The Tiger's Daughter

The Tiger's Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera

*I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Synopsis

This is the story of a Qorin warrior, Barsalayaa Shefali, and a divine empress, O-Shizuka, two young women and warriors, raised together across borders since their prophesied birth, who must work together to save the world from the threat of demons.


Review
Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t really my cup of tea. While the writing was lovely, I found the manner of story-telling a bit jarring and unusual. First it is told in third-person present, then told in letter form, with first-person directing the narrative to a specific person, referred to as “you”. It drove me crazy that basically the entire book was a "letter", and it was about events the person reading it had already lived through.

The plot meandered… I guess there was really no “plot”, no specific direction the story was headed. It was mostly an info-dump. The story was about two girls, life-long friends, falling in love. It was also the story about one girl’s battle with a dark disease which changes her entirely. However, I really didn't care at all about the characters and what happened to them.

I confess I found myself bored, skimming over portions, especially in the beginning, and I was not absorbed in the story until the last 15 percent. The book did end on a happy note, which redeemed it a little. 

The world portrayed was very vivid and interesting, with the cultures obviously influenced by real-world Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese cultures. I liked that women were powerful and warriors. I thought the threat of the demons added an interesting and grim twist to the overall story.

As I said above, it just wasn’t really something that caught my interest.

Rating

2 stars

Details

Genre: Fantasy.

Language: None.

Sex: One explicit sex scene.

Violence: A lot of graphic violence.