Review: Danger, action, romance, and tigers
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 20, 2014
In the sequel to Black Tiger, Greta van der Rol continues the story of Sally Carter and Asok (Ash) Bhosle and their weretiger alter-egos. Sally and Ash are in New York, and a mistake in the subway sets embroils Sally in the plight of a white tiger kept as a “watch cat” over the stash of a drug lord. When she and Ash accompany the rescued tiger to a sanctuary in North Carolina, Dave Gardner joins in, for his own carefully-hidden reasons. Gardner sees things no human eye should be able to see, but despite that, Sally and Ash offer him a chance to see the inner workings of the sanctuary. He has a plausible-sounding reason for wanting to go with them; he’s working on an article for a women’s magazine. Jill, the daughter of the sanctuary’s director, sees Gardner as a means to an end—more funding for the tigers and legislation to stop their exploitation. It’s even less smart to meddle in the affairs of drug lords than of wizards, and it will take the wits of all four humans and both weretigers to keep them alive.One of the things I liked most about the book, and its predecessor, is the fact that van der Rol lets her tigers be tigers. There is no pretense of big cats being simply, well, big cats of the domestic variety. They are savage and merciless, and they kill when necessary. There is rich ground here for examining the inner conflict Dr. Carter must feel between her profession and her tiger-nature. If I have a criticism at all about White Tiger, it is that that conflict wasn’t given the play it could have had. I understand why not — there is a lot of action, and the inner workings of a woman/weretiger’s mind would interrupt the smooth pace and flow. If she writes a third book in the series, and I hope she does, perhaps she will allow us to see more of Sally’s dilemma.In White Tiger, van der Rol once again gently educates the reader about the appalling state of US law with regard to wild animals, big cats in particular. She draws the curtain back on a dark window most of us never knew existed. After reading this book, the blue eyes of the white tiger will stare back at you through that window.Profits are donated to tiger conservation. Keep that in mind when making a purchase decision.