A Side of Panache

Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense! Last time, literally nothing new happened.  They drove for a couple of days, and had conversations that we've already had, so we didn't learn anything new about the characters.  Also, Mr. Kadam is directly responsible for European colonialism in Asia.  Yikes. This time, Kelsey and Kishan have another training scene (goody), and they get ready to meet the Ocean Teacher so that he can bless them before their trip to Mount Everest. Chapter Fifteen: Yin/Yang Ooh, so we're bringing Taoism into this story now, too.  At least it makes sense regionally. Since the Dalai Lama isn't, you know, actually in Tibet, Mr. Kadam sets up a meeting with his staff located in Lhasa.  The meeting is in a few days, which gives them some more time to sightsee.  And by "sightsee," I mean "list off a bunch of places without going into any more detail as to what they're like in order to provide a sense of at...

Welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense! Last time, the plot took a glacial step forward as Kelsey and Kishan received Durga's blessing, got some cool new stuff, and started heading toward Lhasa to meet with the Ocean Teacher.  Mr. Kadam talked a lot (again) and Kelsey made some unfunny jokes (again). Now, nothing really happens between seeing Durga and getting to Lhasa.  You'd think that this would be a good section to skip over, then, or spend a couple of pages on.  Because nothing happens.  You would be wrong!  It's more god-damned filler!  It's literally just them driving from point A to point B and talking! AAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHH That in itself isn't all that bad--a slow chapter can be essential to good pacing  if  it's between scenes with a lot of action.  But this book has maybe the worst pacing I've ever seen.  We're almost halfway through and the only thing that's happened is Ren got kidnapped and they wen...

Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense! Last time, bad mythology and a training sequence.  But not even really a training sequence, because it was skipped over for some reason.  We didn't even really get a training montage , since Kelsey just said, essentially, "I practiced for a few weeks, and now I'm good at using my lightning powers."  Which is not great. This time, the characters realize that they're almost 50% of the way through the story and they haven't done any curse-breaking yet in a book about breaking a curse, so they start to do that.  Prepare for some very rushed pacing, folks, because the events that took up the first book take up about 2/3 of that space in this book. Chapter Thirteen: Vatsala Durga Temple If you don't remember, this is the temple that they narrowed it down to in the last chapter because it's in close proximity to Lhasa, where they have to go next. Kelsey says that they've kept to thei...