Chapter 5: The Plane
This is it. The big one.
The worst chapter. I have ever read.
You know how Indiana Jones just skips over the airplane with a fun montage and it skips over the whole "traveling in a plane for hours on end" thing because it would be really boring to watch?
Yeah, this entire chapter is Kelsey and Mr. Kadam's flight to India.
The only things that happen in this chapter are Kelsey describing how nice the plane is and listening to more exposition from Mr. Kadam.
This goes on for eighteen pages.
Let's get this over with.
(Big thanks to Jurakan on Tumblr for trying to help me parse through some of the mythology research in this chapter! You can check out his ongoing spork of Hounded here or his completed Angelopolis spork here (this is the one with the penis-eating angel!).)
Chapter Five: The Plane
The chapter itself is even named after this thing!
Kelsey wakes up the next morning and takes Mr. Kadam's car to the circus (if you forgot, she borrowed it from him the night before while Mr. Kadam stayed at the circus for whatever reason). Kelsey describes the car as "delicious" which gives a small taste of what is to come.
A truck is already there, and Matt's dad is busy loading Ren into the back. Kelsey notices that Ren seems pretty ambivalent to being loaded into a loud truck while having a heavy chain tied to a big collar around his neck, and he only seems to want to look at Kelsey. Weird! Mr. Kadam walks up to Kelsey and asks her if she wants to ride in the truck or in his car.
I looked at the monster cargo truck and quickly made my decision, "With you. I'd never pick a monster flatbed over a sleek convertible." [sic]
1. Yes, that is how it's written in the book, with the comma instead of a period before the dialogue. No, the editor didn't catch it. Yes, I want to punch them. All I know is that Sterling Publishing needs to hire a new editor AND a new copyeditor because both of them were taking the day off when they were supposed to read this. Or maybe there were other, even larger problems that distracted from grammatical issues. Ugh.
2. Imagine an eighteen year old girl saying this sentence.
3. Yes, it uses the word "monster" as a descriptor in two consecutive sentences for no reason.
4. We get it! It's a nice car!! Stop talking about it!!!
There's a tepid little section of the convoy driving to the airport from the fairgrounds. If you're really interested in the road map of Oregon, you'd probably like it, but since I've never been to Oregon nor do I care about how to get to the airport there, I'll spare the details. Houck actually lives in Oregon, so she probably gets this part right. Too bad it's not fun to read at all.
When they finally get to the airport, they pull up near a private plane that says Flying Tiger Airlines on the side, and the plane has a picture of a tiger on it. Interestingly, there is a real Flying Tiger Line of cargo planes. It was founded in 1945 and was a major carrier of military cargo during the Cold War. You can buy a model of one, apparently.
Flying Tiger was bought by FedEx in 1988 and ceased all operations in 1989, so it can't actually be the same company in the book. Which means Houck was doing research and noticed that there was a real company that was named after tigers! And this book is about tigers!! It's a perfect match!!! It's a bit too on the nose for me, personally.
Even Kelsey notices how cutesy the name is and asks Mr. Kadam about it, but he continues to dodge her questions and says he'll explain it later. Oh boy, I can't wait!
Ren gets loaded onto the plane, and then Kelsey and Mr. Kadam walk on and are greeted by a flight attendant.
An attractive Indian flight attendant with long, dark hair gestured to a chair and introduced herself. "My name is Nilima. Please, go ahead and take your seat, Miss Kelsey." She had an accent similar to Mr. Kadam's.
I asked, "Are you from India, too?"
You can't describe her nationality in the narration (from a first person perspective, no less) and then ask about it in the next paragraph! That makes no sense! Aaargh!
The plane is really nice, and Kelsey won't let you forget about it.
I was amazed at the opulence of the interior. The plane was decorated in black, white, and chrome, which made it look sleek and modern. The black leather seats were exceptionally cozy looking, a far cry form the cabin seats on commercial jets, and they fully reclined!
Okay, the plane sounds nice and everything--
It was luxurious, wide open, and had plenty of legroom and comfy leather reclining chairs. [Yes, she describes the chairs twice. No, I don't know why.] It was so much nicer than flying coach. Comparing this to a regular plane was like comparing a soggy, stale French fry you find under a car seat with a giant baked potato with salt rubbed into the skin and topped with sour cream, crumbled bacon, butter, shredded cheese, and sprinkled with fresh-cracked black pepper. Yep, this plane was loaded.
Ha ha okay but--
Opening a sliding door, I walked into a surprisingly large bathroom. This was not at all like the small boxy bathrooms in a regular plane. The lights were recessed in the walls and they softly illuminated the special features of the room. The bathroom was decorated in copper, cream, and rust colors, which were more to my liking than the modern austere look of the plane's cabin.
I--
The first thing I noticed was the shower! I opened the glass door to peer inside. It had beautiful rust-and cream-colored [sic--yeah there's a space missing after rust's hyphen] tiles set in a lovely pattern. There were mounted pumps full of shampoo, conditioner, and soap. The copper showered was detachable, and a simple squeeze turned it on and off, similar to a kitchen sink sprayer. I figured this design would help to use less water, which wouldn't be in abundance on a plane. A thick cream-colored rug covered the beautiful tiled floor.
Wait a sec--
Off to the side two vertical cubbies, set into the wall, were filled with soft, alabaster towels held in place with a copper bar. Another wide compartment sported a silky soft, fully lined robe that felt like cashmere. It hung from a copper bar. Just under that, another smaller alcove held a pair of cashmere slippers.
A deep sink, shaped like a skinny rectangle, had a pump on each side of the copper faucet. One was full of creamy soap and the other with a sweet lavender lotion.
Stop!!!!
Holy shit is that a lot of description. I know I just quoted a lot (and probably way more than I should have) but I just needed to share how much of it there is and how pointless it all is. Granted, these are sort of spread out over most of the chapter, but that's still an obscene amount of description for how little time we spend with this plane.
There's an unwritten rule of fiction that the amount of description of a location should be directly proportional to how long the character spend there. So if your protagonist is visiting the magical kingdom of the elves or whatever, but only spends a single chapter there, you shouldn't spend pages describing what it looks like if they're only there for an hour. If they're only there for a short time, it's probably not as relevant to the plot compared to more plot-important locations. This is a good general rule, but I think it can be bent here and there if the setting is especially different from other locations and works to set a bit of tone or mood. Maybe the kingdom of the elves is full of magical flowers that fart pixie dust or something. In that case, it makes sense that the protagonist would spend time describing it, because it's significantly different from what they're used to.
This plane doesn't fit into either of these categories. We spend a one (1) chapter in the plane, and then it's never seen again. I think that just the first paragraph of description would have been fine on its own, because it shows that the plane is really nice. That, along with the fancy car, hints at Mr. Kadam's mysterious wealth and gets the point across very quickly. Everything else is extraneous details that don't add any information other than "this plane is very fancy." And it just. Keeps. Going.
It's also not earth-shatteringly different from Kelsey's experiences so far. Yeah, it's a very nice private jet, but that's all it is. It's pretty much exactly what I picture when I think "private jet" so none of the description is even interesting.
This is the first Google image result for "private jet interior" and it's both exactly what I thought it would be and almost exactly how the book describes it. That's just bad description.
Let's rewind back to when Kelsey and Mr. Kadam get on the plane, and I'll stop talking about the plane itself. Suffice it to say that it's scattered throughout the whole chapter and it's really annoying. I didn't even quote all of it above.
There's other stupid to get to.
Kelsey spends about an hour reading a magazine and doing some crosswords, and then starts asking Mr. Kadam some questions. I'm not sure why she didn't start off with the questions, but Houck thought it was important to let us know what Kelsey was doing, so I'll include it too.
Kelsey asks about the name Flying Tiger Airlines, and Mr. Kadam tells her that his mysterious employer owned the company, which was a major charter company in the 40s and 50s. Which is exactly what the real Flying Tiger Line was, except the real company was American. The name the fictional company apparently came from "tiger" planes flown during World War II (or, as Mr. Kadam says, "WWII" which just looks funky in dialogue). These planes were painted to look like tiger sharks, but whatever.
Funnily enough the real Flying Tiger Line has the exact same backstory! Except since the real company wasn't trying to force a comparison to a magical tiger, it doesn't feel like such a forced decision.
So, basically, the name of a real company has been slightly changed (maybe unintentionally?) and the only reason it's in this book is because it has the word "tiger" in it. This is hit-and-run research.
Mr. Kadam is basically this employer's vice president who takes on all business responsibility. Kelsey makes a really dated reference:
"Ah, so you're the Mr. Smithers to his Mr. Burns."
I mean, yes, technically The Simpsons is (somehow) still running, but the show really wasn't the cultural touchstone it used to be when this book was published in 2011. People would understand the reference, sure, but I have a hard time believing a teenager in 2011 would make off-the-cuff Simpsons references.
Just saying. It's weird.
It's even better because Mr. Kadam doesn't have any idea what she's talking about, rendering this baffling exchange pretty pointless.
They get back into the history of Flying Tiger Airlines for some reason. Apparently the airline carried Aquatic World's killer whale and the Statue of Liberty's torch.
Aquatic World. Yes. Why the sudden concern for branded names? Bentley and other company names have been dropped already, so why change this one?
Funnily enough, the real Flying Tiger Line carried SeaWorld (TM)'s famous Shamu (TM) as well as the Statue of Liberty's torch. Weird coincidence!
Kelsey asks how they fit a whale onto an airplane and Mr. Kadam answers, "One flipper at a time, Miss Kelsey. One flipper at a time."
Ha. Ha.
This plane is an MD-11, or a McDonnell Douglas, and the description Mr. Kadam gives is almost word-for-word identical to the Wikipedia description. Mr. Kadam gets really excited about planes, apparently, and I'm glad that this book actually provides characterization for someone. So I don't mind all the plane talk because it actually fleshes Mr. Kadam out a bit.
Kelsey is confused, and Mr. Kadam offers to tell her some Indian tiger mythology. I think he means Hindu mythology, but since this book equates Hinduism with all Indian cultures and religions it means basically the same thing.
I'd like to preface this by saying that I am by no means an expert in mythology (especially Hindu beliefs) so all of my limited knowledge comes from pretty cursory Googling. If I get anything wrong, or if I say that Houck got something wrong and she didn't, please let me know!
According to Mr. Kadam:
The tiger is considered the great protector of the jungle. Several Indian myths say the tiger has great powers. He will bravely combat great dragons but he will also help simple farmers. One of his many tasks is to tow rain clouds with his tail, ending drought for humble villagers.
The tiger isn't considered the protector of the jungle (in India, at least). There are a couple of Hindu gods that are associated with guardianship and jungles/forests, though. Aranyani is a goddess who protects forests and the animals within them, and Budhi-Pallien is a goddess who protects the forests of Assam in the form of a tiger. Tigers also have nothing to do with ending droughts. The actual story involves the god Indra (who is the god of storms and flowing rivers) defeating the dragon-demon Vritra, the evil personification of drought.
Neither of them have anything to do with tigers.
The part about tigers ending droughts seems to come from a couple of other Asian myths. There is a tiger in the Vietnamese story "The Rain King," which is about ending a drought, but the hero of that story is Toad, not Tiger. The only other thing that I can find that links tigers and rain is a piece of Korean folklore that says sunshowers are caused by a wedding between a male tiger and a female fox.
There are a couple of Chinese and Japanese myths that have to do with drought. Nuba/Hanba (女魃/旱魃) is a Chinese drought demon to defeat the wind and rain gods, but she isn't connected with tigers at all. The Japanese Hiderigami (日照り神) is a god of drought (thought to have originated from the Chinese Hanba. Wikipedia says that people used sunshine, flood, and tigers to drive it away, so I guess tigers are kind of tangentially related to ending droughts in Han China and Japan.
This isn't to say that tigers don't play a major role in Hindu mythology (because Durga's mount is a tiger-lion hybrid) but I can't really find a lot of stories about magical tigers. That doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere, though.
Mr. Kadam also says that in Indian myths tigers have healing properties, which is why they are often poached and used in medicine.
This is Chinese folklore. And it's not that they have Wolverine-like healing factors that they're used in medicine. It's because tigers are thought to represent strong male yang energy, as opposed to weak female yin energy, which is part of Daoist spiritual and medicinal theory. Tiger parts would be used to treat excess of yin or lack of yang in the body and the diseases resulting from this imbalance. That, and the fact that it's a source of yang energy means it's also used as an aphrodisiac.
Mr. Kadam also says that Islamic tales say that "Allah will send a tiger to defend and protect those who follow him faithfully, but he will also send a tiger to punish those he considers traitors."
I can't find anything that corroborates that, but I haven't read the Qur'an or any of the Hadith, so I guess it's possible. I'm also pretty sure that Allah's pronouns should be capitalized.
Kelsey replies, "Hmm, I think if I were Islamic I would run away from it, just to be on the safe side. I wouldn't know if it's coming to punish or to protect." If only there were a synonym for the word "Islamic" one could use when discussing the followers of the religion. Oh wait, there is! It's "Muslim." That's not even getting into the fact that Islam is practiced pretty widely in the Middle East and Asia, and things tend to vary a bit. I doubt that a religion that started in a region that doesn't have tigers would feature them like this.
Kelsey asks if there are any "damsel-in-distress type tiger myths" because, in case you forgot, this is a YA paranormal romance story, so everything has to relate back to romance.
Mr. Kadam tells her his favorite story about a winged tiger flying a princess to the stars and becoming a part of the Milky Way, conveniently leaving out any details that would let me be able to find this thing. So I have no idea if this is a real myth or of Houck made it up. The only solid source I can find on the whole internet is this National Geographic article that says that there are images of a winged tiger flying into the stars, but it helpfully doesn't provide any sources or pictures.
Jurakan found a couple of ancient pictures that depict tigers with wings, but not in the way that Houck describes it.
Chinese astrology features a white tiger (without wings) that represents the West (西方白虎 xifang baihu, for those interested), but I was unable to find a story about a tiger becoming part of the stars. There is a Chinese myth in which a cowherd and a weaver girl were forbidden from falling in love and were banished to opposite ends of the Silver River (aka the Milky Way), and once every seven years they cross a bridge made of magpies to be together for one night. This is also the origin of the Qixi festival in China. The only story I can find about the Milky Way in Hindu mythology is that it originates from Shiva's son Skanda cutting the top off of the White Mountain, which spilled into the sky and turned into the stars.
So I have no idea what this story is about, in other words.
Kelsey is getting as bored as I am, and "yawns sleepily." How redundant! She continues, and says, "How beautiful. I think that one's my favorite too." She has heard exactly one (1) story so far. She has nothing to compare it to to be able to call it her favorite!
Mr. Kadam continues and tells another story about tigers. He gives a place name this time: Nagaland. Nagaland is a region in northeastern India next to Assam (where Bhudi-Pallien is said to live), which I had to Google to find out. Thanks, Houck. Anyway, Mr. Kadam tells a story about Brother Tiger and Brother Man, the children of Mother Earth. They got along until they got into a fight over a woman (of course) to the point where Mother Earth kicked them out. They went underground into the pangolin's den and still fought a lot, so they chose to live apart. Even though the two will still fight, they mostly live in peace and tigers share a kindred soul with humans even to this day.
I have searched high and low for anything that even remotely resembles this, and the only source I've been able to find is a book called Sacred Animals of India, which has all of two reviews on Amazon. Maybe not the strongest source, in other words. It's, uh, not similar at all. Here, the first man and the first tiger were born in the pangolin's den, and later, when the man and the tiger fought, the man killed the tiger. When the god Dingu-Aneni saw the bones, he saw that tiger and man were related and sat on them for ten years, which created a large number of tigers.
There's actually a Nagaland story that offers an explanation for the reverence of tigers in Naga culture. There are three brothers in this version--man, tiger, and a cosmic spirit--and no pangolin's den. The most popular version of the story involves man and the spirit conspiring to send tiger away to the jungle as a result of him being annoying around the house while their mother was dying.
There are some really sketchy-looking sources that have some of the information that I couldn't find. Which means that either Houck used these websites as sources for research, or these websites used Tiger's Curse as a source for research.
Neither option is very good.
Kelsey rudely starts to fall asleep, and just barely hears Mr. Kadam still talking. He says that the white tiger is especially powerful and is drawn to a strong-willed woman who "will possess great inner strength, will have the insight to discern good from evil, and will have the power to overcome many obstacles. She who is called to walk with tigers." That's just vague enough to apply to any YA protagonist! Gasp, Kelsey is a YA protagonist! I wonder if she's the person the white tiger is drawn to???
Kelsey falls asleep, and this onslaught of folklore is finally over.
The chapter isn't, though.
Kelsey wakes up in time for lunch. It's not important what they eat, but it's described in great detail, trust me. Mr. Kadam asks Kelsey about Oregon, but that's less interesting so it's condensed down into two paragraphs, as opposed to the tome I read through before this. The only notable thing here is that Kelsey says that she knows a lot about the flora and fauna of Oregon, which is funny since she said a couple of chapters ago that she hated biology.
They stop in New York to refuel and Kelsey goes to check on Ren in the cargo hold. She tells him some of the same stories that Mr. Kadam told her, and I'm almost crying from happiness that I don't have to read them again.
They take off and Kelsey watches Gone with the Wind. Normally, this might be a good time to tie a movie thematically to the novel, or let Kelsey watch a Bollywood movie or something to try to get acquainted with the culture a bit, but that's not what Houck does. So this information just takes up space.
Later, they eat dinner and talk some more:
This time we talked about his country. He told me all kinds of interesting things and described fascinating places in India. I wondered if I would have time to see or do any of those things.
Oh, come on, this is the perfect time to foreshadow some of the places they go later on! Talk about Kishkinda a little bit, or Durga's temple, anything! Then it's not info-dumped later on!
When he talked, I felt like I was there seeing and experiencing it for myself.
This is what THIS BOOK IS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THROUGH GOOD WRITING. YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT YOU'RE HEARING A GOOD STORY IN THE NARRATION AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Sorry.
They talk about their favorite books and characters for a bit. They namedrop Hamlet, Captain Ahab, Dr. Frankenstein, Robinson Crusoe, Jean Valgean, Iago, Hester Prynne, and Mr. Darcy. Maybe it's just me, but the only person in this list that I would even consider talking about for any length of time is Mr. Darcy. Because Mr. Darcy is great. Mr. Kadam recommends reading about Arjuna, Shakuntala, and "Gengi" as well.
Houck doesn't feel like saying what these characters are from, so I will. Arjuna is in the Indian epic "The Mahabharata,"which is the story of the battle for the throne of Hastinapura and involves the children of quite a few of the well-known Hindu gods. Sakuntala is a character in an eponymous play, and is also a character in "The Mahabharata." Genji (as it's actually spelled) is from a Heian-era Japanese novel called "The Tale of Genji," and is about a member of the aristocracy growing up among the common folk. I haven't read either of these and the plot summaries are from Wikipedia, so hopefully that's all correct.
Kelsey rudely starts falling asleep again, and the two of them talk about Ren for a bit. Kelsey says she feels safe around Ren, which makes Mr. Kadam seem thoughtful.
This would be a normal place to end the chapter, but there's about a page and a half tacked onto the end about them eating breakfast. It's boring. Then they land in India, and this nightmare of a chapter finally ends.
Closing Thoughts
This chapter is literally nothing but descriptions of the interior of a plane and summaries of half-researched mythology about tigers. I hated it and I'm glad I never have to look at it again.
Again, I'm pretty sure that I've missed out on a lot of what the actual myths and folklore are in India and Asia as a whole. I did my best, but I had such little information to go on that I couldn't find anything.
What exactly is accomplished by this chapter? We don't really learn anything that comes up again. This is a great time to set up some foreshadowing through the choice of stories. Like even mentioning Durga, since Durga plays a pretty major role in this book. We also hear very little from Kelsey about what it feels like to travel to another country (since she's never done this before). It just alternates between plane description and talking heads telling a story. Aside from some minimal characterization of Mr. Kadam (which I like) this chapter accomplishes nothing. If you cut everything out and said, "The next day we flew to India," nothing would change at all.
At least the next chapter is mercifully short, at only ten pages. Stay tuned for Chapter Six: Mumbai!
The worst chapter. I have ever read.
You know how Indiana Jones just skips over the airplane with a fun montage and it skips over the whole "traveling in a plane for hours on end" thing because it would be really boring to watch?
Yeah, this entire chapter is Kelsey and Mr. Kadam's flight to India.
The only things that happen in this chapter are Kelsey describing how nice the plane is and listening to more exposition from Mr. Kadam.
This goes on for eighteen pages.
Let's get this over with.
(Big thanks to Jurakan on Tumblr for trying to help me parse through some of the mythology research in this chapter! You can check out his ongoing spork of Hounded here or his completed Angelopolis spork here (this is the one with the penis-eating angel!).)
Chapter Five: The Plane
The chapter itself is even named after this thing!
Kelsey wakes up the next morning and takes Mr. Kadam's car to the circus (if you forgot, she borrowed it from him the night before while Mr. Kadam stayed at the circus for whatever reason). Kelsey describes the car as "delicious" which gives a small taste of what is to come.
A truck is already there, and Matt's dad is busy loading Ren into the back. Kelsey notices that Ren seems pretty ambivalent to being loaded into a loud truck while having a heavy chain tied to a big collar around his neck, and he only seems to want to look at Kelsey. Weird! Mr. Kadam walks up to Kelsey and asks her if she wants to ride in the truck or in his car.
I looked at the monster cargo truck and quickly made my decision, "With you. I'd never pick a monster flatbed over a sleek convertible." [sic]
1. Yes, that is how it's written in the book, with the comma instead of a period before the dialogue. No, the editor didn't catch it. Yes, I want to punch them. All I know is that Sterling Publishing needs to hire a new editor AND a new copyeditor because both of them were taking the day off when they were supposed to read this. Or maybe there were other, even larger problems that distracted from grammatical issues. Ugh.
2. Imagine an eighteen year old girl saying this sentence.
3. Yes, it uses the word "monster" as a descriptor in two consecutive sentences for no reason.
4. We get it! It's a nice car!! Stop talking about it!!!
There's a tepid little section of the convoy driving to the airport from the fairgrounds. If you're really interested in the road map of Oregon, you'd probably like it, but since I've never been to Oregon nor do I care about how to get to the airport there, I'll spare the details. Houck actually lives in Oregon, so she probably gets this part right. Too bad it's not fun to read at all.
When they finally get to the airport, they pull up near a private plane that says Flying Tiger Airlines on the side, and the plane has a picture of a tiger on it. Interestingly, there is a real Flying Tiger Line of cargo planes. It was founded in 1945 and was a major carrier of military cargo during the Cold War. You can buy a model of one, apparently.
Flying Tiger was bought by FedEx in 1988 and ceased all operations in 1989, so it can't actually be the same company in the book. Which means Houck was doing research and noticed that there was a real company that was named after tigers! And this book is about tigers!! It's a perfect match!!! It's a bit too on the nose for me, personally.
Even Kelsey notices how cutesy the name is and asks Mr. Kadam about it, but he continues to dodge her questions and says he'll explain it later. Oh boy, I can't wait!
Ren gets loaded onto the plane, and then Kelsey and Mr. Kadam walk on and are greeted by a flight attendant.
An attractive Indian flight attendant with long, dark hair gestured to a chair and introduced herself. "My name is Nilima. Please, go ahead and take your seat, Miss Kelsey." She had an accent similar to Mr. Kadam's.
I asked, "Are you from India, too?"
You can't describe her nationality in the narration (from a first person perspective, no less) and then ask about it in the next paragraph! That makes no sense! Aaargh!
The plane is really nice, and Kelsey won't let you forget about it.
I was amazed at the opulence of the interior. The plane was decorated in black, white, and chrome, which made it look sleek and modern. The black leather seats were exceptionally cozy looking, a far cry form the cabin seats on commercial jets, and they fully reclined!
Okay, the plane sounds nice and everything--
It was luxurious, wide open, and had plenty of legroom and comfy leather reclining chairs. [Yes, she describes the chairs twice. No, I don't know why.] It was so much nicer than flying coach. Comparing this to a regular plane was like comparing a soggy, stale French fry you find under a car seat with a giant baked potato with salt rubbed into the skin and topped with sour cream, crumbled bacon, butter, shredded cheese, and sprinkled with fresh-cracked black pepper. Yep, this plane was loaded.
Ha ha okay but--
Opening a sliding door, I walked into a surprisingly large bathroom. This was not at all like the small boxy bathrooms in a regular plane. The lights were recessed in the walls and they softly illuminated the special features of the room. The bathroom was decorated in copper, cream, and rust colors, which were more to my liking than the modern austere look of the plane's cabin.
I--
The first thing I noticed was the shower! I opened the glass door to peer inside. It had beautiful rust-and cream-colored [sic--yeah there's a space missing after rust's hyphen] tiles set in a lovely pattern. There were mounted pumps full of shampoo, conditioner, and soap. The copper showered was detachable, and a simple squeeze turned it on and off, similar to a kitchen sink sprayer. I figured this design would help to use less water, which wouldn't be in abundance on a plane. A thick cream-colored rug covered the beautiful tiled floor.
Wait a sec--
Off to the side two vertical cubbies, set into the wall, were filled with soft, alabaster towels held in place with a copper bar. Another wide compartment sported a silky soft, fully lined robe that felt like cashmere. It hung from a copper bar. Just under that, another smaller alcove held a pair of cashmere slippers.
A deep sink, shaped like a skinny rectangle, had a pump on each side of the copper faucet. One was full of creamy soap and the other with a sweet lavender lotion.
Stop!!!!
Holy shit is that a lot of description. I know I just quoted a lot (and probably way more than I should have) but I just needed to share how much of it there is and how pointless it all is. Granted, these are sort of spread out over most of the chapter, but that's still an obscene amount of description for how little time we spend with this plane.
There's an unwritten rule of fiction that the amount of description of a location should be directly proportional to how long the character spend there. So if your protagonist is visiting the magical kingdom of the elves or whatever, but only spends a single chapter there, you shouldn't spend pages describing what it looks like if they're only there for an hour. If they're only there for a short time, it's probably not as relevant to the plot compared to more plot-important locations. This is a good general rule, but I think it can be bent here and there if the setting is especially different from other locations and works to set a bit of tone or mood. Maybe the kingdom of the elves is full of magical flowers that fart pixie dust or something. In that case, it makes sense that the protagonist would spend time describing it, because it's significantly different from what they're used to.
This plane doesn't fit into either of these categories. We spend a one (1) chapter in the plane, and then it's never seen again. I think that just the first paragraph of description would have been fine on its own, because it shows that the plane is really nice. That, along with the fancy car, hints at Mr. Kadam's mysterious wealth and gets the point across very quickly. Everything else is extraneous details that don't add any information other than "this plane is very fancy." And it just. Keeps. Going.
It's also not earth-shatteringly different from Kelsey's experiences so far. Yeah, it's a very nice private jet, but that's all it is. It's pretty much exactly what I picture when I think "private jet" so none of the description is even interesting.
This is the first Google image result for "private jet interior" and it's both exactly what I thought it would be and almost exactly how the book describes it. That's just bad description.
Let's rewind back to when Kelsey and Mr. Kadam get on the plane, and I'll stop talking about the plane itself. Suffice it to say that it's scattered throughout the whole chapter and it's really annoying. I didn't even quote all of it above.
There's other stupid to get to.
Kelsey spends about an hour reading a magazine and doing some crosswords, and then starts asking Mr. Kadam some questions. I'm not sure why she didn't start off with the questions, but Houck thought it was important to let us know what Kelsey was doing, so I'll include it too.
Kelsey asks about the name Flying Tiger Airlines, and Mr. Kadam tells her that his mysterious employer owned the company, which was a major charter company in the 40s and 50s. Which is exactly what the real Flying Tiger Line was, except the real company was American. The name the fictional company apparently came from "tiger" planes flown during World War II (or, as Mr. Kadam says, "WWII" which just looks funky in dialogue). These planes were painted to look like tiger sharks, but whatever.
Funnily enough the real Flying Tiger Line has the exact same backstory! Except since the real company wasn't trying to force a comparison to a magical tiger, it doesn't feel like such a forced decision.
So, basically, the name of a real company has been slightly changed (maybe unintentionally?) and the only reason it's in this book is because it has the word "tiger" in it. This is hit-and-run research.
Mr. Kadam is basically this employer's vice president who takes on all business responsibility. Kelsey makes a really dated reference:
"Ah, so you're the Mr. Smithers to his Mr. Burns."
I mean, yes, technically The Simpsons is (somehow) still running, but the show really wasn't the cultural touchstone it used to be when this book was published in 2011. People would understand the reference, sure, but I have a hard time believing a teenager in 2011 would make off-the-cuff Simpsons references.
Just saying. It's weird.
It's even better because Mr. Kadam doesn't have any idea what she's talking about, rendering this baffling exchange pretty pointless.
They get back into the history of Flying Tiger Airlines for some reason. Apparently the airline carried Aquatic World's killer whale and the Statue of Liberty's torch.
Aquatic World. Yes. Why the sudden concern for branded names? Bentley and other company names have been dropped already, so why change this one?
Funnily enough, the real Flying Tiger Line carried SeaWorld (TM)'s famous Shamu (TM) as well as the Statue of Liberty's torch. Weird coincidence!
Kelsey asks how they fit a whale onto an airplane and Mr. Kadam answers, "One flipper at a time, Miss Kelsey. One flipper at a time."
Ha. Ha.
This plane is an MD-11, or a McDonnell Douglas, and the description Mr. Kadam gives is almost word-for-word identical to the Wikipedia description. Mr. Kadam gets really excited about planes, apparently, and I'm glad that this book actually provides characterization for someone. So I don't mind all the plane talk because it actually fleshes Mr. Kadam out a bit.
Kelsey is confused, and Mr. Kadam offers to tell her some Indian tiger mythology. I think he means Hindu mythology, but since this book equates Hinduism with all Indian cultures and religions it means basically the same thing.
I'd like to preface this by saying that I am by no means an expert in mythology (especially Hindu beliefs) so all of my limited knowledge comes from pretty cursory Googling. If I get anything wrong, or if I say that Houck got something wrong and she didn't, please let me know!
According to Mr. Kadam:
The tiger is considered the great protector of the jungle. Several Indian myths say the tiger has great powers. He will bravely combat great dragons but he will also help simple farmers. One of his many tasks is to tow rain clouds with his tail, ending drought for humble villagers.
The tiger isn't considered the protector of the jungle (in India, at least). There are a couple of Hindu gods that are associated with guardianship and jungles/forests, though. Aranyani is a goddess who protects forests and the animals within them, and Budhi-Pallien is a goddess who protects the forests of Assam in the form of a tiger. Tigers also have nothing to do with ending droughts. The actual story involves the god Indra (who is the god of storms and flowing rivers) defeating the dragon-demon Vritra, the evil personification of drought.
(depicting Indra's victory over Vritra)
Neither of them have anything to do with tigers.
The part about tigers ending droughts seems to come from a couple of other Asian myths. There is a tiger in the Vietnamese story "The Rain King," which is about ending a drought, but the hero of that story is Toad, not Tiger. The only other thing that I can find that links tigers and rain is a piece of Korean folklore that says sunshowers are caused by a wedding between a male tiger and a female fox.
There are a couple of Chinese and Japanese myths that have to do with drought. Nuba/Hanba (女魃/旱魃) is a Chinese drought demon to defeat the wind and rain gods, but she isn't connected with tigers at all. The Japanese Hiderigami (日照り神) is a god of drought (thought to have originated from the Chinese Hanba. Wikipedia says that people used sunshine, flood, and tigers to drive it away, so I guess tigers are kind of tangentially related to ending droughts in Han China and Japan.
This isn't to say that tigers don't play a major role in Hindu mythology (because Durga's mount is a tiger-lion hybrid) but I can't really find a lot of stories about magical tigers. That doesn't mean they don't exist somewhere, though.
Mr. Kadam also says that in Indian myths tigers have healing properties, which is why they are often poached and used in medicine.
This is Chinese folklore. And it's not that they have Wolverine-like healing factors that they're used in medicine. It's because tigers are thought to represent strong male yang energy, as opposed to weak female yin energy, which is part of Daoist spiritual and medicinal theory. Tiger parts would be used to treat excess of yin or lack of yang in the body and the diseases resulting from this imbalance. That, and the fact that it's a source of yang energy means it's also used as an aphrodisiac.
Mr. Kadam also says that Islamic tales say that "Allah will send a tiger to defend and protect those who follow him faithfully, but he will also send a tiger to punish those he considers traitors."
I can't find anything that corroborates that, but I haven't read the Qur'an or any of the Hadith, so I guess it's possible. I'm also pretty sure that Allah's pronouns should be capitalized.
Kelsey replies, "Hmm, I think if I were Islamic I would run away from it, just to be on the safe side. I wouldn't know if it's coming to punish or to protect." If only there were a synonym for the word "Islamic" one could use when discussing the followers of the religion. Oh wait, there is! It's "Muslim." That's not even getting into the fact that Islam is practiced pretty widely in the Middle East and Asia, and things tend to vary a bit. I doubt that a religion that started in a region that doesn't have tigers would feature them like this.
Kelsey asks if there are any "damsel-in-distress type tiger myths" because, in case you forgot, this is a YA paranormal romance story, so everything has to relate back to romance.
Mr. Kadam tells her his favorite story about a winged tiger flying a princess to the stars and becoming a part of the Milky Way, conveniently leaving out any details that would let me be able to find this thing. So I have no idea if this is a real myth or of Houck made it up. The only solid source I can find on the whole internet is this National Geographic article that says that there are images of a winged tiger flying into the stars, but it helpfully doesn't provide any sources or pictures.
Jurakan found a couple of ancient pictures that depict tigers with wings, but not in the way that Houck describes it.
(Korean)
(Roman)
Chinese astrology features a white tiger (without wings) that represents the West (西方白虎 xifang baihu, for those interested), but I was unable to find a story about a tiger becoming part of the stars. There is a Chinese myth in which a cowherd and a weaver girl were forbidden from falling in love and were banished to opposite ends of the Silver River (aka the Milky Way), and once every seven years they cross a bridge made of magpies to be together for one night. This is also the origin of the Qixi festival in China. The only story I can find about the Milky Way in Hindu mythology is that it originates from Shiva's son Skanda cutting the top off of the White Mountain, which spilled into the sky and turned into the stars.
So I have no idea what this story is about, in other words.
Kelsey is getting as bored as I am, and "yawns sleepily." How redundant! She continues, and says, "How beautiful. I think that one's my favorite too." She has heard exactly one (1) story so far. She has nothing to compare it to to be able to call it her favorite!
Mr. Kadam continues and tells another story about tigers. He gives a place name this time: Nagaland. Nagaland is a region in northeastern India next to Assam (where Bhudi-Pallien is said to live), which I had to Google to find out. Thanks, Houck. Anyway, Mr. Kadam tells a story about Brother Tiger and Brother Man, the children of Mother Earth. They got along until they got into a fight over a woman (of course) to the point where Mother Earth kicked them out. They went underground into the pangolin's den and still fought a lot, so they chose to live apart. Even though the two will still fight, they mostly live in peace and tigers share a kindred soul with humans even to this day.
I have searched high and low for anything that even remotely resembles this, and the only source I've been able to find is a book called Sacred Animals of India, which has all of two reviews on Amazon. Maybe not the strongest source, in other words. It's, uh, not similar at all. Here, the first man and the first tiger were born in the pangolin's den, and later, when the man and the tiger fought, the man killed the tiger. When the god Dingu-Aneni saw the bones, he saw that tiger and man were related and sat on them for ten years, which created a large number of tigers.
There's actually a Nagaland story that offers an explanation for the reverence of tigers in Naga culture. There are three brothers in this version--man, tiger, and a cosmic spirit--and no pangolin's den. The most popular version of the story involves man and the spirit conspiring to send tiger away to the jungle as a result of him being annoying around the house while their mother was dying.
There are some really sketchy-looking sources that have some of the information that I couldn't find. Which means that either Houck used these websites as sources for research, or these websites used Tiger's Curse as a source for research.
Neither option is very good.
Kelsey rudely starts to fall asleep, and just barely hears Mr. Kadam still talking. He says that the white tiger is especially powerful and is drawn to a strong-willed woman who "will possess great inner strength, will have the insight to discern good from evil, and will have the power to overcome many obstacles. She who is called to walk with tigers." That's just vague enough to apply to any YA protagonist! Gasp, Kelsey is a YA protagonist! I wonder if she's the person the white tiger is drawn to???
Kelsey falls asleep, and this onslaught of folklore is finally over.
The chapter isn't, though.
Kelsey wakes up in time for lunch. It's not important what they eat, but it's described in great detail, trust me. Mr. Kadam asks Kelsey about Oregon, but that's less interesting so it's condensed down into two paragraphs, as opposed to the tome I read through before this. The only notable thing here is that Kelsey says that she knows a lot about the flora and fauna of Oregon, which is funny since she said a couple of chapters ago that she hated biology.
They stop in New York to refuel and Kelsey goes to check on Ren in the cargo hold. She tells him some of the same stories that Mr. Kadam told her, and I'm almost crying from happiness that I don't have to read them again.
They take off and Kelsey watches Gone with the Wind. Normally, this might be a good time to tie a movie thematically to the novel, or let Kelsey watch a Bollywood movie or something to try to get acquainted with the culture a bit, but that's not what Houck does. So this information just takes up space.
Later, they eat dinner and talk some more:
This time we talked about his country. He told me all kinds of interesting things and described fascinating places in India. I wondered if I would have time to see or do any of those things.
Oh, come on, this is the perfect time to foreshadow some of the places they go later on! Talk about Kishkinda a little bit, or Durga's temple, anything! Then it's not info-dumped later on!
When he talked, I felt like I was there seeing and experiencing it for myself.
This is what THIS BOOK IS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THROUGH GOOD WRITING. YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT YOU'RE HEARING A GOOD STORY IN THE NARRATION AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Sorry.
They talk about their favorite books and characters for a bit. They namedrop Hamlet, Captain Ahab, Dr. Frankenstein, Robinson Crusoe, Jean Valgean, Iago, Hester Prynne, and Mr. Darcy. Maybe it's just me, but the only person in this list that I would even consider talking about for any length of time is Mr. Darcy. Because Mr. Darcy is great. Mr. Kadam recommends reading about Arjuna, Shakuntala, and "Gengi" as well.
Houck doesn't feel like saying what these characters are from, so I will. Arjuna is in the Indian epic "The Mahabharata,"which is the story of the battle for the throne of Hastinapura and involves the children of quite a few of the well-known Hindu gods. Sakuntala is a character in an eponymous play, and is also a character in "The Mahabharata." Genji (as it's actually spelled) is from a Heian-era Japanese novel called "The Tale of Genji," and is about a member of the aristocracy growing up among the common folk. I haven't read either of these and the plot summaries are from Wikipedia, so hopefully that's all correct.
Kelsey rudely starts falling asleep again, and the two of them talk about Ren for a bit. Kelsey says she feels safe around Ren, which makes Mr. Kadam seem thoughtful.
This would be a normal place to end the chapter, but there's about a page and a half tacked onto the end about them eating breakfast. It's boring. Then they land in India, and this nightmare of a chapter finally ends.
Closing Thoughts
This chapter is literally nothing but descriptions of the interior of a plane and summaries of half-researched mythology about tigers. I hated it and I'm glad I never have to look at it again.
Again, I'm pretty sure that I've missed out on a lot of what the actual myths and folklore are in India and Asia as a whole. I did my best, but I had such little information to go on that I couldn't find anything.
What exactly is accomplished by this chapter? We don't really learn anything that comes up again. This is a great time to set up some foreshadowing through the choice of stories. Like even mentioning Durga, since Durga plays a pretty major role in this book. We also hear very little from Kelsey about what it feels like to travel to another country (since she's never done this before). It just alternates between plane description and talking heads telling a story. Aside from some minimal characterization of Mr. Kadam (which I like) this chapter accomplishes nothing. If you cut everything out and said, "The next day we flew to India," nothing would change at all.
At least the next chapter is mercifully short, at only ten pages. Stay tuned for Chapter Six: Mumbai!
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