Tiger, Tiger

by Mel Keegan

In 2073 the wild tiger is extinct, but as a species they flourish. Gene-tweaked to make them the size of big dogs, they've becom exotic pets. Few people care if wild tigers are gone, but aged billionaire Cass Vandermeer owns tracts of Tasmania, where a few real tigers still battle to survive. In the last wilderness, Alec Fitch and Sonny Moran are rangers at war with gene smugglers and poachers.

Genres: Romance, Science Fiction

137 pages, Nook

First published September 15, 2005

About the author

A self-confessed science fiction and fantasy devotee, Keegan is known for novels across a wide range of subjects, from the historical to the future action-adventure. Mel lives in South Australia with an eccentric family and a variety of pets.

Every Mel Keegan book is strong on gay or bisexual heroes (also, often, on gay villains), and some of these heroes are the most delicious in fiction: Jarrat and Stone from the NARC series, Bill Ryan and Jim Hale from The Deceivers, Neil Travers and Curtis Marin from Hellgate, and many more unforgettable characters. Because Mel's books feature the same sex relationships, the partnership at the core of each book is integral: this is the relationship driving the story, and it can be very powerful indeed.

Reviews

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

SlashReaders: So, for a Mel Keegan book this was good. However, I was not as impressed with it as with many of his other works. I found that alike some of the others, this one struck me as being too information heavy. This might've worked if the length of the story was longer than a novel. But for a Novelia, I don't really want that much information, back story or all that stuff that goes with the set up for a full length novel.

As always the characters were great and fun to read. The story was action packed once it got going and fun. I thought that the premise and the idea of it were interesting. But it took me a little bit to get into the work as a whole.

So over all it was good but it wasn't as good as I've found many of his other works to be.

[Aricia Gavriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession: I adore tigers, so this story is custom-tailored for me. Keegan paints a rich portrait of a near-future world which is alarmingly familiar. Picture, if you will, the last wilderness in the world. Humans have covered the globe like a virus, species everywhere are but a memory, cities have sprawled across the continents. You travel to the end of the Earth, literally, to find the last tract of wilderness: a regon called the Tarkine.

And it's a real place, in the northwest of the island of Tasmania, just off the southern tip of Australia. In this short-novel, this part of the island is privately owed, meaning it can't be logged, turned over to "pine plantations," mined, developed into a celebrity vacation resort, or yet another city. The Tarkine is owned by a very old man who's still on a mission: preserve the last surviving fragment of the wilderness ... and preserve real, genuine live tigers in the wild.

In this tiny patch of paradise live the park rangers who safeguard the region and its cats. Without delay, we meet Sonny and Alec. Warning: be prepared to fall in lust, if not in love! And into this snippet of paradise come the villains ... gene smugglers, whose industry will make your blood run cold (if it doesn't there's something wrong, all your spark plugs are not sparking).

The text is quite brief (the paperback version is 136pp, with gorgeous illustrations) but the story is amazingly complex, so richly detailed, you can read it in an afternoon but will be haunted by it for weeks. This reviewer could happily spend a whole novel's worth of reading time in this "Keegan future." I've gone back to Tiger, Tiger several times. Heroes, villains, exotic locations, gay romance (a smidgen of sex) ... and of course, tigers --

What more could you wish for? A mate of mine said recently, "As an artist, Mel Keegan has evolved in recent years." Very true. It's illuminating and gratifying to watch a master craftsman develop. Some of the bounce and verve we saw with the earlier works has sloughed off, replaced by a gravitas and artistry one appreciates.

I would actually give Tiger, Tiger 4.5 stars, because I think it could have been longer, and would have profited by being extended to include a more fully-blown storyline. Having said this, what we see in the book *is* the story: the properly-developed depiction of a single event in the lives of a number of people -- and tigers. I guess I loved this so much, I just wanted more, so I'm a bit picky! Anyway, I'm rounding up to 5 stars rather than down to 4 because the story is absolutely complete, in and of itself, and I do love this "universe."

[Don Bradshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great mystery story with a romance as a secondary plot. Alec and Sonny are lovers but more importantly to the story they are rangers in a private tiger reserve in Tasmania. Set in the near future of 2073, tigers have been genetically altered to save the species from total extinction. Poachers and gene smugglers abound and this time have hit the Tarkine in an attempt to steal tiger blood from a pure bred tigress. Mr. Keegan did an excellent job of making the reader feel like he/she is right in the middle of the old rain forest with his vivid descriptions. You can almost see the damage that had been done to the rain forest. The story flowed well and the bad guy was a bit of a surprise to me. Sonny and Alec are well developed as are the secondary characters. I recommend this story to anyone who enjoys a good chase after the bad guy.

[Mara Ismine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set slightly in the future, Tasmanian tigers have been recreated and are kept in a reserve. Someone is after the tigers. There is much rushing around in the Tasmanian forest trying to check on the resident tigers and find the bad guys. The two heroes are in a steady relationship and try to juggle the demands of their work and relationship as they try and protect the tigers.

I enjoyed the book with it's complex setting and storyline. The romance is more of a sub-plot than the main focus.

[Meggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This plot was partly interesting. This book was simply blah... I admit, there was action, good and bad guys and solid plotted story, but the main characters were to blank. The story was simply not for my taste.