. This novella has more thematic and tonal similarities to the Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (both 2020), the first two novellas in the Singing Hills Cycle, than it does with Into the Riverlands (2022) and Mammoths at the Gates (2023). Like Empress and Tiger, The Brides of High Hill concerns itself with history that cannot be stated out loud: in this case, the history of one family’s skeletons in the closet and a curse keeping the truth from coming out. Vo invites the reader into a Gothic mystery set in the Asian-inspired fantasy world of Ahn as Chih tries to figure out what is happening.

At the start of The Brides of High Hill, Chih has been asked to help out at a wedding by the bride-to-be Nhung, a young woman who is to be married to Lord Guo, a wealthy, much older man who has already had multiple previous wives. Chih’s trusty companion, the neixin (a type of magical bird) Almost Brilliant, is conspicuously absent, and Chih discovers that the Guo compound is home to Lord Guo’s mad son, who has been cursed to keep silent about atrocities that have happened to Guo’s previous wives. Like in Tiger, Chih’s job is to unravel what is really happening behind the scenes before being destroyed themself in the grand estate of Doi Cao.

The new characters in this novella are a highlight. Pham Nhung and Guo Zhihao are both well rounded and sympathetic despite the fact that we see them both at their best and worst. Nhung is presented to us as a plucky young woman marrying an old man for financial benefit and to make her parents happy. She is plucky and determined, though the rest of that story turns out to be mostly spurious. Nhung has taken a liking to Chih, and she repeatedly states so throughout. For Chih’s part, at their first encounter, when Nhung’s mother complains that Chih is going to be useless because clerics from the Singing Hills only tell stories, Nhung replies, “I like stories,” and Chih is captivated “by Nhung’s smile. She smiled closed-lipped with one side higher than the other, and it was the prettiest thing Chih had ever seen” (p. 3). Nhung’s natural charm is what lures Chih into taking the wedding job, but what Chih doesn’t realize is that being Nhung’s favorite isn’t going to help them escape Doi Cao in time, since she knows more than she is letting on and has her own reasons for the wedding at Doi Cao than simply marrying into material comfort. The most similar character to Nhung in Vo’s work might be Luli Wei, the protagonist of the novel Siren Queen (2022), who will stop at nothing to be famous in Hollywood, and, through Nhung, Vo proves again that she can write ambitious yet charismatic women.

The other new character, Guo Zhihao, takes the position of the Gothic tradition’s classic madwoman-in-the-attic. Zhihao is the son of Lord Guo from a previous marriage, and he has been living in the Jonquil Pavilion, where guests are forbidden to see him. As the heir—that is, as neither a wife nor the vengeful ghost of one—he subverts the archetype of the wronged and suffering woman looking for retribution. In fact, the character fulfilling the role of vengeful woman turns out to be someone else entirely, which makes Zhihao a red herring as well. Indeed, Zhihao assists Chih as best as he can, though the curse that keeps him from talking about the true nature of Doi Cao is what makes the investigator notice that there is something deeply wrong about the palace. Zhihao is also given a personality beyond his mental instability, rounding him out as a character. When Nhung says, “Look, Zhihao isn’t angry with me,” for example, Zhihao merely shrugs (p. 101). He is more than the madwoman in the attic, talking back to Nhung and Chih passive-aggressively at times, and his inclusion in the novella adds more depth and gives us a better look at how the disabled and mentally ill are treated by wealthy families in Ahn.

Vo’s writing is descriptive and sumptuous. The estate of Doi Cao has a “wide and gracious courtyard clad in pale stone and the broad steps leading up to the entry hall bordered by cedar pillars,” complete with a red roof covered in “the Ku Dynasty’s famous slithering beasts” to repel misfortune (p. 9).  The descriptions of the prewedding banquets and the wedding breakfasts themselves are more than enough to whet the reader’s appetite. Some highlights include “platters of shaved scallop, sea bream, and pufferfish cut so thin they allowed the pattern of the porcelain to show through, scattered with dyed capelin roe like glittering black eyes,” though the follow-up that Chih “gagged at the fishy reek that rose from it” reveals that not all that glitters is gold in Doi Cao (p. 88). These descriptions bring Doi Cao to life and set the scene for the wedding, even though not all is right in the background—indeed, the wrong is subtly baked into what at first blush seem like straightforward depictions of luxury.

That said, the Singing Hills novellas can be read in any order without knowledge of each other, which as a format has its flaws. Chih has been largely a flat character throughout their adventures. Chih manages to solve mysteries and sometimes encounters magic. After each adventure, Chih resolves to record the stories they have learned for the archives of the Singing Hills without much introspection or reflection on their own part. Chih plays the role of an observer and an eager listener, but they have not grown in a perceptible way between The Empress of Salt and Fortune and The Brides of High Hill. Chih’s past remains largely unexplored, other than how it has been stated they were left at the Singing Hills at a young age and have been there ever since. Given how dynamic the other characters in Chih’s world are when push comes to shove, it’s a shame that Chih isn’t allowed to change in the same way even after surviving multiple harrowing adventures and traveling far and wide through Ahn.

Nevertheless, these are books with which a reader can build a relationship. The first time I read Nghi Vo was during lockdown in 2020. I remember sitting down to read The Empress of Salt and Fortune and being blown away by the worldbuilding and the way the story unfolds through artifacts. The traditions and world of Ahn were at home with stories passed down to me from my family in a way that’s still unusual in English-language fantasy, and Vo’s writing brought me joy during an uncertain time. Now, five novellas in, The Brides of High Hill delivers on its promise of a Gothic mystery with any remaining loose ends neatly tied up at the end, all coated in Vo’s sumptuous descriptions of the world of the Singing Hills.