“When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain” by Nghi Vo

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

An interesting and entertaining story involving a travelling monk who goes around collecting stories and records for their temple. In this story, he gets a ride on a mammoth to get over a mountain pass. But it goes awry when tigers attack them, forcing them to hide in a shelter on the mountain.

The tigers turn out to be magical tigers who can transform into human form and talk. When they discover the monk is recording stories, they ask the monk to tell them the human version of a story involving another magical tiger and a scholar (before they will probably get eaten).

As the story progress, the tigers interject and present their own version of events in the story. While this very entertain back-and-forth of storytelling is going on, the monk and the mammoth rider also have to think of a way to avoid getting eaten. Things would come to a head at the end when conflicting versions of the way the story ends are presented: violence would ensure, but with some good fortune, the monk gets rescued and now has another story to add to the temple archives.

As with the previous tale, this is a story within a story, but told in an entertaining way. The magical and fantastical elements are more prominent in the form of magical tigers but also with the introduction of mammoths and their riders, which were instrumental for the North defeating the Empire of the South in the previous tale.

Book read from 2021/02/09 to 2021/02/10