Tiger (novel)

Tiger is the first novel in The Five Ancestors, written by Jeff Stone. It is AbOUT five monks being hunted down by their older brother Ying (Cantonese for Eagle) at Cangzhen Temple, and the temple is later burned down by Ying's men. The monks separate, yet Fu (tiger) decides to stay and fight. He sets off towards the forest (after a brief fight with Ying's #1 man Tonglong (praying mantis)) and stumbles across men fighting a mother tiger and cub. Fu gets enraged, and attacks a boy named Ho, who is actually the son of the Governor of the region (Fu doesn't know this).

Fu is then captured,escorted escorted to the Governor's village, meets a drunkard skilled in The Martial Arts, and learns that the two tigers had been hunted down because they had attacked the Governor's wife. The Governor tells him that Ying requested him to be captured, and later Captain Yue (Ying's #3 man) begins to take Fu's cage to Ying. When Captain Yue and Ying's #2 man Commander Woo block each other down the path, a pack of macaque monkeys attack Yue's caravan, Fu's brother Malao (monkey) quickly finds Fu's cage and frees him. Before they can escape, Ying and Tonglong arrive, with another brother: Hok (crane), strung to a pole.

Tonglong leads them down another path where Ying instructed the three brothers be killed. Tonglong, returning a favor from being spared during a fight, causes a diversion that lets the monks escape. At the end of the book, Hok decides to go away to find brother #3 (Seh the snake) and brother #5 (Long the Dragon). Fu decides to stay and fight, and in the last sentence of the book, Malao goes with Fu ("Let's have some fun, Pussycat").