Tiger Queen by Annie Sullivan - ADVISABLE

Tiger Queen by Annie Sullivan. 330 pgs. Blink. $17.99 

Language: G; Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG13 

BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS - ADVISABLE

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

Kateri, a desert warrior princess, must win a series of fights against men chosen by her father in order to prove her fitness to rule Achra, a desert kingdom whose water supply has nearly run out.  If Kateri loses a fight, she will be forced to marry the man who beat her and he will rule in her stead. When her father chooses Rodric as her next opponent, she knows she cannot marry him and flees to the desert.  Here she meets Cion and the Desert Boys, a band of robbers who steal water from the rich and give it to the thirsty people of Achra. From them, she learns that there is actually a huge underground reservoir of water and that her father and Rodric are hiding it to control the people.  Kateri must find a way to beat Rodric and release the dam holding back the water in order to keep her kingdom from crumbling back into the desert. 

I had a hard time deciding if I like this book. Kateri, Cion, and the other protagonists have no faults and Rodric and the King are completely evil with no redeeming qualities. This makes all of the characters feel unreal and flat to me and I had a hard time relating to any of them.  However, the world-building and action scenes were well done and kept me reading to see how Kateri would eventually defeat Rodric. A romance develops between Kateri and Cion with a few mild kissing scenes. There is plenty of swordplay, as well as two tigers that kill people as punishment for disobeying the king. 

Dona Wilson--Teacher Librarian