How long does it take to read The Empress of Salt and Fortune?
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo takes about 2 hours 9 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 1 of The Singing Hills Cycle
About 2 hours 9 minutes
An evening's read
First published 2020. 117 pages, about 32,175 words.
5 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 3 hours 35 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 9 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 20 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama, Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women. A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully. Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for. At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.
Subjects: Empresses, Fiction, Interpersonal relations, Imaginary places, Exile (Punishment)
