The Tiger's Apprentice

April 14, 2003
"A very few must protect the many, and with no thanks for their efforts." An ominous portent for an eighth grade boy, but that's the lesson at the heart of this original fairy tale, in which Yep (Dragon of the Lost Sea) once again successfully mixes fantasy and Chinese history. Tom Lee lives with his elderly grandmother, Mistress Lee, in a house filled with arcane signs and mirrors with trigrams. She has been teaching her grandson the philosophy of the Lore, but Tom soon discovers just how much power his Grandmom holds as a Guardian. The day he comes home to find Mr. Hu, a shapeshifting tiger who once studied under Mistress Lee, dark forces attack, seeking a magical artifact. Tom's Grandmom is killed, and he and the tiger must seek out the evil Vatten; the villain has stolen a fabled phoenix egg and is trying to force it to hatch. Mr. Hu gathers two other admirers of Mistress Lee: the dragon Mistral and mischievous Monkey. An intriguing side story tells how Monkey led a rebellion against Heaven itself, and stole magical peaches that give eternal life. Small touches like these, combined with nuggets of wisdom ("Magic that forces someone to change taints itself. It poisons the heart of the user," Hu explains to Tom) and often elegant prose (Mistral's "scarred scales were black as chips of night") endow this tale, the first in a trilogy, with a sense of wonder. Ages 10-up.

January 3, 2005
PW
called this novel starring a boy, a dragon and a monkey (among others) who attempt to secure and protect a fabled phoenix egg, an "original fairy tale that successfully mixes fantasy and Chinese history." Ages 10-up.

July 1, 2003
After his grandmother dies while protecting a sacred phoenix egg, seventh-grader Tom Lee finds himself apprenticed to the egg's new guardian, a magic tiger. Yep draws from Chinese creation myths to develop his characters and their histories, but the novel gets off to a slow start, and the writing is persistently clunky.

(Copyright 2003 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

April 1, 2003
Gr 5-7-San Francisco is the setting for this modern-day fantasy. Tom is his Chinese grandmother's somewhat reluctant apprentice in magical arts, but after she dies while defending a mysterious coral rose from evil foes, the eighth grader finds himself enmeshed in a dangerous world where Chinese myth is a reality. The rose, a phoenix egg in disguise, is stolen by Kung Kung's lieutenant, who wants to use it to take over the world, and a motley crew of bickering magical creatures goes on a mission to get it back. The action is nonstop, with one predicament and villain after another, and plenty of humor to lighten things up. Tom's friends may be exotic, but they still have to take buses and taxis to get across the city, squabbling like siblings all the way. Some scenes feel a bit too familiar (a magical marketplace in Chinatown called Goblin Square is quite reminiscent of Harry Potter's Diagon Alley), but the emphasis on Chinese folklore and culture keeps the story fresh. The sense of menace from a powerful enemy isn't as strong or as pervasive as it could be, which sometimes gives the impression that Tom and his cohorts are on an afternoon jaunt rather than an urgent and dangerous quest, but the plot is still compelling, with enough strings left hanging to make readers eagerly anticipate the next book in this projected series.-Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library

Copyright 2003 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2003
Gr. 5-7. Seventh-grader Tom Lee leads an ordinary life with his grandmother in San Francisco until she is killed by a monster and he finds himself apprenticed to Mr. Hu, a shape-changing tiger who is Guardian of a precious phoenix egg. Villainous creatures want to steal the egg to wreak havoc on the world, so when it disappears, Tom, Mr. Hu, an ostracized dragon, and a roguish monkey battle evil monsters to retrieve it. Designated as the first book in a planned series, this reads like the second or third book, with a great deal of background information packed into the first several chapters. Once the explanations are out of the way, the pace quickens and adventures ensue. The Harry Potter-like events are enticing, and the elements of Chinese mythology and culture give the story a distinctively Asian perspective.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)