A Mouthful of Dust, by Nghi Vo

[mrissa]

 

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is another of the novellas featuring Cleric Chih and their astonishing memory bird Almost Brilliant, although Almost Brilliant does not get a lot of page time this go-round. This is mainly the story of hunger, desperation, shame, and unquiet ghosts. It's about what depths people might sink to when famine comes--in this story, a famine demon, personified, but the shape of the story won't be unfamiliar if you've read about more mundane famines.

The lines between horror and dark fantasy are as always unclear, but wherever you place A Mouthful of Dust, I recommend only reading it when you're fully prepared for something unrelentingly bleak.

Comments

[watersword]

Thanks for the warning; I love this series but "unrelentingly bleak" is NOT what I want to read rn.

[radiantfracture]

Oo, a new one! But you would say it's quite tonally different from the others?

[mrissa]

Yeah, it's more pure-grim than the others. Sigh.

In the acknowledgments Vo thanked her agent for saying people weren't ready for cannibalism and baby-eating in 2020 but were ready now, and uh...I am not against people expressing what they want to express and writing what they want to write, but I am sure not ready for it now.