Ratings67
Average rating4.2
So, I have not read the previous book still, but the author made it clear this could be read independently. This was one of those ebooks Tor sends out to subscribers for free that goes on a folder somewhere and gets lost that I didn't actually lose and I'm glad I didn't.
Truthfully, I had no idea what to expect. Readers are trained to look for tropes, so everything I was reading about this hit those pretty hard, which are not really indicative of what the book was actually about. Sapphic romance? Cool. Historical fantasy? Sure! Nonbinary representation? Alright, cool.
I still had no idea what to expect.
One thing I noticed right away is that I've yet to really read a modern novel that tackled nonbinary representation well, as in using they/them pronouns. Most I've read have been SF and have defaulted to a specific gendered pronoun to deal with some sort of alien society, etc. There's a couple of things I noticed here. The first is that I sorta found myself getting lost at first, having to stop and realize the “they” wasn't being used for the group, but the individual. It's silly, I obviously know this and use it normally, but I haven't read a novel that does that well yet, so there you go. The second is holy shit, I read a broad range of books that err progressive, how haven't I read something that does this already? Publishing has a lot of issues, but representation needs to be more than just ornamental for brownie points. Do better. Like this book.
Alas.
What struck me about this book was how this worked on an allegorical level. Written by an Asian American during, well... I don't even know how to explain these last few years, right? People are awful and the treatment of nonwhite cultures in the west/global north errs on the side of awful, if not criminal.
So, this book asks a simple question: Who controls the narrative and how does it impact “othered” people?
Tigers are “othered” here. Feared for being vicious, blood-thirsty villains who attack at random without regards for life. They're shapeshifting, of course, which means they're actually tigers who can take the form of people to appear “normal” and, look... if you understand how a lot of nonwhite cultures exist within a fairly homogenous monoculture, you've heard about this and probably know people who have to do this to get by.
Think ‘Sorry to Bother You' and the “white voice” black folks would use at the call center to get a better reaction on the phone.
The central focus is a group cornered by three tiger sisters and the resident storyteller/cleric of the group finds a way to bargain for their lives by telling them a story. It's a well known folktale about a relationship between a tiger and a cleric.
The cleric tells the sanitized, “cultured” version of the tale, which paints the tiger as a dangerous beast to fear, dehumanizing the character for being different and misunderstood. It also shows the cleric, who within the framing of this sanitized version of the story, openly mistreats the tiger, as a civilized savior (a “white savior,” if you will).
Throughout the telling of the story, the tigers respond to each passage with frustration and anger, making the cleric write down the story as they remember it, which contains an almost identical plot, but with wildly different details.
You see, the tigers remember the tiger character with pride, label the treachery of the cleric for what it is, and don't celebrate the bare minimum the cleric does to make good without putting in any work. The tiger saves the cleric numerous times and yes, there are bargains that come with it, and some of what happens are due to cultural misunderstandings, but the tiger loves the cleric and is willing to look past most of this.
Ultimately, Chih remains afraid regardless of this heightened understanding and happily takes the assistance of other hunters swooping in to the rescue to scare off the tigers, although they do imply that the tigers should be left alone. There's a sense of yearning and perhaps this was a mistake to break a pact with the tigers like in the story and that they would spread the written story.
This proved to be a really well done case of showing how outside cultures are powerless in the face of their oppressors to control their own history or be seen as literal humans. Just fantastic stuff. I'll definitely read more from this author.