The story takes place in the 1930’s in Malaya as British Colonization is still going strong. We follow around two characters, Ji, the main character, and Ren. Their stories eventually wrap together around a finger of Ren’s old master who has tasked Ren with getting the finger back to his grave before 49 days are up. However, things don’t go at all like they should for Ren and Ji ends up tied into as well. There is a bond between the two of them as well as Ji’s step-brother Shin and Ren’s brother Yi.

Like I said, this book was outside my normal read and I wouldn’t say that I’m the target audience of the book. It has some romance undertones throughout the whole book that feel like they are written in amateurish way that I would attribute to something more of a romance novel. And in those it felt a little bit Cassandra Claire in the tone it takes at times, though never sets up the dumb twist and it is just honest about the relationship between the two characters. All of that said, I do think the relationship works at least somewhat, and doesn’t feel like something that is impossible to have as a relationship, it just feels like it’s a little bit weaker in the writing of that than other parts of the book.

I do have one other criticism for the book before I get to some of what I liked. I think that the quality of writing changes depending on what character perspective you’re seeing it from. Yangsze Choo writes Ji’s chapters from a first person perspective and it works well. The limited information she has just makes a lot of sense, and the story flows well through her eyes. However, the other chapters are written from Ren’s perspective and once in a while another character’s perspective, but those are written in third person. And some of it is at the beginning of the book it’s jarring to have the perspective change, but the third person writing just seems a whole lot weaker. The writing has a choppier feeling to it that doesn’t tie together all that well with the rest of the story and every times the perspective changes, it takes you out of the story because the writing quality changes.

Now, I’m not going to just knock the book, and I don’t think the first one is really an issue, that I mentioned, I think that one is just something that I’m not the target audience for that some people who come to this site will find the same. But the use of Asian lore in the book is extremely well done and very interesting. I have some knowledge of Japanese lore and Indian lore, but not much from the Malaya area and Chinese influence as well. You can really see the care and effort of adding that depth to this story. It was very interesting to see that magical aspect of the culture and the lore brought to life in this book and it makes me curious to find more literature that uses it.

Let’s quickly talk about the magical realism aspect and what that means, since it wasn’t a term I was all that familiar with coming into this book. Basically, it’s adding the lore or magical into the real world, but to have it be normal. So, it’s different than something like Urban Fantasy where generally there’s something hiding the magical and people see it and treat it as something different. In magical realism it’s treated just like it’s normal. I think that Yangsze Choo does a solid job of mixing in that slightly magical aspect to the book well. It isn’t too over the top that it would feel jarring, but really focuses on the magical aspect in dreams and then in subtle ways. There is one moment where it is clearly magic or some power, however you want to call it, that feels a bit jarring, but I think, since it’s towards the end of the book, it’s to show off that there is something special going on.

Finally, I just want to touch on the plot quickly. I liked it quite well, the whole idea of the body needing to be buried full so that the spirit doesn’t wander is well done. And the use of tigers throughout is well done. I do have a knock on the story, but I’m not sure it would have been done differently. At the start of the story we’re introduced to the main plot in where Ren is told by his old master to find his finger and bring it back to be buried with him before 49 days are up. That storyline, which has always felt like the biggest aspect to the story wraps up well before the book is done. Choo has introduce other story elements that extend the plot out, but it feels like the story of the missing finger should run closer to the end of the book than it does. Instead, we have the story drag out longer and really starts to lean more on the romance piece. Though, that last section has a couple of nice twists to it, though, one of them, I thought was somewhat obvious.

So how was this book? I thought it was generally enjoyable, but not one that I’d highly recommend. The Night Tiger does some nice things and some interesting things. I’m not normally the biggest historical fiction fan, but this one handles it well, and liked getting into that lore. Have you read this book, if so what did you think of it? Or have you read other books of magical realism?

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1. I resolve to play the games that I got in 2018 that I haven’t played yet. Board games and video games. But really mainly board games is what this is for. Now, I’m not going to be too crazy and say something like I won’t buy more until I’ve played these games, but I want to get these games to the table. On the Dice Tower FB group, they call those unplayed games as your shelf of shame, and I have a number on there right now. The streaming of the games is going to make getting them off the shelf of shame easier.
2. That takes me nicely into Nerd Year Resolution #2. I resolve to do 20 streams this year. Now, what that looks like is still up in the air, but I want to stream a board game play 20 times. It might mean that I take a week of vacation in the summer and do a stream each day to get a bunch of them done, it might mean that I stream every other week (or at least try to). Or it might mean that I end up streaming 100 times (that would be a lot), but I want to try and stream board game content 20 times.
3. Complete the Pop Sugar reading challenge. I tend to think Pop Sugar is a pretty dumb site, but three of my co-workers and myself are doing their 40 book reading challenge, and people who don’t finish it by the end of the year have to buy the others lunch. I fully expect to fail at this simply because of having a small child, or baby as they are known as by most people, but I’m going to give it a go and see how many Dresden Files books I can get onto the list.
4. Watch and/or finish five new animes this year. That isn’t a big number, but look at what else I’m resolving to do. With my previous work schedule I was able to watch a lot of animes, but now it’s a bit trickier, and Funimation leaving VRV slowed it down for a moment as well. But now we have Funimation’s streaming service, so we’re watching Dagashi Kashi which has been hilarious.

Now, four things isn’t a ton of resolutions, but a few of them are pretty big, actually all of them could be big, but I’m probably not going to say I need to watch all of One Piece as the anime, it’ll probably be shows with 20-50 episodes for the whole show. But I was trying to do a few specific things with these resolutions.

First, I was trying to make them at least semi-attainable. It is going to be tricky to get through all 40 books for me, unless I find some pretty short books to read. Maybe some of the baby books will fit a category. But one thing you’ll notice, to make them semi-attainable, was that I set bigger numbers, but not a specific pace.

I could have said that I want to stream every other week, but I don’t have my streaming computer yet, and I don’t know how long it will take to get the set-up for streaming right. So instead of going with something that I might fail at easily, because it might not show up and get set-up until two weeks into January. So I went with the bigger numbers, 40 books is daunting, but saying that I want to read a book a week sounds nearly impossible.

Secondly, I’m fine with failing at all of these resolutions. I could have said that I wanted to get back to the gym three times a week and lose 30 pounds so that I’m healthy again or something very important like that, like graduate college or get a job if I were job hunting. But those aren’t great resolutions, those are things that you should be wanting to do without actually making a resolution about them. While I hope all of these comes true and I can get them done, because they would be fun to get done, they aren’t key to my survival still.

That actually quite nicely flows into the final point. All of these are fun resolutions. Kind of like being fine failing at any of them, I’m also going to be more tempted to keep them as compared to losing 30 pounds or finding a job, because I like them. Again, doesn’t mean that those two things aren’t highly important, but you get the point. It’s more that resolutions should be stuff you want to do for yourself to better yourself because you want to do them, not because you have to do them.

Anyways, those aren’t really resolutions, but I wanted to add that in to help people think about their nerdy or non-nerdy resolutions. It might help to put down something you need to do as a resolution, but make sure you pepper in some fun stuff as well

What are your nerdy resolutions for 2019? Do you want to try a new nerdy hobby, read a book that’s been on your reading list for years, or watch a certain TV show or movie? Leave them in the comments below so that people know, and you can help hold me accountable to what I put above as well.

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