WHITE TIGRESS

Author: Jade Lee ISBN: 0843953934 1/2005 HISTORICAL Publisher: DORCHESTER/Leisure

Englishwoman Lydia Smith sailed to the Orient seeking her fiance. She found treachery instead. In seedy Shanghai, she was drugged, sold, and made slave to a dark-eyed dragon of a man. But while her captor purchased her body, was that what he truly sought? He demanded not her virginity but her yin—the essence of her ecstasy—and there seemed no choice but to consent. What harm, Lydia wondered, was there in allowing him to pleasure her, to teach her, until she could flee? It was the danger—and the reward—of taking the first step on a journey to heaven, and her feet were already on the path to becoming a radiant and joyous...White Tigress...

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

WHITE TIGRESS has me a bit befuddled. Sort of split right down the center as to whether I like it or not.

On the one hand, I admire the way Jade Lee handles the interracial aspect of this book, as well as placing the romance in the unique setting of China—Shanghai, in particular—at the turn-of-the-century.

On the other hand, I am a bit perplexed by both Lydia and Ru Shan, and turned off by what seems a confusing, frustrating and unsatisfying ending.

The first half of WHITE TIGRESS, while erotic and fascinating in a way, was painfully slow going. As highly sensual as this part of the story was, it was Lydia (or Li Dee, as her Chinese captor Ru Shan calls her) that drove me up a wall. That she would travel to Shanghai alone, ignorant of the customs and language, not knowing anyone there, without notifying her family she was leaving or her fiance in China that she was coming (she wanted to surprise him), seemed a bit too much to swallow. We're not taking Europe here, we're talking half-way around the world! Completely and utterly alone! To be quite honest, later on in the story, I thought that a woman who was ballsy enough to do all that would surely have been clever enough to outwit and escape her captor. Obviously, she wasn't and didn't until much later. Managing to get independently to China must have been a one-time fluke.

Beginning in the second half, when Lydia finally manages to escape her captivity, the book took on a new turn and became a real page turner. Lydia seeks revenge—not just against Ru Shan, who bought and held her as a slave in order to take her yin to mix with his yang and thus become an Immortal, but also against her cad of a fiance, Max Slade, who ruined her reputation. In what I suppose should be a twist of irony, Lydia, after being coerced and tricked by Max to marry Ru Shan, refuses, at first, only suddenly to discover she is in love with Ru Shan. Upon this enlightenment and at the urging of an English priest (?!), she agrees to wed him, and this, my friends, is where the rest of WHITE TIGRESS seemed to just go downhill.

Ms. Lee gives WHITE TIGRESS a great feel of the Orient in both setting and culture, but I'm not sure how much of the yin and yang philosophy (is that part of Taoism?) that Ru Shan practices is accurate, fictional, or a mix of the two—that's one subject I have absolutely no knowledge of. Those readers who like a sensual and erotic romance, set within the unique trappings of a fascinating country and culture and are better at suspending their sense of disbelief, I'm sure will appreciate WHITE TIGRESS much, much more than I did.

Nancy Davis