Thursday, February 27, 2014

Review & Interview: White Tigress by Jade Lee



White Tigress (The Way of the Tigress, #1)

Kindle Edition, 325 pages
Published March 18th 2012 by ePublishing Works! (first published January 1st 2005)
 Goodreads
Englishwoman Lydia Smith sailed to the Orient seeking her fiancé and found treachery, instead.

In seedy Shanghai, she is drugged, sold, and made a slave—to a dark-eyed dragon of a man. Her captor does not demand her virginity but her Yin—the essence of her ecstasy.

What harm can come from allowing him to pleasure her, to teach her, to explore the path of becoming the White Tigress, until she can flee?

I am going to post 4 stars, but its more like a 3.5. I didn't hate or love this story.
This was definitely different. A different outlook on sex and religion.
This is a hard book to write a review for. Its your typical woman trusts the wrong person, gets put into Brothel, man sees woman, buys woman then your story. But its much more than that.
Lydia is a strong Englishwoman in a foreign country, she tries to stay true to herself.
Ru Shan is a Chinese man with traditional beliefs and another "practice". He finds out that some of his beliefs are not true, things he has been taught for years are wrong. But he tries to stay true to those beliefs. Ru Shan also practices Taoist, a different type of sexual "feeling".
There is some sexual parts in this book, but nothing like what most are used to reading.
So hard to put into words what I feel and thought.
I felt for Lydia, she went through so much. She tried hard to understand the culture and even tried to adjust herself to it, but fell short due to lack of communication. That is my opinion, others might see it differently.
Ru Shan, tried to be "the Cheng Mountain" and hold the ENTIRE family on his shoulders, yes that was custom in this time period; but he also tried to be someone else, learn and accept new things/ideas.
 

Jade Lee
 A USA Today Bestseller, JADE LEE has been scripting love stories since she first picked up a set of paper dolls. Ball gowns and rakish lords caught her attention early (thank you Georgette Heyer), and her fascination with the Regency began. An author of more than 40 romance novels and winner of dozens of industry awards, she finally gets to play in the best girl-heaven place of all: a Bridal Salon! In her new series, four women find love as they dress the most beautiful brides in England. A Gentleman’s Gamble and What the Groom Wants are coming out in January and February.
And don’t forget KATHY LYONS. She’s Jade’s lighter, contemporary half. Don’t you hate it when you share erotic dreams with a stranger? It happens in her new Kathy Lyons series. Dream Nights with the CEO is available now!
To find out all the latest news on Jade or Kathy, visit them on the web at www.jadeleeauthor.com or www.kathylyons.com!
Jade, Thank you so much for agreeing to chat about an older book of yours.

    How did this particular story, White Tigress, come to you?
I was looking for a new series when I went walking through my favorite place in the world: A museum gift shop. I was at the Asia Society Museum in Manhattan. http://asiasociety.org/  and a book literally fell onto my foot. It was Hsa Lia’s Sexual Teachings of the Jade Dragon. I later found his first book, The Sexual Teachings of the White Tigress. I started reading and became enthralled. The idea of a female oriented Tantric cult in China just sparked my imagination. The concept that orgasm can lead to a spiritual experience was both titillating and totally absorbing. Given my somewhat repressed Asian background, I couldn’t stop reading. And once I started exploring, my imagination took hold.

I thought about all the different misconceptions between the English and the Chinese. Things like the Chinese were surprised that Europeans had words for family relationships like mother and father. The propaganda at the time said the white man lived in colonies like monkeys. Communal society without close family ties. That was just one misconception, and I thought what could happen to a naive  Englishwoman if she stepped off the boat to meet a fiancĂ© who wasn’t there? I also started thinking about exposing a Victorian girl to Chinese Tantrism. It would blow her mind!


      This is book 1, when you started this did you know it was gonna turn out to be a 6 book series?
I just kept writing. After book 1, I thought it would be a trilogy. After book 3, I thought, I have another trilogy in mind. And so it just built.
     How difficult was the research for this topic?
I got obsessed. And titillated. And intrigued. And…  You get the idea. So the research wasn’t hard at all!
      Why, did you choose this way of writing the story of Lydia and Ru Shan instead of the traditional way of them meeting.  Like why add this different view, adding his Taoist practices.  You could have just done the traditional woman sold to be a sex slave him falling in love, him teaching her the ways of a new culture. Why did you take this route?
It was the tantrism that grabbed me in the beginning. Sex slave/master is a standard romance trope, but I’ve never been strongly pulled to it. What fascinated me was the clash in cultures – not just English vs. Chinese but Christian vs. Tantric. So that’s where I went!
Thanks again Jade, for stopping by to chat with me about this book.  I can't wait to get started on the rest of the series.
It is a very intriguing subject for sure. 
For those of you who haven't read the series, here are the books in order:

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