I liked this better than Into The Riverlands, but not as much as the first two in this series. The problem is that the first two books in this series established an absolutely brilliant narrative structure, in which the frame narrative is very unobtrusive, such that Chih's role is to elicit and witness the embedded narrative, which is really the primary tale of the story. But in this book, we're going on a journey with Chih themself, and I wasn't interested in that. The best parts of the book were the events surrounded Cleric Thien's memorial, in which Chih serves their fundamental role (as I see it): to enable other people to tell a story. And I really enjoyed how the stories told about Thien served to enrich Chih's understanding of who this beloved mentor was. 

The very very best bit was the ambiguity surrounding the story of Thien's wife, and whether her life-changing injury was Thien's action, or simply an accident. Given that the whole vibe of the Singing Hills monastery is to preserve the past through collecting stories, the fact that there is this unknowable part of Thien, whose uncertainties can never be resolved, works beautifully to highlight the difference between living people and static history.

And then Vo decides to answer the question and tell us what happened, which just breaks the whole point! Strategic error. The ambiguity was what made the book work.