Chapter 1: WOU

Hello! Welcome back to nonsense.

What happened last time? Not a whole lot. Kelsey exposited about why she's upset (I explained before that I didn't have a problem with that because that's how sequels usually work). Basically, she "broke up" with Ren--despite never actually officially dating him--because she thinks she's not good enough for him, and then left him in India to start college in Oregon.

On the one hand, it's kind of nice seeing a protagonist of a YA novel who isn't a high school student. On the other hand, I absolutely despise every single thing that happens while she's in college.

So. Let's go!

Chapter One: WOU



The chapter starts when the plane lands. Which only makes me question why the prologue wasn't just a first chapter, since chapter one starts immediately after the ending of the prologue. The first book had a prologue and epilogue from the antagonist's point of view, so I expected the same thing to happen here. Nope!

Kelsey walks outside and feels happy to be home. What follows is an entire paragraph of sentences that say the exact same thing in slightly different ways, which is annoying and repetitive to read:

Taking a deep breath, I felt Oregon center me. I was a part of this place, and it was a part of me. I belonged here. It was where I grew up and spent my whole life. My roots were here. My parents and grandma were buried here. Oregon welcomed me like a beloved child, enfolded me in her cool arms, shushed my turbulent thoughts, and promised peace through her whispering pines.

I think if you cut out everything in between the first and last sentence, you would lose nothing and actually gain a cleaner version of the sentiment Kelsey is trying to explain.

Kelsey and Nilima get off of the plane, and a car arranged by Mr. Kadam pulls up on the runway. Kelsey feels sad because it's the color of "his eyes" [no emphasis added]. Kelsey looks at the name on the back of the car, and it's a Porsche Boxer RS 60 Spyder. If you're like me and never learned the different types of car, here's a picture:

Except blue.

You can purchase one yourself for the low, low price of $54,700 (or, at least you could in 2008).

Which is surprisingly lower than I would have expected. Sure, it's a really expensive car, but it's at least a couple tiers below the really expensive cars, which can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Given what we've seen of Mr. Kadam, who loves expensive cars, and Ren, who has more money than God, this is a lot less fancy than I would have expected. Given how wowed we were supposed to be about how nice the plane is and how fancy Ren's house is from the first book, this car seems like a step down.

Nilima, who exists to serve Kelsey, apparently, drives Kelsey back home. Along the way, some teenage boys start cat-calling them from another car. Multiple times! Rather than getting annoyed like a normal person would, Kelsey just thinks about how sad she is because she knows they're whistling at Nilima and not her. Here, I'll prove it:

Cars full of teenage boys passed us. They whistled, admiring either Nilima's exotic beauty and long, dark hair flying in the wind or the nice car. I'm not sure what inspired the catcalls but I knew they weren't for me.

This is supposed to show that Kelsey's insecure about how she looks, I guess, but I hate it so much.

Not touching the "exotic beauty" comment.

Older men cruised past us slowly too. They didn't whistle, but they definitely enjoyed the view. Nilima just ignored them, and I tuned them out, thinking, I must look as awful as I feel

Yikes! Is there a single male character who isn't a complete creep?

Also, is this a common occurrence in Oregon? When you're a woman driving a car, every single male driver stops and whistles or stares at you? Remind me never to go to Oregon.

Nilima misses a turn on the way back to Sarah and Mike's, but when Kelsey tries to tell her that she's going the wrong way, Nilima brushes her off. What could it mean?

They drive down some smaller roads outside of Salem, and it's a really nice neighborhood. Nilimar parks outside of a duplex that looks, of course, really fancy. Kelsey, as her usual dense self, doesn't understand what's happening until Nilima explicitly tells her what's going on.

Nilima glided smoothly into the garage and stopped the car. "We're home," she announced. 

"Home? What do you mean? Aren't we going to my foster parents' house?" I asked, even more confused than I was.

Nilima smiled understandingly. She told me gently, "No. This is your house."

"My house? What are you talking about? I live in Dallas. Who lives here?"

"You do. Come inside and I'll explain."

Every line of dialogue is like pulling teeth. If Kelsey could just use her brain to connect any two dots she'd be a much better character. She's so dumb.

They go inside, and of course the house is just beautiful and has a fully kitted out kitchen and library. Nilima explains that the house is part of the payment for her services in India over the summer, among other things. Kelsey immediately starts arguing about this, because all she thought she was getting was money for books and community college. This conversation goes on for an entire page.

Kelsey also brings up that this house is really far away from community college, where she's planning on enrolling now that she's back home. I have no idea what the date is during this conversation, but from what I can tell, we're at least a couple of months into the summer. I don't know how community college registration works, but this seems like it might be too late to enroll this close to the start of the semester.

Nilima asks why she would take the bus when she could just drive. Kelsey's all "What do you mean? I don't get it!" and it turns out the car they drove there in is hers too! Whomp whomp!

When Kelsey asks if there's anything else she should know about, Nilima says, "Well . . . he also took the liberty of signing you up at Western Oregon University. Your classes and books have already been paid for. Your books are on the counter next to your list of classes, a Western Wolf sweatshirt, and a map of the campus."

WHAT???

That's not how college admissions work! What about applications? Admissions essays? Interviews? And we have no idea when all these arrangements were made, and for a university like that it's possible that it's too late for her to even enroll for this semester.

Although, given the recent college admissions scandals going on, it might not be too much of a problem. I guess Mr. Kadam is feeding into that whole scheme. Great!

Also, he signed up for her classes for her? Without even asking what she'd be interested in? That's crazy.

Kelsey says that she'd been planning on going to community college and working, to which Nilima responds, "He must have thought a university would be more to your liking." Yikes! Looks like Ren and Kishan aren't the only controlling creeps in the group!

In addition to the house, and the car, and the tuition/illegal entrance scandal, Mr. Kadam has also set up a bank account for Kelsey. The amount in the account is unspecified, but it's enough for all of her bills to be sent immediately to an accountant (that Mr. Kadam just has on retainer, I guess).

Kelsey tells Nilima that she's going to call Mr. Kadam to give all of the stuff back, and Nilima says that it wasn't Mr. Kadam that organized all of it. Kelsey eventually figures out that it was Ren! Because even though she broke up with him and dumped his ass in India, he still wants to control where she lives and where she goes to school and what she's studying!

(And yes, I know it's supposed to read like he cares about her so much that he's giving her all of this luxurious stuff that he knows would make her happy. It doesn't come across that way.)

Under my breath, I grumbled, "Fine. He always gets what he wants anyway. There is no point in trying to give it back. He'll just engineer some other over the top gift that will only serve to complicate our relationship further."

DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF? "HE ALWAYS GETS WHAT HE WANTS ANYWAY"???? THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING, KELSEY.

Nilima hands Kelsey a new cell phone (another gift from Ren) and bounces. Once she leaves, Kelsey explores the house, and of course it's wonderful. I'll spare you the details, but it's a ridiculously nice house for a recent high school graduate to be living in alone.

There's a note from her foster parents in her bedroom that says that they're looking forward to seeing her now that she's back in the States.

We love your new home!

I think Sarah and Mike are even more oblivious than Kelsey. First, they display absolutely no concern for her when she goes off to India with complete strangers for an ostensibly two-week trip and then stays with little to no contact for two months or longer, and now she has a gigantic new house from a mysterious source, and they're not even a LITTLE BIT CURIOUS about how she got it? From their point of view, this should be extremely sketch.

She opens her closet and all of her clothes from India are in there.

How on earth did Mr. Kadam get this stuff here before me? I left all this in India.

Yeah, that's actually a good question! It was still there when she left, and she took a private plane with Nilima that would be faster than any other way to travel. What?????

Kelsey finally notices that her bedroom is peaches-and-cream colored, which is what Ren said she smelled like. I don't remember if I mentioned it during the spork of the last book, but, uh, now you know.

She takes Fanindra out of her bag and takes out her new phone, which is designed by Prada. To my surprise, there are actually phones designed by Prada. Apparently the Prada phone was the first phone with a full touch screen, and they still claim that Apple stole it from them for the iPhone. The more you know!

She doesn't see anything from Ren, and gets annoyed that he didn't even try to call her. You! Told! Him! Not! To! And! Then! Left! Him! You have no right to be annoyed about that!

She calls her foster parents instead, and gets another narrative jab at her foster mother's vegan cooking. I didn't miss this.

After making dinner plans with them, she looks through her WOU stuff. Mr. Kadam chose international studies as a major with a minor in art history for her.

HE'S EVEN PICKED OUT HER MAJOR FOR HER?? Bonus negative points for being a major that would benefit their curse-breaking plan with absolutely no consideration that Kelsey might actually prefer to study another subject. She mentioned possibly studying biology in the first book. I remember these things.

Also, most colleges don't even let you pick a major as a freshman. I don't know how WOU works, but I wasn't allowed to declare my major until my sophomore year.

Her classes are also weird.

Mr. Kadam had somehow managed to get me, a freshman, into 300- and 400-level classes.

Hey, you do know that the whole point of not being able to get into advanced classes right away is so you can get foundational knowledge in intro classes so you can actually understand what's going on in upper level classes, right? Prerequisites exist for a reason. Ugh.

Not only that, but he had also booked my classes for both the fall and the winter terms--even though winter registration wasn't available yet.

So, like, how big of a bribe to WOU are we talking here?

Also, a lot of classes can't be planned out this far in advance because you have to know which professors are able to teach, and when they're available to teach, and often you just don't know enough that far in advance to plan out the schedule.

WOU probably received a big, fat donation from India, I thought, smirking to myself. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new building going up on campus this year.

Yeah this isn't something to be smug about? You probably kept someone who deserved your spot out of going to WOU.

She's taking an intro college writing class, first year Latin, a 400-level Anthropology course, and a 300-level Indian geography course in the fall; in the winter, she's taking a 200-level Art History course, 400-level Women in Indian Society, another intro college writing course, and a 200-level political science course in international relations. It's not important to the plot, I'm just passing along the information.

You know how the classes in Harry Potter are actually plot-relevant, where you get to learn about spells and concepts that show up later so Harry knows how to deal with them later on? And how Kelsey's classes would actually provide a good opportunity to learn about some mythology or language that could be relevant in their quest?

Yeah, that doesn't happen. It's like all of the mythology stories from the last book: they just waste time and contribute nothing to character interaction or plot foreshadowing. It's such a slog to read through.

Kelsey thinks about how she's going to manage her life in college while still helping Mr. Kadam figure out where they're supposed to go next.

Just then, "I Told You So" by Carrie Underwood came on the radio. Listening to the lyrics made me cry.


The way that's phrased is just absolutely hilarious to me. I have no idea why.

She decides to not think about how sad she is about Ren, and instead think positively about her future in college. She decides to study hard and even date other guys to keep from thinking about him. That is foreshadowing.

She goes to bed, and when she wakes up the next morning, Mr. Kadam calls her. She asks him how his translation is going.

I am attempting to translate the rest of the monolith you found. I sent someone [who???] back to Durga's temple and had pictures taken of the other pillars. It appears each pillar features one of the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire."


Also, we have a continuity error! The first prophecy was found on one of the faces of the monolith inside of Kanheri Cave. There were no pillars in the room:

The door opened inward, as if pulled by invisible hands, and allowed us to pass. We walked into a large grotto that was glowing dimly from phosphorescent lichen growing on the stone walls. The center of the grotto housed a tall rectangular monolith with a small stone post in front of it. 

[snip]

After the hissing stopped and the steam cleared, I gasped in shock, seeing that glyph engravings had appeared on all four sides of the stone where none had been before.

There aren't really any pillars described in any detail in the temple part of the cave, either, unless you count this:

The remnants of a ceiling, still held up in some places by rock pillars, cast deep shadows over the area. Statues were carved into the stone columns, and, as we walked through, I kept my eye on them just to make sure they didn't let the remainder of the roof come crashing down on us.

That's it.

There were four columns in Durga's temple showing people worshipping Durga, which is what I think Mr. Kadam is referring to. I'm not sure why those are miles and miles away from where the prophecy is, considering they could have literally gone to any temple to Durga to get her blessing (they specifically stopped at that one because it was on the way to Hampi), and the prophecy was specifically located in Kanheri Cave, but whatever.

Anyway.

The original pillar was related to earth because it had carvings of farmers on it, and it led them underground to the Golden Fruit. Mr. Kadam says that there was a fifth pillar that was destroyed that represented the fifth element of space.

I'm shocked that this is actually a feature of the Hindu elemental system (which I knew because I was researching elemental systems for my story, which uses an elemental magic system). Of course, the specifics of the Hindu elemental system are filed off for this story. If you're curious, the elements are all classified by the five senses. Earth can be heard, felt, seen, tasted, and smelled; the next highest, water, can be felt, seen, and tasted, but not smelled; fire can be heard, felt, and seen; air can be heard and felt; and space/void can't be detected at all.

I think it's interesting, anyway.

Kelsey realizes that she forgot to bring back her foster family anything from India and buys some stuffed tigers for the kids. While she's out shopping, she gets a giant white stuffed tiger. Because she's a glutton for punishment, I guess.

Back at home, I grabbed the tiger around the middle and buried my face in the fur. It was soft but didn't smell right. He smelled wonderful, like sandalwood and waterfalls.

Except, no, in the last book you said he smelled like sandalwood and jasmine.

Kelsey drives to her foster parents' house, and Mike immediately ignores Kelsey to go gawk at her car. She hands him the keys and he immediately starts driving away, which. Same. I also want to get far away from Kelsey.

Sarah lets Kelsey know that Mr. Kadam called every couple of days to let them know how Kelsey was doing in India while Kelsey was too busy running around with Ren to even think about her foster family worrying about not hearing from her. Lovely.

Also, if I was her foster parent, and I was only getting news about my foster kid from a complete stranger telling me how great things are going without getting confirmation from my kid that she wasn't murdered or kidnapped, I'd be pretty suspicious.

Sarah talks like an alien who's heard that humans make noises out of their mouths to express ideas and concepts, but hasn't quite figured out a way to translate electrical impulses in her brain to physical human speech.

"Well, it's very exciting, isn't it? Let's see. He talked about your new job and how you will be interning every summer and working with him on various projects from time to time. I had no idea that you were interested in international studies. That is a wonderful major. Very fascinating. He also said that when you graduate, you can work for his company full time. It's a fantastic opportunity!"

Christmas.

First off--and this one's a big one--people having a conversation don't normally talk in massive paragraph blocks. You can have character monologues, and sometimes one character won't want to talk, but there's a reason. Here, Kelsey asked what Sarah and Mr. Kadam talked about, and Sarah launches into an eight sentence spiel that sounds like half of a conversation.

Second, Sarah ping-pongs back and forth between random topics that don't flow very well. She's talking about Mr. Kadam explaining what Kelsey did over the summer, we take a hard left into Kelsey's college career with absolutely no segue, and then we veer right back into career prospects. It doesn't flow like a natural conversation should.

Third, Sarah had no idea that Kelsey was interested in international studies because Kelsey has no idea she's interested in international studies. Ren picked it out for her because he's a controlling creep.

Kelsey says that she likes Mr. Kadam, and Sarah says that he always spoke very well of her on the phone.

"He even admitted to us that he's come to depend on you. He's a very nice man. He also insists that you are . . . how did he say it . . . 'an investment that will have a big payoff in the future.'"

So, like, is this supposed to be foreshadowing that Mr. Kadam is just using Kelsey to accomplish his own ends? That literally sounds like something a Disney villain would say.

(At least as far as I've read up to--almost halfway into book 3--this has not happened. It's just bad writing. Although, I suppose I can always be proven wrong.)

Also, good to get some confirmation that Mr. Kadam, Ren, and Kishan view Kelsey as a means to an end.

Sarah sets up dinner like all good housewives are required to do, and Kelsey makes fun of her cooking again. God, she is so awful.

After dinner, she answers their questions about India to the best of her ability without talking about any of the curse stuff. They ask about how the tiger from the circus is getting along. Sad trombone. Now Kelsey's sad.

Kelsey bounces and heads back home, and cuddles up with her stuffed tiger in bed. The end.

Closing Thoughts

Wow, Kelsey is so great! She has so much cool stuff, and everyone loves her! It's so relatable to read about a character who's so pretty that she gets cat-calls from every man she passes on the street but doesn't realize how beautiful she really is! I've never seen that before! I hope she and Ren get back together, I'm fully invested in their dynamic and complex relationship!

Next time, Chapter Two: Wushu! Houck tries to write about martial arts. Luckily, that's something I have a bit of experience in. Houck tries to write about Chinese culture, and we get distracted from any hope of plot until THIRTY-FIVE PERCENT OF THE WAY THROUGH THE BOOK, AND I REALLY WISH I WAS KIDDING. For reference, we're about five percent of the way through after chapter one. Ouch.

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