White Tiger
By Kylie Chan
Published in: 2006
Pages: 546, with a glossary and a reference list at the end
Edition: paperback
Times read: 1st
Brought in: late 2009 from a second hand store, on a whim.
Time taken to read: 2 days, but it was literally less than 24 hours- I started it at 8pm last night, I finished it at 3pm today.

Oh, how glad I am I brought this book. It is possibly my new favourite series. It is brilliant. It… oh, I could not put it down. While I was sleeping last night, I kept waking up, looking at the clock, and sighing when I realised that I still had another 4 hours of normal sleep time before I could resume my reading of this fantastic book! Yes, it was that good.

So the book is about Emma Donaghue. She’s an Australian nanny living in Hong Kong, working full-time for Mr. John Chen, his daughter Simone, and their bodyguard Leo. Emma has feelings for John but keeps things professional, until she learns that he is in fact a chinese deity, and one who is going to die very soon. Emma adapts to this strange world with ease, caring for her charming charge Simone, forming a friendship with Leo that is reminiscent of brother-sister bond (some of the practical jokes they play on each other are amusing), and learning martial arts from Mr. Chen, whose domain is over marital arts (oh, and he’s a turtle. For some reason. Not a real one, he’s human in this book, but his ‘true-form’ is as a turtle.). Confused? Well read the book dammit and get understanding!

So basically, this story is fast-paced, there is quite a bit of action- no glancing over the fights that occur, they do go into some detail. There is some brilliant use of chinese mythology in it, enough to make me really interested and want to go find out more (the books referenced at the end? Yeah, I’m on bookdepository.com already searching for them to be sent out to me). I loved the main character Emma, she was an australian (so i identified with her rahter well), she was quite headstrong and stubborn, and really quite awesome. Basically, I could not stop reading this book (but was forced to when the power went out earlier, and during which I sulked around my mum until it came back on) and upon finishing it, reached for the other book I had in the series, only to realise I have the third book, not hte second one.

So while I cry over the fact that I have to wait until the weekend to go buy the second book, here’s my final words:
White Tiger Rating: 10/10. For sure.
Would I re-read it? Hells yes. I loved every minute of this book. Every minute. You know how in some stories, there are dull moments that you wish you could skip through and get to the good parts again? No such parts like that in this book. It was fantastic.
Who would I recommend it to? Well this is a tough one. I am rather interested in mythology, and this book really hit me because it is all about Chinese mythology, something I know nothing about. I currently read the dream-hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon, which is about the greek gods, so I guess people who are into mythology or that series would enjoy this one (though there is so much less… well smut in this story- there’s only some innocent kisses shared. But trust me, the story more than makes up for it, if that’s the onyl reason you read these kinds of books). So basically I guess people into mythology would enjoy this book, or anyone who likes a good action read. Or a decent romance- this is pretty big on the ‘forbidden romance’ thing, if you like that sort of stuff.

Links:
Author’s website: http://www.kyliechan.com/ 
There is no amazon link to this, probably because the author is Australian. But her website tells you where you can purchase her books if you like- and they have just released it all onto e-book i think.

So definitely pick up this series and give it a shot. It will not disappoint, it is beyond brilliant.