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A review by historyrebel
The Ninja Daughter by Tori Eldridge
2.0
I'll admit up front I didn't quite make it to the end, but I did get through the majority of it. I wanted to like it early on, but there's just too many problems here.
First, some things I did like, which is why the book gets two stars and not one. I like Lily's overall attitude, with the right mix of seriousness and sarcasm. I could relate a little bit to her relationship with her mom, the overbearing control freak type. She's also not entirely perfect, and despite her fighting and athletic skills, has to think her way out of problems at times. It is entertaining to see how she gets herself out of trouble. The story gets off to a good start with a scene of Lily in a lot of trouble and saving herself. The early stages of the book were pretty good and kept me reading for a while despite some of the problems below.
You will be reminded of Lily's heritage...constantly. It quickly crosses the point where it's informative to being repetitive and starts dragging the story down any time Lily's family is involved, which is quite a lot of the story. In particular, one scene is hard to keep up with because Lily has to stop every other sentence to explain some aspect of Chinese culture (Lily's Norwegian heritage is also frequently mentioned, but given much less focus). This is one of those "women empowerment" stories where women's empowerment is code for a woman beating men, where random creeps are thrown in to molest Lily who do absolutely nothing to further the story but give her a reason to beat some creepy men to show she's some lady badass. It's also one of those stories that relies on double standards to try to fight other double standards, which kills whatever message it's trying to send. Considering how much Lily is clearly a stand-in for the author, there are times the story feels very much like a revenge fantasy against men. It's not as bad as some stories, in that not every man is a terrible scumbag, but most definitely seem to be. On that note, Lily's work helping women get away from abusers dominates the first few chapters, and then just disappears for a long stretch of the book, only occasionally being referred to. It does finally pop back up, but it's so much later I'd pretty much forgotten about it. Characters in this book speak differently depending on their ethnic lines, and the ones of different ethnicities are generally almost completely indistinguishable from each other.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The premise was interesting. The execution didn't work out.
First, some things I did like, which is why the book gets two stars and not one. I like Lily's overall attitude, with the right mix of seriousness and sarcasm. I could relate a little bit to her relationship with her mom, the overbearing control freak type. She's also not entirely perfect, and despite her fighting and athletic skills, has to think her way out of problems at times. It is entertaining to see how she gets herself out of trouble. The story gets off to a good start with a scene of Lily in a lot of trouble and saving herself. The early stages of the book were pretty good and kept me reading for a while despite some of the problems below.
You will be reminded of Lily's heritage...constantly. It quickly crosses the point where it's informative to being repetitive and starts dragging the story down any time Lily's family is involved, which is quite a lot of the story. In particular, one scene is hard to keep up with because Lily has to stop every other sentence to explain some aspect of Chinese culture (Lily's Norwegian heritage is also frequently mentioned, but given much less focus). This is one of those "women empowerment" stories where women's empowerment is code for a woman beating men, where random creeps are thrown in to molest Lily who do absolutely nothing to further the story but give her a reason to beat some creepy men to show she's some lady badass. It's also one of those stories that relies on double standards to try to fight other double standards, which kills whatever message it's trying to send. Considering how much Lily is clearly a stand-in for the author, there are times the story feels very much like a revenge fantasy against men. It's not as bad as some stories, in that not every man is a terrible scumbag, but most definitely seem to be. On that note, Lily's work helping women get away from abusers dominates the first few chapters, and then just disappears for a long stretch of the book, only occasionally being referred to. It does finally pop back up, but it's so much later I'd pretty much forgotten about it. Characters in this book speak differently depending on their ethnic lines, and the ones of different ethnicities are generally almost completely indistinguishable from each other.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The premise was interesting. The execution didn't work out.