Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune

Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune

Author: Nghi Vo

Published by Tom Doherty Associates

March 24, 2020

 

Summary

“A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.

Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.”

 

Review

Chih, a cleric at Singing Hills Abbey, meets an elderly woman known as Rabbit. The two start talking about the land's history, and soon Chih and their talking hoopoe Almost Brilliant are listening to a story from years ago, when the elderly lady was a "rabbit-toothed girl from the provinces" working as a servant to the imperial household — where she saw In-yo, the Emperor's foreign-born bride, face prejudice and attempted erasure. Rabbit continues to tell stories to her captive audience, each one highlighting a different aspect of the empire's grand narratives.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is preoccupied with objects. Almost every chapter begins with descriptions of various items written in the dry style of a museum inventory ("Astrological chart of the Baker's constellation. Ink and fine rag paper. Signed in the lower-right corner with the character for "lucky." The framing device depicts Chih and Rabbit interacting with these objects, prompting Rabbit to delve into one of her stories. A game board ("Pale wood and gold paint. The moon, a woman, a fish, a cat, a ship, and a needle drawn in six circles") leads into a story about Rabbit hearing In-yo speak for the first time when he asks how to play the game. A mammoth sculpture ("worked realistically rather than figuratively, every hair detailed and with rubies serving as eyes") leads into a story about the artist, whose mark can be found on the mammoth's foot.

Although it is a fantasy story, the novella keeps supernatural references to a minimum. Rabbit mentions "imperial war mages who kept Anh in perpetual summer," as well as ghosts who serve as forewarnings ("There are some very elegant ghosts who walk the edge of the lake, their long hems fading into the bracken. Some of them have handmaidens trailing behind them, tongueless, handleless, and eyeless, and I am well aware of the consequences of my devotion to In-yo"). The pantheon of the empire's religion is also depicted, along with a talking hoopoe.

However, such elements serve no purpose in the story other than to add a little glitter around the edges. The primary goal of the secondary world setting is to separate the story from real-world history. Nghi Vo creates an imaginary Asia out of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese details, sketching out the spread of empire and the clash of civilizations with brief references to events such as lychees becoming scarce due to a certain region having "declared sovereignty and closed its borders." All of this gives the impression of a grand, intricate history while also reminding us that the real story is hidden between the cracks in the surface, ignored and erased.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is more than just a narrative about the various stories that can be attached to any given object: it is that object itself. The novella invites us to pick it up and look at it, to see the shapes and colors that appear and disappear like reflections in a cut gemstone. With stories layered on top of tales, narratives nested within narratives, and stories hinted at by other stories, this is a novella that deserves to be read again and again.

The genre of this book is fantasy fiction, high fantasy, lesbian literature, coming-of-age story, and epic fiction. This book is the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novella.

My favorite line in this book is “Accuracy above all things. You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.”