54 pages • 1 hour read
Larissa LaiThe Tiger Flu
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Kora Ko
Kora Ko is one of two main protagonists in The Tiger Flu. Kora has only ever known a world devastated by plague and famine. As result, she is scrappy and tough. She loves her family and her beloved pet goat Delphine, but she finds displays of emotion “corny” (13). Kora does not call her mother “mom” or “mother,” instead preferring to call her by her given name, Charlotte. As a Grist sister, she physically resembles Kirilow Groundsel. As Myra observes in Chapter 20, when looking at Kora: “The doctor’s older, yes? But otherwise, you look exactly the same. Freaky deaky” (134).
Kora has a unique lineage, one that is only revealed to her over the course of the novel. At the outset of the novel, she thinks she is just a humble potato farmer, living in exile with her mother Charlotte, her brother K2, and her uncle Wai. When she attends the Cordova School for Dancing Girls, Kora learns that her family is responsible for the creation and spread of the tiger flu, the plague that wiped out modern society. Her grandfather, Lennox Ko, the founder of the cloning company Jemini, reanimated the Caspian tiger and then purveyed “tiger wine,” an addictive substance that spread the flu throughout the world. Unbeknownst to her for most of the novel, Kora is also a starfish. She not only has Ko blood in her, but she is also a descendant of the Grist queen Chan Ling, who was a factory worker at Jemini. As Elzbieta points out in Chapter 38, Kora is a “mongrel,” since she senses there is some non-Grist blood in her too (268). Kora is ultimately transformed into a Kora Tree, a new kind of being that helps sustain the New Grist Village.
Kirilow Groundsel
Kirilow Groundsel is a “groom” or doctor of the Grist Village. As a groom, it is her duty to keep her doubler healthy by harvesting organs from starfish in the Grist Village. The Grist sisters are somewhat looked down upon in the universe of The Tiger Flu, as they are seen as provincial. Kirilow, like all the Grist sisters, has “crow-black hair, autumn-leaf skin, and short legs” (36). Glorybind Groundsel is Kiri’s “mother double,” the doubler who gave birth to her.
Kiri is a celebrated doctor known for being especially skilled with plant manipulation and the creator of forget-me-do teas and other herbal concoctions (the Grist sisters are lovers of the natural world). Kiri is austere, fastidious, and gruff in her manner of speaking. Like all Grist sisters, she “lives clean” and does not partake in N-Lite or any other toxic substances (311). Kiri can be abrasive, but she loves and feels an intense sense of preservation for the Grist sisterhood. She reflects, “If I were a perfect groom, I could modify the longevity bestowed by the ganoderma to become immortality, and then there would be no need for doublers or starfish” (49). In Chapter 12, Kiri loses her lover Peristrophe Halliana, a starfish in Grist Village. This provides some motivation for one of her chief concerns: keeping the Grist Village alive and sustaining their bloodline.
Madame Aurelia Dearborn
Madame Aurelia Dearborn is the leader of the Cordova School of Dancing Girls, which is a cover organization for the Grist Commune. The Grist Commune is an outpost of Grist Village, a haven for Grist sisters who made their way to the Saltwater Flats. Madame Dearborn is a maternal figure to the ragtag group of orphans who come to the school, especially Myra, Tania, and Modesta. They are devastated when Madame Dearborn dies in Chapter 26 after revealing to Kiri that Madame Dearborn is the Grist Commune’s last groom. Madame Dearborn dies after an accident in her lab leaves her with a fatal infection.
Isabelle Chow
Isabelle Chow, an inventor and CEO of HöST Light Industries, rules the Saltwater Flats. In the words of Madame Dearborn, Isabelle created a technology “said to cure the mind of the body,” but to the Grist sisters, “it is simply a death” (173). The technology in question is the LïFT, which separates the mind from the body; the body is then transformed into another object or creature while the mind is “uploaded” to the Chang or Eng satellite mainframes. Isabelle eventually descends into a kind of madness. In Chapter 42, when Kiri first lays eyes on Isabelle, she describes her as “tall and otherworldly,” with “shiny black hair [that] gleams in the refracted light that comes through the glass dome roof” (306). Isabelle unleashes a nuclear missile that destroys the New Origins Archive (and herself) in the process. After killing her best friend (Elzbieta Kruk) and releasing the nuclear bomb that destroys Chang, Isabelle sits amid the crumbling New Origins Archive, and Kiri observes her “laughing the giddy, uncontrollable laugh of someone who’s lost her senses” (317).
Marcus Traskin
Marcus Traskin is the lord and CEO of the Pacific Pearl Parkade and the leader of 100 tiger men. At the tiger party in Chapter 31, Kora first sees Marcus Traskin in the Pacific Pearl Parkade. She observes that he is covered with scales, some small and sleek, some fine and filigreed, flowing from his head and eyes and mouth to his beard and neck. Marcus being covered with scales implies that he is extremely wise. In Chapter 35, Marcus is killed by K2 when K2 realizes that Marcus is trying to take control of the Jemini factory.
Elzbieta Kruk
Elzbieta Kruk is the high priestess of the New Origins Archive. Kiri describes her as “pale and lovely as the spirit of the air” (144). The New Origins Archive, located in the Third Quarantine Ring, is a conservatory of seeds, spores, and cells from which new life could generate and recreate the world. Though Elzbieta is a friend of Kiri’s mother double Glorybind, and someone who helps Kiri and Kora in the earlier portion of the novel, she is not to be trusted. In Part 3, Elzbieta succumbs to a lust for power and attempts to recruit Kora to usurp control of HöST. Isabelle, however, captures her and uses LïFT technology to transform her into the root vegetables that are consumed by guests at the Feast of Abundance.
