Ok let me just say this. It takes breasts and brains to write in the prespective of a man! Plus it was just awesome.

Ok story Tiger is just your normal average guy, mostly. He goes to cantinas every day after he gets his victory in from sword dancing or sword fighting. When he was younger he was raised be a native tribe, earning his name by killing a sandtiger. When he meets Delilah I guess his life basically changes.
Del doesn't trust men. When her brother his kidnipped she hears of the infamous underwater Tiger of the South and seeks him out for help.
As time goes by they form a bond, fight bad guys, discover both of their pasts!
Watch out for the next Tiger and Del Novel! One more on the way early next year! ( )

This is exactly the kind of book I usually love, and I wasn't turned off by any flaw: it's well written, the characters well-conceived, the story arc is dominated by a noble quest and peppered with plenty of action. Normally I'm a sucker for a romance between a hard-bitten warrior and a fierce, sword-wielding woman. But this pair of novels, Sword-Dancer and Sword-Singer, just didn't do it for me. And I know why, too.

I really liked Tiger, the narrator of both novels. He's a hyper-masculine, gifted swordsman who takes life as it comes and generally doesn't think too much, but displays true insight when it's called for. Del, on the other hand, she is just....ugh. She's mean. I got so sick and tired of how badly she treated Tiger - and not just at the end, either, all the time. She was horrible to him. So prickly, brittle and unbending, constantly angry, usually contemptuous to boot.

Both Tiger and Del lived through some pretty bad stuff - Tiger was enslaved throughout his childhood, Del witnessed the murder of her family and was temporarily enslaved by their killers - and respond differently. Tiger tries to forget, but can't; that's his cross to bear. Dell lets the tragedy consume her entirely; she refuses to heal or move on. Which brings up another thing about these books that could have gone either way for me. Tiger and Del spend a LOT of time thinking and talking about the past. It makes sense and serves the story - events force each to confront his or her personal demons - but by the end of the second volume, I was feeling bogged down by the repetition. People who survive really awful experiences do need to replay them over and over and over, but as a reader my patience is limited.

So...Sword-Dancer and Sword-Singer turned out to be almost great, but not quite good enough to win me over. Not quite good enough for me to continue with the series. ( )

fantasy ( )