Mouthful of Dust

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo

Just as a fair warning, this book went darker than I'd expected. The Singing Hills books haven't all been sunshine and rainbows, but this one was definitely grim. I don't want to get into spoiler territory, so I'll just say there could be trigger warnings for starvation and the types of decisions starving folks might make.

With that out of the way, this is a thought-provoking and haunting book, and it was really a good read, if not always an easy one. Chi finds themselves in a town famous for a particular pork dish, and goes in search of stories of the region's food history. And things start to get interesting when some would prefer that certain histories stay hidden.

Nghi Vo is an excellent storyteller, and does really well with these novella length snippets of legend and lore. I enjoy reading the Singing Hills books so much, and Mouthful of Dust is a moving new installment in the series.