The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Publisher - Tor.com
Published - Out Now
Price - £8.99 paperback £2.06 Kindle eBook
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.
In the UK we have a tv show called The Antiques Roadshow where experts look at people’s old items/junk. Part of the fun is someone finding out that the jar in the back of the cupboard is worth a fortune; or the cruel looking posh person’s treasure is a fake but one of the other interesting aspects are the stories of how an object got into your family. As historians have known for a long time objects tell us about the times they were created in and also we can find a lot about the owners’ lives down the ages. In Nghi Vo’s beguiling The Empress of Salt and Fortune a review of objects slowly unveils a picture of one woman’s life in service to a monarch filled with loss and also delivers a wider change that impacted an entire country’s future.
The formidable Empress of Salt and Fortune has died and her successor is to be crowned soon. Chih is a cleric and has been asked to visit Lake Scarlet a site that has been in imperial lock down for decades to review and catalogue what they can find. There they meet Rabbit an elderly woman who Chih discovers was part of the Empress’ original household long ago and who knows this place as Thriving Fortune (a name used in jest as it was often felt to be exile). As Chih examines the property this triggers a set of stories from Rabbit about her past and casts a light on events most historians are not fully aware of.
I loved this story for how it is very much a set of small interlude stories that when you reach the end you realise that how you see Rabbit and the wider history of the Empress you will feel as if you’ve read a huge epic fantasy in about two hours. Its a masterpiece in storytelling. Chih and Rabbit in the book’s present are the framing device and slowly we unpeel the truth about this famous Empress. very subtly we see the politics that lay behind her marriage to the Emperor and that this was a strategic partnership of different lands rather than love. Rabbit is happy to attend but most of her fellow household are actually all feeling more punished having to now seek exile now the Monarch is seen to have done her duty had a child and is no longer required for anything else.
What really impressed me is the reader soon finds the darkness of this period. Not explicit but ever-present danger. Staff members that appear to be sympathetic to the Empress may vanish without a trace. slight news from home suggest some plan for executions and we soon realise Lake Scarlet is more prison than retreat. The tale then becomes a battle of political factions and we start to see how the Empress started to fight back under the nose of an all powerful Empire. The various objects all have a key role to play and as this segment of the story begins there is a huge tension that the Emperor’s henchmen will find out.
This alone could have been interesting historical fiction but I really loved that despite the focus o the Empress Vo reminds us of the other people these conflicts impact. Rabbit is a character as our narrator we get to know and we see her grow up, love and also experience sacrifice for her beloved Queen that reminds us that history is not a simple game of thrones and ambitious nobles but there are lots more people impacted. It’s also amusing that the Empire clearly doesn’t rate women as capable of rebellion and yet slowly that dawns on them. Vo’s prose really helps underline how these events can haunt someone for years afterwards.
Its a truly beautiful novella and an absolute pleasure to read. I will definitely be keen to explore more of Vo’s work in the future Happily another story in the series has recently been released but this story stands on its own two feet. Strongly recommended!
