A Long and Speaking Silence
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- Pedido anticipado
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- Se espera: 5 may 2026
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- $279.00
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- Pedido anticipado
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- $279.00
Descripción editorial
From USA Today bestselling author Nghi Vo comes a beautiful new tale in the Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle, drawn from the earliest days of Chih's career as a wandering cleric.
"Nghi Vo is so good."—NPR on The Brides of High Hill
Every story begins somewhere.
On the banks of the Ya-lé River, the town of Luntien gathers to celebrate the start of the rainy season, but the celebration is marred by the arrival of refugees from the sea. Everyone has a story about the foreigners newly in their midst—lazy, violent, unwanted—while the refugees themselves grieve the loss of the home they loved.
Cleric Chih, very recently still Novice Chih, is also a stranger in Luntien. A moment of carelessness and bad luck leaves them waiting tables as they struggle to establish themself as a real cleric. A cleric’s job is to listen and record, but the stories emerging in Luntien are ugly and violent, as hard to predict as the river itself. With their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant by their side, Chih must help the refugees while also unraveling a mystery that may have roots in their own faraway home in the abbey of Singing Hills.
In the seventh entry of the award-winning Singing Hills series, we meet Chih and Almost Brilliant just beginning their journey together as Chih assumes their place on the road and in the world.
The novellas of the Singing Hills series are standalone stories linked by the Cleric Chih, and may be read in any order.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
Into the Riverlands
Mammoths at the Gates
The Brides of High Hill
A Mouthful of Dust
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Told with remarkable compassion and grace, the elegant seventh installment in Vo's Hugo Award–winning Singing Hills Cycle series (after A Mouthfull of Dust) flashes back to the beginning of protagonist Chih's career as a cleric. Less than a year into their partnership with Almost Brilliant, a memory spirit in the form of a hoopoe bird, Chih, whose primary job is to record people's stories, is stranded in the river city of Luntien after someone picks their pocket. So they take a gig waiting tables at Certain Compassion in exchange for food (described in loving, mouth-watering detail) and board. Tensions are high in Luntien as refugees from the war-torn Verdant Island, or Muyi, stream into the port. The local Temple of the Lady of the Thousand Hands is barred from turning anyone away, but that doesn't mean the refugees are well received. As Chih endearingly struggles to find their footing as both a waiter and a cleric, they attempt to broker peace between the locals and the outsiders, take down lists of the refugees' family members to carry with them in their travels, and investigate a gentle mystery about Certain Compassion's late owner. Vo imbues all of her characters with dignity and depth, creating a moving, nuanced portrait of a refugee crisis. Complete with a thoughtful meditation on which stories are committed to history and which are lost, this proves another high note for the series.
