Better than Expected! Into the Riverlands Review

I really need to remember to put reviews from YouTube up over here... managing multiple sites with different formats is surprisingly easy to screw up!

Setting that aside...

I kind of expected this book to be a demonstration of the unsatisfying path that modern fantasy and science fiction have taken over the last couple of decades. After all, this novella is part of a series that managed to win a Hugo Award, and that whole process has been going downhill for a long time now.

So, it was with a skeptical eye that I began to read Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo. I figured, hey, if it's bad, at least it's short, so why not give it a try?

What I found, to my surprise, was a fun, if somewhat unfocused, story that could have come right out of a kung-fu movie from the 1970s. Murderous bandits, wild marshes, and a few over-the-top fighters.

The story is told from the perspective of a member of some kind of order of history monks. Apparently the monks give up their genders as a part of their vows or something. It's not explained at all, and frankly doesn't make a lot of sense. However, at the very least, it's not preachy about it. This might be one of the first books where I've seen the neuter "they" pronouns used consistently, and it is way more confusing when written than when spoken.

So I learned that. 

Anyway, these history monks use magic birds with photographic memories to "store" the stories they witness and hear. It's worth noting that the bird has a lot more of an interesting character than the monk.

This novella tracks the monk Shih traveling with a group of people into a marshy area. They come upon a victim of some group of killer bandits, and are present as that group of bandits tries to attack a village. A "mythical" story that the monk heard earlier in the book connects, funnily enough, to what happens in the present, and the result is a fairly neat little action scene that could have come right out of Kung Fu Hustle.

And it turns out that the person who went by the title of "Beautiful" in the earlier "mythical" story is actually real, and a dude, which is what I guess was done to check the "gender subversion" box. 

All in all, it managed to be interesting and, I repeat, because it bears repeating, not preachy. A fairly good half-hour read.

What I wonder is whether the other books in the series will maintain the same atmosphere, humility, and fun. (Later, I read another book in the series, Mammoths at the Gates, and the answer is an unfortunate "no." I'll have a post for that review soon, which is up on YouTube.)