James Nicoll Reviews

Emily Yu-Xuan Qin’s 2025 Aunt Tigress is a stand-alone modern fantasy.

Classmates might see Tam Lin as a timid student. Potential girlfriends might note Tam’s shyness and touch aversion. Current maybe-girlfriend Janet knows Tam’s secret. Tam can see supernatural beings.

Or rather, Janet knows a very small part of Tam’s secret, which is that Tam is not exactly human.

Tam’s mother is a human. Tam’s father was an ancient being of power, a shape-shifting tiger. Lineage does not always confer supernatural abilities. Had events played out differently, Tam might never have developed her special talents.

However, Tam’s paternal aunt is also an ancient being of power. When Tam’s parents foolishly allowed Aunt Tigress to tend Tam, Aunt Tigress triggered Tam’s second sight. Being a person of remarkable callousness, Aunt Tigress later roped Tam into certain unsavory, dangerous activities Tam prefers not to dwell on.

Tam’s mother blames Aunt Tigress for Tam’s father’s death. Tam has not seen Aunt Tigress in years. Now, Tam receives alarming news from Aunt Tigress’ demon lawyer. Aunt Tigress is dead. Aunt Tigress was murdered.

Tam has no idea who or what could have killed Aunt Tigress. She doesn’t know if the guilty party has anything to do with the supernatural entity stalking Tam. In fact, Tam does not even know what questions to ask, because Aunt Tigress was not murdered at all. The situation is much worse than that.

~oOo~

Obligatory Canadian content: this is set in Canada. It matters to the plot that it is set in Canada. One of Aunt Tigress’ pastimes is trying to strong-arm secrets and power out of First Nations supernatural beings. Furthermore, the story is told from the perspective of a first-generation Taiwanese-Canadian by someone with personal experience of Canadian foibles… which is to say Canadians do not come off as the paragons of virtue that all foreign authors must believe us to be¹.

It would be interesting to take a long look at the evolution of immigrant fiction as the nations of original change and the receiving nation’s culture evolves. Might be easier to find Canadian examples rather than American just now… but that’s a job for someone else.

This plot is the opposite of a found family plot. Instead of finding strangers with whom one has common ground, this is more about trying to shed relatives who have transitioned from unhelpful to actively dangerous. Mind you, the nature of supernatural beings is that they’re risky to be around at the best of times, but Aunt Tigress is super dangerous even for a supernatural tiger.

This novel is not the sapphic romance some readers might expect. Janet has her own agenda and Tam isn’t near the top of that agenda. In fact, one might go so far as to say that Janet isn’t a great girlfriend. She might well be a bad girlfriend.

Reactions:

• The novel might seem a bit disjointed to some readers. I didn’t mind that; I enjoy digressions².
• I did find the novel a bit long for my taste, but that’s my taste. Readers who enjoy long leisurely reads will enjoy this novel.
• I also bounced off the whole cultivation-of-abilities subplot. This was one reason I bounced off Sky Pride, reviewed last week. Again, your mileage may vary.

The prose was fine and the characters were skillfully done. It happens the book isn’t my thing, but only for reasons related to my very specific tastes, not because the novel fails to be what the author intended. Readers looking for what the author set out to write should enjoy this.

Aunt Tigress is available here (DAW), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: That said, USA delenda est.

2: My love of digressions leads to footnotes. Enjoy 😊