Tuesday, March 12, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo



The Night Tiger is another example of the SF/F genre where it's not quite clear to the reader how much fantastical elements actually are present ("Potentially Fantasy"?).  Unlike some other books of this type (for example, The Invisible Valley by Su Wei), there are clear fantastical elements here, but for the most part this is probably most appropriately termed historical fiction, set in 1930s colonial Malaysia (or British Malaya, as it was known at the time).  Which is certainly a setting that's different from most books I read, which is why it drew my interest.

As for whether I liked it or not....it's kind of hard to say, the Night Tiger is a weird book.  The story has three point of view characters (really, two and a half) and its two main characters have plotlines that intersect and yet...the two storylines never fully tie together really.  And while I found the setting interesting and liked one of those plotlines a bit, the result felt a bit uneven, even if it never actually verged on being bad.  I'll try and explain better after the jump.

Note:  One plotline in this book involves potential romance between two stepsiblings, so if that's an issue for you - I found it a little icky myself - this book may not be for you.
--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
In 1930s British Malaya, young woman Ji Lin has been working at a Dance Hall, unbeknownst to her family, in order to make money to pay back her mother's secret gambling debts.  As a student growing up, Ji Lin was actually better at math and subjects than her smart stepbrother Shin, but her stepfather forbid her to do any such work until she got married.  But when she finds a severed finger in the pocket of a guest at the Dance Hall, a guest who promptly dies, things in her life begin to change.

Ren is a 10 year old boy, whose twin Yi died years ago, and had been working as the servant for a British Doctor named MacFarlane.  But when MacFarlane dies, he charges Ren with the task of finding MacFarlane's severed finger which he last left with a fellow doctor and for Ren to bury the finger with his corpse.  For MacFarlane warns Ren that if the finger isn't reunited within 49 days, MacFarlane's spirit will not rest and will walk the earth as a deadly tiger, killing those in his path.

As Ji Lin attempts to decipher the mystery of the finger, she comes back into contact with her stepbrother Shin and begins to feel things for him she never expected.  And as Ren attempts to search for the finger, he winds up in the employ of a womanizing British Doctor named William, who takes Ren under his wing.  But others are seemingly searching for the Finger, and when Ren and Ji Lin's paths cross, the two will find themselves in potential danger as someone, seemingly a tiger, is killing others who seem to be crossing their paths.
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The Night Tiger is a hard book to summarize really because the plot doesn't really fit into a cohesive whole, and really is just a sequence of two or three plots tied together by the characters being in the same area and all having some connection to the severed finger (the Amazon summary suggests that Ji Lin is looking for adventure, which is not quite the case).  Ji Lin's storyline is about her trying to figure out her life as it's turned a little upside down by her feeling that she has to do so something to return the severed finger, with her also trying to figure out where she should go in the future and her feelings toward Shin.  Ren's storyline is about him trying to find the finger so he can return it to his master's body, with him trying to use the skills he learned from his master to help his new employer William.  And then there's also a third storyline, that of William as he trudges through the same setting, trying to be his womanizing self (no seriously) while people with connections to him seem to be mysteriously dying.

The connection between the storylines is the fantastical element: Ren, Ji Lin, Shen, Ren's twin Yi, and one other (the mysterious "Li") are all named after the Five Confucian Virtues, and seem to have some supernatural connection to each other.  Ji Lin has dreams of Yi, telling her of Ren, and Ren feels a connection to Ji Lin when they interact - not to mention their connections to the finger - and those connections lead to them making decisions and actions that change their fates.  But aside from these connections, their plots are basically separate.*

*Spoiler in ROT13 as an explanation: Abjurer vf guvf zber pyrne guna va gur pbapyhfvba, va juvpu gur qrnguf guebhtubhg gur obbx ner erirnyrq gb or gur jbex bs 2 QVSSRERAG crbcyr - bar jvgu gvrf gb Wv Yva, naq bar jvgu gvrf gb Jvyyvnz naq gb n yrffre rkgrag Era.  Gur obbx znqr vg frrz yvxr nyy gur qrnguf jrer pbaarpgrq gb n fvatyr xvyyre, jvgu gur pbaarpgvba pbirevat nyy bs gur punenpgref, ohg abcr!  Vg'f bar xvyyre cre rnpu fgbelyvar, juvpu bayl rknpreongrf jub frcnengr gurl srry va gur raq.

Ji Lin's storyline works the best of the group.  You can really feel for her as a young woman in an era and place where bright young women are relegated to secondary positions at best - and her stepfather prevents her from even working for one of those as well - and one who in trying to do the right thing regarding the finger comes up against a number of men who have major presumptions of her.  And how her interest in her stepbrother - icky connotations aside - doesn't naturally override her refusal to bend to those presumptions of others, that she should be "theirs."  And that carries over to her non-romance story, as she attempts to do right and figure out the connection between her and Ren, and what really happened to the salesman who she took the finger from.

Ren's storyline is fine, I guess, but too often relies upon a trope I find myself disliking: the story featuring a point of view from a child who doesn't understand what he sees, unlike the reader.  Ren is highly intelligent for his age and background, but as a 10 year old he doesn't quite get things like we do, and seeing him bumble around as a result is just irritating.  Meanwhile there's also William's storyline which is just....weird, because he's kind of a jerk all the way around and yet he gets sort of his own plot.

The issue of course with the above, if you couldn't tell, is that while Ji Lin's story ends on a sort of satisfying note, the other two characters' stories don't really do so - they resolve the conflicts within, but they're kind of underwhelming.  Really the fact that these stories don't truly converge and still seem separate at the end is just enough to make this book kind of "meh" in the end for me, with my initial reaction not being pleasure at what I read or anger at wasting my time, but simply me thinking "huh?"  Ah well.


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