Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Tijgergenocide.
This book interested me greatly, so I borrowed it from the library. Let's have a look.
Driven by a passion for tigers, author Chris Slappendel decides to go on a journey to every country where tigers currently live in the wild, or have lived until relatively recently but went extinct. Her uses this journey as an opportunity to learn about the current state of tigers in each country, to educate others about conservation, and to see some of the awful things that are happening to tigers (e.g. tiger farms, poaching for their bodies, territory loss, etc.).
Overall a truly great premise for a book. I love tigers and I'm very interested in stories about them and their conservation. Where this book falls flat is the execution. While the writing voice reads pleasantly, the book has all sorts of errors that leaves it feeling amateuristic.
First of all, the weird formatting. This book is subdivided into chapters, which are then again divided into subsections, but they're super un-evenly spaced and sometimes one of these subsections is something as simple as a quote about tigers, so not really worth dedicating a subtitle to. There's also a super distinct blank lines between each paragraph.
Then I'm also not even talking about the content of the text itself. I spotted several grammar/formatting errors. But that's not all. Here's just a few mistakes I spotted: referring to the Panthera genus as "Felidae", saying blue "Maltese" tigers are proven to exist (there's stories and rumors but so far no real proven confirmation of this), and saying the MGM logo is a tiger when it is a lion and has been for ages, it has never been a tiger.
So yeah, while I love the journey and effort the author put into tiger conservation, so much of it just falls flat because of these mistakes. If this had just had a few more revisions this could've been truly one of my favorite non-fictions, but I struggle to take it seriously when there's these obvious mistakes and errors that shouldn't be present in a published book, especially a non-fiction about a serious subject.
I was still very interested in this book, don't get me wrong. And if one is passionate about the subject I do recommend it despite its flaws. Just know that it's a little jarring to see so many mistakes and errors in the book.
Rating: 3/5
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