Book Review of #2 Hungry Tigress by Jade Lee
Author: Jade Lee
ISBN: 0-8439-5504-X
Publisher: Leisure Historical Romance
Part of a Series: Tigress Sextet: White Tigress Prequel; Corned Tigress, Burning Tigress Desperate Tigress and Tempted Tigress sequels.
Type of book: China, 1896-1898, Tigress, Tao, Adult, interracial relationship, Asian male/white female
Year it was published: 2005
Summary:
The Tigress: the counterpart to the "male" dragon; the Chinese symbol for female sexuality; a priestess of the Taoist sect seeking enlightenment through ecstasy.
Joanna Crane joined China's Boxe Rebellion because of the emptiness inside her. SHe was tired of being her rich daddy's showpiece and had a hunger to do good. But when the rebels-anti-foreigner bandits with a taste for white flesh-turned out worse than their ruthless Qin enemies, her onyl hope was a Shaolin master with fists of steel and eyes like ice. A Shaolin master who was not what he seemed.
He had no wish to harm the meddling American, so, when she learned his secret, Joanna's captor determined to stash her at a Taoist temple. True, the sect was persecuted throughout the land, but he saw no harm in seeking divinity through love. And the cult's mistress was the great Tigress, Shi Po. WHat he did not see was that he and Joanna were on the path to Heaven, and salvation lay in a kiss, a touch and sating the...Hungry Tigress.
Characters:
The characters are enjoyable and three dimensional. Joanna is not a pampered brat but instead desires independence and to use her vast knowledge to help China. Zou-tun, although he is from a similar class to Joanna's, although much higher, doesn't have a desire for bloodshed and violence and instead wants to lead a peaceful life. I would guess that they are archetypes; the girl rich and rebelling, and the guy rich and also rebelling, but as mentioned, the characters are interesting. The other characters in the book such as Shi Po, Joanna's and Zou-Tun's fathers seem to be flat. I would have liked an epilogue, to know whether or not Joanna conceived. (In Hungry Tigress it seemed definite, while in Burning Tigress it's not.)
Theme:
In order to be happy, sometimes one must rebel against the culture they are brought up in.
Plot:
This is written in third person point of view, from Zou-Tun's and Joanna's points of view. One thing that really bugged me about this book is where he had learned her name? And how? (In first chapter when they meet, he basically knocks her out, and then in second chapter he calls her by her name with no explanation of how he learned it.) I think suspension of disbelief is required in this book, along with the eye rolling at the message they learned.
Author Information:
Children of mixed races have their own set of rules. As the daughter of a Shanghai native and a staunch Indiana Hoosier, Jade Lee struggled to find her own identity somewhere between America and China. Her search took her to Regency England, where the formality of culture hid a secret sensuality that fascinated her. But Devil's Bargain was just the beginning. That same search adds a mystical element in her Tigress series beginning with White Tigress. In those books, Jade delves into the hidden sensuality of the Dragon/Tigress sect in pre-revolutionary China.
Jade is a USA Today Bestseller, 5 time PRISM award winner, Romantic Times Reviewers Choice winner (and 4 time nominee), and a state racquetball champion! She�s been a RITA finalist twice, 6 time RT KISS award winner, and the recipient of multiple glorious racquetball bruises and injuries. But her favorite accolade comes from reader emails. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your wonderful emails! I couldn't do it without you!
At home, her husband and two daughters try to ignore her stacks of Zen sexual texts. Instead, they brag about her award-winning humor pseudonym, Katherine Greyle. (From freshfiction.com)
Opinion:
This is one of the novels that I come back to over and over again, enjoying the reading; the dislike the two characters held for one another and how they seemed to fall in love. What really did bother me is that nowhere in the book did the author mention how Kang Zou-Tun learned Joanna's name and also I kind of wished that the time would have stretched on for the characters, because the time doesn't seem realistic. (Within less than a week they're in love?)
4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
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