Liu, Marjorie M. - Tiger Eye

[oyceter]

Despite several people reccing Liu to me, I've been avoiding her books after reading a snippet of one (Red Heart of Jade, I think) and being completely weirded out by the Taipei in it.

Dela Reese buys a strange puzzle box in a Beijing street market; the next thing she knows, she's surrounded by flashy golden lights and a seven-foot tall guy with a lot of weapons is demanding to know what her command is. When he learns that she doesn't want anyone killed or conquered, we get:

"If you did not bring me here to kill or fight, then I was summoned to pleasure your body." He looked like he would rather impale himself face-first on a bed of nails.

Not quite what I had envisioned, and thoroughly welcome!

My general impression of the recent paranormal trend is that they tend to be more sexually explicit and have better worldbuilding, but to my surprise, this book's strengths lie in the snappy dialogue and the characters. Not that the sex is bad, and the worldbuilding is pretty neat, but I am so glad to have a romance in which the characters actually feel like they're falling in love, not insta-lust.

Anyway, Hari (aforementioned seven-foot tall shapeshifter guy from the box) and Dela soon discover that not one, but two groups of people are out to kill Dela. Oh, also, Dela has psychic powers, namely, an affinity for metal, as does most of her family and the detective agency her family founded. To my surprise, Dela not only protests that she's capable of taking care of herself, most of the time she follows through. She's smart, funny, down-to-earth, and also wary. Hari's also a surprise -- rather than being the alpha male intent on seduction, he's fairly shy and hurt after being basically tortured and enslaved for two thousand years. My favorite part of the book was watching the two of them gradually get to know each other and trust each other; there's a sweetness about Hari that's particularly charming, especially when juxtaposed with Dela's practicality.

Some of the prose descriptions in the beginning were a little too purple for me, but Liu soon gets into Hari and Dela's voices, and that's when she really begins to shine. I haven't laughed so much while reading a romance for quite some time.

We later get to meet some of Dela's friends from Dirk & Steele, the detective agency cum hideout for other psychically-powered pepole. Normally, I would resent meeting all these people who were clearly going to star in the next books, but instead of giving me endless descriptions on how testosterone-ladden, gorgeous and broad-shouldered the men are, Liu focuses on their dialogue and personalities. For once, I'm actually excited to be reading the next books in the series because I want to know more about the characters (I have slight crushes on Dean for his total guy-ness and Eddie because he is cute and "ma'am"'s Dela).

In terms of gender politics, the only thing that really bugged me was that I wanted more women in Dirk & Steele. That's more a minor complaint, though; we get to meet one of Dela's female friends, and there are several powerful women in the background, including the co-founder of Dirk & Steele. In terms of race politics, I do wish that there were Chinese main characters, given the early setting in Beijing and a later subplot. While the inclusion of the Chinese mafia as villains in a book with a mostly white cast would normally bug me, I am not as irritated, given that Liu's later books do seem to star an Asian character (or more?). I'm particularly looking forward to the one that's set in Africa, starring an actual black man! Not specifically targeted as an African-American romance! (To clarify: I have no problem with African-American romances, but am irked that the trend of Exotified Ethnicities a la Harlequin Presents somehow always skips over black men.)

In conclusion: I am very happily surprised. This isn't just a good paranormal, it's a good romance and a fun read, period. I'm also extremely glad ladyjax persuaded me to buy the next book in the series last week and that I have the third one sitting around somewhere (Dean! In Taiwan! AWESOME!).

Comments

[oyceter]

It was a lot of fun! Also, seven-feet-tall hot guys from boxes learning the joy of flossing will never cease to amuse me.

Hrm, in the book "Dela" is short of "Delilah," and she's explicitly described as being blond-haired, blue-eyed and very pale. I was trying to figure out the ethnicity of her friend Kit, who I think gets her own book later, and of the rest of the Dirk and Steele guys, but I actually didn't quite catch what they looked like. Artur's Russian, Dean is blond (I think), Eddie supposedly looks like Orlando Bloom, and Blue has long black hair and high cheekbones. I keep picturing Eddie as a cute young Asian guy and Blue as possibly mixed, but I think I am making stuff up.

I was wondering about Hari too -- he has gold eyes and auburn/gold/multi-colored hair, but then again, he's a tiger shapeshifter. I was mostly placing him as Indian, partly because of the name and partly because he was called out of his box by one or two Mongolian leaders. On the other hand, he's also spent time in ancient Rome and under a Goth master, so I'm not sure.

[nojojojo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, just looked up the book on the Brookly Public Library's catalog, and saw the cover. I've seen this book several times, actually, and never touched it because, well, putting a blonde white chick on the cover of a book isn't really the way to market anything to me. Granted, I read books with white protagonists... well, all the time. =) But I still prefer if the book's cover keeps things racially and visually ambiguous, so at least I can pretend she doesn't look like Yet Another Cliche.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I was put off by the cover as well. Thankfully, the book itself stops with the physical descriptions after the first few chapters, IIRC, so I constantly was thinking Dela looked something like Eliza from Gargoyles for some reason, and then being surprised by the cover again.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I generally tend to decide that the cover artist doesn't know what they're talking about in such cases. Sometimes the author doesn't either. :)

[oyceter]

I mean, I don't mind. And I'd rather have moments of forgetting how the character looks than the constant repetition of golden hair and blue eyes blah blah.

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

I started with Soul Song first and went from there although I am a bit cheesed that to date, Sould Song is the only one with the hero on the cover not the heroine. What - they couldn't find a picture of a biracial sister for the cover? Preferably one that doesn't pretty much look white?

Should I even ask that question?

At least the cover girl on the latest book, The Last Twilight is brown haired.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

That was the first one I picked up, and I really really wonder if they put mer-boy on the cover because it hit the market around the same time as a paranormal merman romance by Gena Showalter:



Coincidence?

And the cover blurbs make them sound really, really similar, too. (They're not -- I picked up the GS on the anti-rec of a friend who works for Harlequin, and as promised it was SO AWFUL that it wound up being hysterically funny; I was expecting more of the same from the Liu, not knowing anything about the author or series, and was rather pleasantly surprised that she was so competent.)

[oyceter]

Siiiiiigh. I hadn't noticed it was the _only_ one with the hero on the cover, but... sigh. And the trend in the YA covers I've been seeing right now is to actually get the ethnicity of people right too.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Kit is biracial. Half African-American and... I can't remember the other half. Maybe white but I'm not 100% certain.

[oyceter]

Oh good! For some reason, I thought so but I wasn't sure.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Your memory's right -- her dad's people were from Appalachia.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

If this is the same Kit who reappears in Soul Song, Kitala Bell the violinist, she's biracial -- black mom, white dad. And blessedly free of the "oh noes I am stuck between worlds, where do I beeeeeeeeelong?" angst that so many authors seem to automatically tag mixed-race characters with. (Her love interest does have a wee bit of it, but y'know, his mom was human and his dad was a merman, so it's kind of understandably literal in his case.)

That book's also got a minor Asian baddie -- a dirty cop -- who stood out because she was presented so matter-of-factly -- no ooh so exotic, no sudden reveal of martial arts skills or mysticism or anything, no relation of her ethnicity to her motivation...what a shocking concept!

[oyceter]

Yup, that's her! Yay biracial character!

I'm mostly ok with the Asian baddies as long as there isn't stupid exoticism and if there are other Asian characters to balance it out.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if there were other Asian characters in that particular book, but the cop at least was presented as totally matter of fact and unexotic. Cop, female, Asian, turns out to be on the take, but IIRC so was her white male partner.

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

Blue's mom is actually from Afghanistan, which is touched on in context of his focus book.

[oyceter]

Yay!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I think I remember Kit is Black or at least mixed race. I read it a long time ago.