Paperback: The Ninja's Blade by Tori Eldridge, 2020, 9781951709099.
Same lady sent a solicitation email for the library to purchase her novel. Most solicitations I get are self-pubbed, too narrow in interest, or look awful. That lady - forgot who - is published with Agora, which is a subsidiary (partner?) of Polis. I order her book and was scrolling through both publisher lists and figured to try this one out.
When I got this novel and started reading I realized this is the second of the series. Damn it. I prefer to start with the first in a series. Oh, well.
Lily Wong is the of a North Dakota dad and a Hong Kong mother. They all live in Los Angeles but are absent Lily's murdered sister who was killed 4-5 years ago. North Dakota runs a Chinese restaurant and Hong Kong runs a branch of her controlling father's business that does Big Shot Money Stuff For Big Shots. Mid-twenties Lily doesn't do much of anything. Sure, she does some web consulting and marketing type stuff but she mostly spends her time kung fu-ing, karate-ing, and training to fight with traditional weapons. After her sister's rape and murder Lily has dedicated her time to kicking ass and taking names of sex traffickers and other despicable people.
Anyhoo. Lily is quite petite and gets around town on her bike, bus, or Ubers (Lyft?). She volunteers with a couple shelters for people escaping sex trafficking or leaving prostitution work. Lily is on a revenge, mourning, and blame-herself-kick. She needlessly puts herself in harm's way and does so for complete strangers as she tracks down runaways and sex trafficking victims.
Subplot has Lily hiding all her undercover investigations and fistfights from her loving family. The loving family, meanwhile, is having stress as the controlling Hong Kong Father is coming for a family/work visit and Lily's mother is stressing.
Comments:
1. I enjoyed the novel.
2. Eldridge sounds to be super-duper kung-fuey herself and I think she writes well about the skills and training. I read some authors who get way too detailed in the lingo and language of martial arts. Eldridge writes clear action scenes describing Lily's physical actions in both training and fighting. I understood what was happening and the fight scenes read quickly with no clunky. There was no, "I did a [lingo] into a [lingo] and hit him with a [lingo] an back into a [lingo]."
3.Third novel comes out this fall. I'll likely read it. Unless I forget. Which is entirely possible.
