Title: The Tiger Queens Author: Stephanie Thornton
Published: November 4, 2014
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 586
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:After her mother foretells an ominous future for her, gifted Borte becomes an outsider within her clan. When she seeks comfort in the arms of aristocratic traveler Jamuka, she discovers he is the blood brother of Temujin, the man who agreed to marry her and then abandoned her long before they could wed.
Temujin will return and make Borte his queen, yet it will take many women to safeguard his fragile new kingdom. Their daughter, the fierce Alaqai, will ride and shoot an arrow as well as any man. Fatima, an elegant Persian captive, will transform her desire for revenge into an unbreakable loyalty. And Sorkhokhtani, a demure widow, will position her sons to inherit the empire when it begins to fracture from within.
In a world lit by fire and ruled by the sword, the tiger queens of Genghis Khan come to depend on one another as they fight and love, scheme and sacrifice, all for the good of their family...and the greatness of the People of the Felt Walls.
My fairly recent discovery of Stephanie Thornton has been one of the highlights of my historical fiction reading career. Her novels about women forgotten by history are wonderfully written and imagined, and I was absolutely anticipating The Tiger Queens. The women who played a role in Genghis Khan’s life? Absolutely! Unfortunately…I didn’t like this novel nearly as much as the author’s two previous novels.
The big issue here is scope: Thornton is trying to accomplish too much. The cast of characters in The Tiger Queens is huge and often difficult to keep track of, and the book has not one self-contained narrative, but four. I feel like there’s enough material here to have filled a trilogy about badass Mongol women, but instead it’s all squished together in one book, and the individual stories of Borte, Alaqai, Fatima, and Sorkhoktani are really not done justice. Because, rather than having a cohesive overarching plot, each “section” of The Tiger Queens has its own plot. So from page 1-165 we have Borte’s story, which is completely self-contained, then we move on to her daughter Alaqai for another 100 pages or so, and so forth. Yes, most characters make appearances more than once, but the tone and narrative focus always shifts drastically. And, really, 100 pages or so is seriously not enough to develop a character, a motive, and a well-reasoned plot. So, for the most part, this book felt rushed, lacking in depth, and surface-level only.
And this is super disappointing for me to say, because I truly wanted to get into the stories of these women, but they were just so rushed. Thornton’s two previous books were only about one woman each, and that allowed for a greater depth of character and nuance of storytelling that is simply not possible with a book formatted in this manner. Honestly, I think Borte’s story was the strongest of the four, and I don’t understand at all why Thornton didn’t decide to dedicate 400 pages to her life. The three women who came after her didn’t seem nearly as fully-realized as she did.
On the other hand, I do love the uniqueness of Thornton’s writing and how she allows women’s stories to be heard. There’s a lot of fictionalizing going down in The Tiger Queens, but I truly felt that the book captures the spirit and essence of the culture and lives of these people (albeit in a slightly truncated manner). You can always see the amount of research this author puts into her novels, and this book is no different.
Sure, I’m disappointed by how this book didn’t live up to its potential or the standard the author has set for herself, but that doesn’t mean this is a bad book. I think The Tiger Queens is a pretty solid example of what Thornton can do, and why I will continue to read and purchase her fiction.
