When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
core novella 2020 The Singing Hills Cycle
Record
| First published | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novella |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.15 (19,772 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 128 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781250786135 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, second novella in the Singing Hills Cycle, finds cleric Chih and their guide Si-yu traveling by mammoth when they are confronted by three wild tigers. Taking shelter in a barn, they discover the tigers' leader can transform into a human woman, and Chih, seeking a way to survive the encounter, begins telling the story of a young scholar named Dieu and her wife, Ho Thi Thao, a shapeshifting tiger. The tale follows Dieu's journey to the city of Ahnfi to sit an imperial examination, where she first meets the tiger who becomes her spouse. As Chih narrates, the tigers repeatedly interrupt with their own conflicting version of events, offering a rival account of the same relationship.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Singing Hills Cycle
- Series: The Singing Hills Cycle core; position 2 of 7 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Nghi Vo
Notes
- From the series record (The Singing Hills Cycle): Ongoing connected-novella cycle following the wandering cleric Chih and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant, collecting oral histories across the world of Anh. A seventh entry, A Long and Speaking Silence, has been announced but not yet published as of this record.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Singing Hills Cycle: position 2 of 7: previous The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020) · next Into the Riverlands (2022)
- Internal chronology, within The Singing Hills Cycle: position 2 of 6: previous The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020) · next Into the Riverlands (2022)
Sources
- The Hugo Awards: 2021 Hugo Awards
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Tiger_Came_Down_the_Mountain
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