Because I am such an avid reader, I tend to buy a lot of books and then run out of places to put them. Since I don’t like to waste space, I occasionally do a bit of a stocktake and put some of my older (or least favorite) books aside to be sold or given to friends. I was doing this the other day and came across White Tiger by Kylie Chan. I was a bit confused as to what it was doing in my bookshelf because I vaguely remembered disliking it and I generally get rid of novels that I dislike as soon as possible. So I decided to re-read it and refresh my memory.

White Tiger is a book about an Australian woman named Emma who works in a kindergarten in Hong Kong. Disillusioned by her boss’s attempts to treat the students like robots, Emma decides to quit and focus on private tutoring. As luck would have it, the wealthy Mr Chen offers her an insane amount of money to act as a live-in nanny for his daughter, Simone.

Now, Emma doesn’t know much about Mr Chen as she has only had brief contact with him through Simone -- but she immediately packs up and moves into his house without a qualm. In her place I’d definitely have been more suspicious, especially since Emma has no idea what Mr Chen actually does. She only knows that he’s very wealthy, has a bodyguard for his daughter and carries a sword when he goes out.

As the story progresses however, Emma does find out a bit more about Mr Chen -- a lot more. When she, Simone and the bodyguard Leo are attacked by some teenagers, Emma can’t help but notice that when Leo hits them they turn into stringy black goo. Before too long Emma is drawn into a whole new world of Chinese gods (Mr Chen being one of them), demons and martial arts.

Although White Tiger starts off relatively slowly, things pick in Chapter 9 and this momentum is carried through the rest of the book. Chan provides some nice details about Chinese gods that I didn’t know about and gives each one an accurate portrayal in the story. Her main characters are also very three-dimensional and Chan takes the time to show elements of their personalities through minor interactions. For example, Emma and Leo show their playful sides by playing some rather immature pranks on each other. This helps to provide some levity to the serious situations in the novel.

When I reached the end of the novel I was reminded of what made me dissatisfied the first time around. I believe that the first book in a series should be able to stand on its own and this one doesn’t. The story ends very abruptly as if the author is saying that you have to buy the next book or else. I tend to respond to these sorts of novels by boycotting the series, but in the case of White Tiger I thought that because I enjoyed the story it might be worth reading the second book, Red Phoenix. To my disappointment, this also ended in a bit of a cliffhanger, but I was so caught up in the storyline and characters that I kept reading. Before I knew it, I’d finished the trilogy and started on the next one.

I think that it’s worth reading White Tiger and its sequels, because the books are interesting and not hard to get through. Do keep in mind though that you will have to read all of them in order to get the full story (which still hasn’t finished at the end of the second series). It might be worth borrowing them from the library first to see if you think it’s worth buying the entire series for yourself.

   -- Amy Gordon