The Tiger’s Daughter sinks its claws into a reader and refuses to let them go until the very last page, although some things could also be improved.
It’s not uncommon for novels to have little taglines on their front covers, but The Tiger’s Daughter goes, metaphorically speaking, directly for the jugular. Right beneath the title, the cover pronounces “Even gods can be slain.” That’s pretty ambitious, to say the least, and as a word, ambitious sums up this debut from Arsenault Rivera, sent to yours truly courtesy of Tor Books.
Granted, that term comes with some positives and some negatives alike. Sometimes, it’s a polite way of saying that someone’s bitten off more than they can chew. Make no mistake, Arsenault Rivera bit off a lot with this thick novel.
Put together demons, cultures with pretty apparent real-world influences (for example, I learned what a deel is and that it’s Mongolian from reading the word in this book, so never let anyone tell you that fantasy can’t teach you anything), a hugely central queer storyline that crushes your heart and also a fairly tricky point of view (the book is primarily in the second person, with the conceit being that Shefali is writing to Shizuka, with some third-person sections), and you start to get the idea of what Arsenault Rivera is going for here.
And yet even the hardest challenge of these, the second-person, actually ends up working for the most part. It’s not something I’d like to see become a trend, but she has the benefit of her conceit to get her by as well. Granted, there are portions where it does get a little clunky, primarily because Shefali alludes to future events that Shizuka knows about. It does work as a suitable bit of foreshadowing on occasion, but sometimes it feels a little ineffective just because we’ve seen it a few times before already. Another device that Arsenault Rivera uses repeatedly (no spoilers here, thank you) works better because the characters aren’t withholding knowledge quite as much.
Even with her far-flung world, though, Arsenault Rivera doesn’t get too bogged down in the weeds of her creation. A reader learns more than enough if they’re paying close attention. For the most part, that’s a good thing. In one instance, though, it doesn’t, and that would be when it comes to the suffixes. It’s possible to put most of them together, but when the point is that they all matter, it’d be nice to get (and I can’t believe I’m asking for this) an appendix. However, it’s also clear that this book is kicking off a new series — which means there’s time to go into more detail for the parts of the world we don’t know quite as well in later entries.
Despite the letter, though, there’s still something mythical about this book. Literally speaking, there are a couple competing mythologies at play here — Shizuka is heavily tied to the Heavenly Family, while Shefali refers to Grandmother Sky and Grandfather Earth — but there’s also the sense of mythology surrounding ancestors, too. The inclusion of nearly all female legends has to be a conscious decision, and it’s a good one. Yes, men play their parts in this book, but its two heroines being the most important, both because of the circumstances of their births and because of what they’re capable of, is never even close to being in doubt.
But even in the parts Shefali narrates, Arsenault Rivera lets Shizuka, in particular, be human. Does Shefali comment on some traits that we find negative? Not in the sense that she comes right out and says they’re not the greatest traits to have, but nor does she (and by extension, Arsenault Rivera) elide them either. The both of them are allowed to be human, too, and that shines through.
Next: Review: A Poison Dark and Drowning, Jessica Cluess
It’s been a pretty fair year for fantasy, all told, and The Tiger’s Daughter looks to be continuing that trend.