The Tiger's Daughter
By K Arsenault Rivera
The Tiger's Daughter is an epic fantasy story built around a romance. The epic fantasy is the story of a cultured, old powerful empire being slowly and surely brought to its knees by terrors without and rot within. Demons and corrupted former humans cluster at the borders and seep across the walls that guard the empire. While within the empire suffers from famine and plague as the powerful sink deeper into debauchery. This romance is the relationship between the two main characters, both young woman, with powerful legacies behind them and dangerous futures in front of them. Both these legacies and futures are deeply intertwined to the point that frankly, it would be surprising if they didn't become lovers or arch enemies. This is before we get into the fact that they might be demigods. Let me introduce you to each one in turn.
O-Shizuka is the daughter of the greatest hero of the prior generation and the brother of the emperor of Hokkaran. Her Mother is legendary for her sword work and generalized killing ability, gaining the nickname the Queen of Crows, for her habit of feeding the crows bread in her travels... As well as leaving behind mountains of bodies for them eat (Sound strategically and tactically. Be nice to crows and they’ll be nice to you). Her father, an imperial prince, is the most celebrated poet of his generation and her biggest fan (O-Shizuka's Mother, in turn, is a huge fan of his poetry so it works out pretty well). Now you would think that would be the kinda hard act to follow that would make a kid feel shadowed by their parents but let me add one additional tidbit. O'Shizuka's Uncle the Emperor? Has no children, legitimate or bastard, nor has he any siblings other then O-Shizuka's Father and so O-Shizuka is first and only in line for the throne (Excellent. No male-only primogeniture {I'm glad to know this imperial god-king system has your approval}). Most of us would be excused for feeling a bit under pressure. O-Shizuka on the other hand believes that this is exactly the kind of set up that she deserves and not only is she going to live up to these legacies and responsibilities, she's gonna rock them so hard that in centuries to come people will be referring to her parents as the prologue to her own mind-blowing heroics and poetry. This would be incredibly irritating if it wasn't for the fact that O-Shizuka not only lives up to her self imposed standards, being an empire-wide lauded duelist capable of beating hardened soldiers one on one by the age of 13; but her calligraphy is so famous and awesome that she can literally use it as money. She can walk into any shop she wants and walks away with just about anything just by offering to write them a nice sign. Oh, she also has superpowers like being able to glow, make plants grow whenever and however she wishes and when she walks into a garden every flower turns to face her. Let's be honest anyone of us would have a healthy amount of appreciation for ourselves at this point (That kinda shit would turn most of us into an insufferable narcissist, to be honest). Balancing it out is the fact that she lives in an enemy camp. Her Uncle the Emperor hates her for not being his daughter and for the fact that she's wildly unimpressed with him. Throughout her young life, she is faced with attempts to control her or marry her off to some man old enough to be her father. So in a way her pride is a defense mechanism because if she ever lets it slip she runs the risk of being enslaved. Instead of being annoyed with her, I often found myself sympathizing with her, especially as her situation would go from bad to worse as she grew up.
Shefali, the daughter of the Karsa of the Qorin people, a group of horse nomads that were only fought off a generation ago due to the heroics of the Queen of Crows is rather impressive herself. Her Mother was the woman who slew her brothers so she could avenge her sisters and then united her people without ever speaking a word. Still, without speaking a word, she breached the walls that held them away from the Hokkaran Empire and led her people in an attack deep within the Empire. When the heroics of the Queen of Crows and others made her position untenable she humbled herself by making peace with the Empire, marrying one of its nobles, and bearing two children with him before going her own way. Shefali was the younger of the two children and was given over to her mother to raise. She would face some resistance due to her mixed blood but would win over her relatives and people emerging as one of the greatest riders and archers of her people despite never mounting a horse until she was five. Not only that but she can speak to and understand horses and can hit any target with a bow even while blindfolded. Interestingly enough Shefali is actually rather humble about the whole thing but then she was brought up with a family that basically accepted her and wasn't constantly surrounded by enemies pretending to be friends. What's kind of interesting to me here is just how impactful that is without any attention given to it. While Shefali is considered the shy and untalkative one, it's her social network that the girls use throughout the book, be it Shefali's brother who was raised by their father instead of their mother or going on a mission given to them by someone who met Shefali in a town. Which leads me to suspect the narration isn't entirely trustworthy (it wouldn't surprise me that Shefali underestimates herself) but I'll come back to that.
The world that O-Shizuka and Shefali inhabit is a troubled one and Ms. Rivera takes time to show us that trouble in depth even if she doesn't dump a lot of information on us. From what characters say and do we can glean that the Empire and the world is barely holding back some fallen divine being, who turned on the other gods and leads corrupted armies of humans and other beings. These creatures bedevil and torment humanity which holds them back with armies and walls... okay mostly holds them back with armies and walls. Putting that aside, the Hokkaran Empire is a state with a number of internal issues; there are divisions between the various component states and political resentments. In addition, they have a ruling class that abandons its responsibilities in favor of losing itself in various debaucheries, power games, and artistic pursuits that do little except serve as social status symbols. Now at no point is this flat out said in the story; instead, we're shown a world where bandits operate openly and state paramilitary forces are too afraid to confront them (Dear God, don’t they even have competent junior officers who can take some initiative? {Under emperors like this, junior officers like that get executed}). The peasants abandon farms where the crops don't grow or turn rotten due to malign magical influence. The noble class lives in massive palaces and argues over the merits of old poetry styles standing in massive flower gardens while dressed in clothes expensive enough to feed entire villages. This story does a lot to show rather than tell, with Ms. Rivera doling out her world-building carefully and methodically so as not to overwhelm the reader or give so little as to lose their interest completely. This is done around O-Shizuka and Shefali with both girls serving as sort of tent-poles for the world and the story itself. This is mirrored by the fact that their friendship and later romance is the central column of the story itself and Ms. Rivera approaches that with the same level of care and craft that she does her world building. To be honest it's a more believable relationship than a great number of ones that I've read in the past. The only thing really concerning is how they don't have a lot of friends or allies outside of each other but Ms. Rivera takes care to explain why that's the case within the story. I've mentioned all the things I liked and thought were well done, that leaves what I didn't care for.
The story is told in the narrative device of a letter from Shefali to O-Shizuka, which while not written badly is a narrative frame that I just don't like. For one thing, it drains the suspense out of the story because we know the ultimate ending and leaves me wondering why Shefali wrote a letter that covers their entire lives together rather than telling her about what Shefali did when they were apart? While there are some things that O-Shizuka doesn't know in the letter (which lead to interludes in the “present day” of the novel) for the vast majority O-Shizuka does know what happened because she was bloody there! There's also the fact that Ms. Rivera seems to be modeling this on Victorian letters, which I'm honestly not a fan of. This makes The Tiger Daughter's an example of an Epistolary novel, which is a novel written and presented as a series of documents, like letters, diary entries, or documentaries. This is a format that's achieved recent success, with examples like The Martian or World War Z (although neither of them used the letter version) and has a number of classical novels using the format like Stoker’s Dracula. Now, this format can work and as I pointed out with my examples has worked in the past remarkably well. For example, The Martian was able to maintain suspense by keeping the narrative framing as diary entries by the main character that could have been recovered after his untimely end (Both The Dresden Files and The Laundry use this format as well. In the former it’s unstated by clearly a personal memoir, and in the latter as a series of memoirs designed to provide continuity of institutional knowledge). We can't do that with a letter that Shefali wrote to a still living O-Shizuka who is shown as ruling the Hokkaran Empire from the imperial palace, however. Another issue I have is a frankly personal one that I don't think will affect the majority of readers. I have mentioned in prior reviews that my parents are deaf as you could imagine this meant that I learned sign language at a fairly young age (ASL is his first language, in point of fact). There was simply no choice in the matter if I was going to communicate with my own folks. Shefali's Mother, due to a vow, doesn't speak but signs to communicate to the world (or writes notes), despite living with her Mother for years, Shefali doesn't bother to learn anything but the sign for her own name! (The Fuck?) Needing one of her cousins to translate everything for her. It's also galling because it reminds me how some of my Mother's own family never bothered to learn even the basics of sign language and that led to her being a stranger in her own home and family. This isn't as uncommon within Deaf circles as I would like (Ideal incidence rate is 0%.) and while it's not Ms. Rivera's intent to bring that up, I'm left thinking on it all the same. I'll admit this isn't a problem with the story as much as it is me reacting to something an element of the story reminds me of. That said these reviews are my own subjective experience and opinion of the story. So I have be honest and say that this sapped some of my enjoyment from reading an otherwise really good story. In the end, I have to give The Tiger's Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera a B. Despite my own issues, this story is clearly very much above average and I do think Ms. Rivera should be proud of that, considering some of the other first novels I’ve read.
Next week, we open with our first ever Patreon choice! That being Heaven Sword & Dragon Saber by Louis Cha and Wing Shing Ma. After that comes our second ever Patreon choice Lamplighter by D.M Cornish. If you would like to select future reviews or recommend books join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads. Of course, feel free to comment, and if you liked the review share it with your friends. Above everything else though, Keep Reading!
Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders
Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders
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