★★★★★ Paul Bunyan rides again

Into the Riverlands

Nghi Vo

It is now 2:07 am. This book, pre-ordered, appeared on my kindle at 12:20 am. So eager was I to read it, that I got up from sleep to do that.

Into the Riverlands was quite different from When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain and The Empress of Salt and Fortune, which are very different from each other. In Riverlands we learn the story of a journey through the Riverlands undertaken by Chih and their talking eidetic bird Almost Brilliant (Yes! She's back!) with a small company of fellow travelers, first introduced as Wei Jintai, Mac Sang, Lao Bingyi, and Mac Khanh. As they travel they tell stories of the bandits and fighters of the Riverlands.

The novellas of The Singing Hills Cycle all have this in common -- they play with the nature of story-telling. The story you realize you've read when you get to the end of one is not the story you thought you were reading when you started. Therefore, there is not much I can say without spoiling.

I will say that Into the Riverlands reminded me of Paul Bunyan. I read of Paul Bunyan first in Esther Shephard's splendid compilation. Paul Bunyan is a legendary logger told about in the tradition of American Tall Tales. Being a very analytical kid, I tried to figure out exactly how big Paul was. There are clues in some of the stories from which one can deduce a size. But sometimes he seemed to be 20 feet (6 m) tall, and sometimes he was the size of a mountain. He was always huge, whatever "huge" might need to be in the story being told. He was always bigger than he needed to be to make the story work.

The characters of Riverlands have that same magnitude -- bigger/faster/stronger/smarter than they need to be to make the story work. And perhaps they are Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, in fact. It would be rash to assume you know anyone's true name. Read it and you will see.

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