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| My rating: 5 of 5 stars |
Dark Heavens #1
Published: 24th July, 2006
HarperVoyager, mass market, 546p.
ISBN: 9780732282967
When 28-year-old Emma Donahoe becomes a nanny to John Chen’s
daughter, Simone, she does not expect to be drawn into a world of
martial arts, magic, and extreme danger, where both gods and demons can
exist in the mortal world.
Emma gradually realises that John Chen is no ordinary businessman and
that nearly all the demons in hell would like to see him dead. John and
his American bodyguard, Leo, begin to teach Emma their particular brand
of martial arts and special defensive techniques … they also begin to
realise that there is something that is different about Emma but exactly
what it is, nobody can say.
I have loved this book ever since I first read it way back in 2006. I was drawn to the cover while perusing my local bookstore one day. I picked it up, read the back, and told myself if it was there next time I'd buy it. Well, weeks later it was still there, so I bought it - and had finished it by the time I went to bed that night. It's amazing how we can remember some books so clearly. That first reading, how we felt, the excitement, the highs and lows as we follow the characters through their story. White Tiger is one of those books for me.
The protagonist Emma was an Australian. How many of those do you get? She was loyal, fierce, loving and intelligent. I could hear her voice in my head - no accent adjustment required ;-D I have lived on the Gold Coast, where her character finds herself at one stage, I know the beach, I could smell the sea, feel the beautiful white gold sand under my feet - even felt twinges when Leo got the sunburn of all sunburns. I've been there, done that.
Mixing a modern Aussie girl's adventures in Hong Kong with the Eastern Mythology was just the icing on the cake for me. It opened up so much more than just a contemporary romance could have managed - and made a richer palette from which to draw from. Xuan Wu is wonderful, and his daughter Simone is just so adorable. Leo is a mountain of a man with whom Emma has an almost brotherly relationship with, and don't get me started on Kitty Kwok.
White Tiger is a great first book (in what I originally thought was just a trilogy!), and it is so easy to let yourself just get swept away in the story.
Only negative I have is that none of the books in the series are available on audiobook, but hopefully that will change in the future.
I hope you enjoy my thoughts on the first book in the series, White Tiger. I just finished Black Jade and I will hopefully have a review up sometime soon. It was the final book in the Dark Heavens/Journey to Wudang/Celestial Battle trilogies/series.
I'd love to hear if you have read any of the books in the series, and what you thought of them ;-D
Until next time,
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