Chapter 11: Return to India

Welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!  Last time, we got to experience the entire first act of a narrative happen in about ten pages, and witnessed several extremely graphic tiger maulings. And I think Kelsey murdered someone!

I was talking with a friend recently about how this just feels so out of place in this story (you can check out his excellent spork of the Iron Druid Chronicles here).  So I want to explore that a bit before moving on to Chapter 11.

From what I can tell, Tiger's Curse and its sequels were intended to be a bit more of an action-oriented paranormal romance.  There are clear influences from Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, what with all the temple scenes and basically everything that happens in Hampi from the first book.  That's honestly one of the reasons why I picked this series up in the first place!  I like books that mix together action and romance (which means I am frequently disappointed, because YA books with both action and romance tend to ignore the action in favor of Romance and Drama instead of truly combining them, but whatever).  Anyway.  The Tiger's Curse saga is framed around the act of breaking the curse, and each step of that involves some sort of temple delving and mortal peril.

But the thing is, this mortal peril isn't realistic.  I'm not saying that this is a problem, though!  It's the difference between PG's "scenes of fantasy action" and a hard R's "scenes of graphic violence."  Violent scenes don't fit in every story, and sometimes you just want to read something entertaining, which means that it's fine if your action scenes aren't graphic, or even entirely realistic.  Hell, The Princess Bride has some of my favorite action scenes ever, and they don't even approach realistic!  Even Indiana Jones, which clearly serves as an influence for some of the action sequences in this series, has very stylized action scenes--he uses a whip, which is not a super practical weapon, and gets into lots of very choreographed fight scenes while hanging over cliffs, or between cars, or in a room full of snakes.  It's not realistic, but it's fun to watch!

You can also go the complete opposite direction, and have your YA book contain scenes that are graphic, or violent, or realistic (as long as it's still suitable for your target audience).  The Hunger Games series is incredibly violent, and characters get murdered on-screen constantly.  But the violence never feels out of place, because it's both thematically significant (as the point is to contrast the violence of the Hunger Games themselves with the media coverage in the Capitol) and stays relatively consistent throughout the story (with the possible exception of Katniss just dropping a whole bunch of bees on an enemy camp, because that is just a cartoonish image to me--but it's still described very realistically, like the effort she has to go to to saw through the tree branch, and the injuries she sustains from the bees in the process).  It works there because that's just the tone of the series.

Tiger's Quest is in a weird in-between state.  Most of the action in Tiger's Curse and Tiger's Quest is in the first category.  It's present, but it's very stylized and not very realistic--and that's fine!  The Kappa are fun monsters, and the scene where they get chased out of Hampi by a bunch of angry monkeys is one of the more entertaining action scenes (I like the idea, if not the execution).  Sure, there's blood, but the action never really goes above a PG-13.

But then there's the scene in the last chapter, where Lokesh's private army ambushes the main cast, and it is intense.  There are multiple scenes of graphic tiger maulings, which are all extremely bloody, literal descriptions of piles of bodies like something out the last scene in the first Kill Bill movie, and Kelsey either straight-up kills or seriously maims a bunch of people by striking them with lightning.  It's jarring tonally, like watching Tangled where one of the scenes is replaced by the opening from Saving Private Ryan, and then none of the characters ever talk about it again.  Ren is captured and is explicitly tortured for weeks/months!  This doesn't fit with anything else that happens!  I think part of the problem I have with this is because it involves actual human beings?  All of the other action scenes involving fighting with various animals (random panthers, for example, and there is a fight with a polar bear later on in this book) or with fantasy creatures (the Kappa and the immortal monkeys in Hampi).

But Lokesh's army--what's their deal?  Do they know about the Matt Damon Amulet?  Are they just mercenaries who have no idea what's going on?  Surely all of them can't be irredeemably evil.  And, yeah, violence against mortal humans is different from violence against animal attacks/fantasy creatures.  This could be a turning point for Kelsey, realizing that she's in over her head at this point, and that the stakes are serious.  But she never thinks about it again, except for one line later on saying that she hopes she didn't kill anyone with the lightning!  She uses the phrase "euphoric in my power" as she's blasting rows of people down!

I don't know where else I'm going with this, other than to say that this scene is so jarring because of its inconsistency with the rest of the series's tone.  Pick one or the other, or use this as a turning point for character growth and raising the stakes.  The way it is right now, it doesn't work.

Anyway!

Chapter Eleven: Return to India

Finally.

After passing out in the last line of the previous chapter, Kelsey regains consciousness to the hum of an engine with a headache and a weird taste in her mouth.

Something was very wrong; my mind was still fuzzy.

You should probably take some aspirin for that.  Aspirin is the cure-all of this series!  It can do anything!

There's a tiger next to her, and Kelsey pets him.  Kelsey feels a cool cloth placed on her forehead, and realizes it's Nilima.  This short little section actually does a decent job of showing that Kelsey is disoriented after getting shot with whatever was in those darts, so...yay?  Kelsey notices that they're on the plane.  Of course you remember the plane!  You know, there was a whole pointless chapter dedicated to it in the last book!  It's still pretty pointless.

Nilima leaves to go get Kelsey some water, and Kelsey says to the tiger how it's a miracle that they escaped.

"Let's not split up ever again.  I'd rather be captured with you than be separated."

Hey, I wonder why the dialogue is really on the nose, and why why haven't heard the tiger referred to as Ren?

Nilima comes back to tend to Kelsey some more.

"Here . . . I brought you some aspirin," she said.

HAHAHAHAHA I WAS JOKING ABOUT THE ASPIRIN

Kelsey pops some pills and sits up.

"Thanks.  I feel better already.  At least we all made it.  That's the important thing.  Right?"

It's all incredibly subtle.

Kelsey finally looks over at the tiger, and it's Kishan, not Ren!  She freaks out and demands that they go back for him, and blames Kishan for leaving him.  Which isn't fair to Kishan, but it makes sense in this scenario, so I will allow it.

Kishan turns into a dude and says that it was the only way they could have escaped.

"They shot me with tranquilizers too.  I only got hit once, and I barely made it to the plane despite my ability to heal.  He'd been hit at least six times.  I was amazed that he could still stand.  He fought bravely and well and bought us time to get away."

So, the tranquilizers had enough chemicals in them to almost drop Kishan (a 400 to 450-pound tiger).  Ren, an equally-sized tiger, got hit six times.  So, he got six times the dose that Kishan got, and Kishan was almost out for the count.  Ren should be dead already.

Also, Kelsey got hit twice.  She's not a 400-pound tiger, she is a waify 18-year-old.  Kelsey should also be dead.

Kishan says that the goons only had Taser sticks and tranquilizer darts, so it was pretty clear that they were trying to take them alive for whatever Lokesh's nefarious purposes are (hey, don't look at me--I literally have no idea what he's trying to do other than "get amulet" and also possibly "woo Kelsey to the dark side because she's hot," but I'm not sure why he wants these things specifically outside of being Evil).  Mr. Kadam is already looking for Ren, and since Ren doesn't have his amulet it's possible that they could make a trade.

Kelsey steels her resolve to find Ren.

We were part of each other.  I felt his absence, but the bond was still there.  It was still strong.  He was alive.  I knew it.  My heart was still tied to his.  It gave me hope.  I resolved that I would find him, at any cost.

What a terrible paragraph.  Vary your sentence length!  A whole series of very bland, short sentences one after the other gets old to read, especially when Kelsey really isn't saying anything interesting.  "It gave me hope"?

She also resolves to practice her stupid lightning-shooting powers, because this series is turning into X-Men or something now.

Scene break!  This one gets an actual little squiggle to break up the narration.  I'm not sure why this scene break gets one, when the time difference isn't that much, when before the book skipped entire weeks of time without breaking it up like that.  Consistency really is this series's major problem.

Mr. Kadam picks them up from the airport once they land in India (I'm assuming Mumbai again, but you know how this series works, what with the whole "Asian" nonsense).  Once they get back home, Kelsey asks Mr. Kadam what they can do to find Ren and save him.

"We'll find him, Miss Kelsey.  Don't worry.  There's even a chance he may be able to escape on his own and call us."

You may think this is the same species of incredibly subtle foreshadowing we've seen in the previous chapters, but nope!  He doesn't.  Why even bring it up?

Kelsey remembers that when he was in captivity before, he wasn't able to change into a human because of non-specific curse bullshit.  Mr. Kadam says that since they've broken part of the curse already, it may not work like that anymore.  And it doesn't!  That's the beauty of not actually explaining how anything works, you can just make it up as you go along!

(The real reason is so Kelsey can have visions of Ren Bravely Enduring Torture, which are I guess more impactful if he's a hot guy.)

Kelsey asks Mr. Kadam to train her how to fight (WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THE ENTIRE BOOK SO FAR??? THAT'S WHAT THE WUSHU WAS FOR RIGHT???) and Mr. Kadam says that they can start training today.

Glad to see the entire first third of the book is doubly pointless.  Because Kelsey never ends up using her martial arts skills.

He nodded.  "Perhaps it is for the best.  Not only will you learn new skills, but sometimes it helps to keep your hands busy when they are tied."

Holy mixed metaphors, Batman!  You can't keep your hands busy if they're tied up, that makes no sense!

Mr. Kadam asks to hear about Kelsey's lightning power and...we get an almost word-for-word repeat of the narration from only last chapter!  Only worse!

"Well, I needed to protect Ren and was so angry that I actually saw a red haze around me.  He'd been hit with darts, and he was staggering, weakening.  I knew that he wouldn't last much longer.  I stepped in front of him to face our attackers.  I was desperate because there were so many men coming at us.  A kind of fire burned in me."

You know how in most books, when a side character asks the viewpoint character to get them up to speed about what's happening?  And the viewpoint character can just say something like, "I told him what happened," because the reader already knows?  And it would be pointless and annoying to read the same thing twice?

Yeah.

Kelsey continues recounting the exact same series of events that we just read.  There's not much to note here other than a few...weird comparisons that we didn't get to experience in their full glory while it was happening.  Kelsey compares the feeling of warmth in her body to "a pilot light in a water heater that suddenly bursts into flame."  Which doesn't make sense, because water heaters don't catch on fire, they explode.  Because they're full of water.  Which doesn't burn.  Also, when the henna design on her hand starts glowing, she "could hear a snap, crackle, pop kind of noise," which is just delightful.  That's the first thing I would think of when discovering a magical power to conjure lightning during combat.  Breakfast cereal.

(On a side note, why the hell is there so much fanart of the Rice Krispies mascots???)

Mr. Kadam asks the question that I'm dying to know--did the lightning stun them or kill them?

"I hope it just stunned them.  To be honest, we didn't stick around long enough to find out.  My first target, the man who hit the tree, was pretty hurt I imagine.  I was really desperate."

That's all the introspection we get, folks!  Note the fact that she refers to the man she zapped as her "target," which is pretty terrifying!  She doesn't see him as a person, and she has no moral quandaries over what she's done, even if it was justified.  No, the guy worked for Lokesh, so he must also be unquestioningly evil as well.

Mr. Kadam says that it would be interesting to see how much she can control the lightning, and Kelsey says that she would prefer not to kill anyone.  Which really just sounds like she'd be fine with it if she couldn't end up controlling the intensity of the lightning.  Holy shit.

She and Ren are meant for each other, I guess.

Mr. Kadam offers a theory as to why she can control lightning.  Which is great, because Mr. Kadam's theories have had such a great track record so far.  I've been keeping track, and Mr. Kadam's score is a big fat "zero."  He was wrong about the Golden Fruit, he can't figure out what the prophecy in this book is talking about, and the only reason he knew to go to Hampi in the first book was because it was the prevailing thought that Hampi was built on top of the ancient city of Kishkindha.

Anyway.  Mr. Kadam says that, according to "the ancient stories of India," which is a phrase that hurts my soul like you wouldn't believe, the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva fought the demon Mahishasur together, but were unable to defeat him.  When they "combined their energies," Durga was created from the light like fucking Captain Planet and defeated the demon.  Even if we accept this explanation as what happened in Hindu mythology, light and lightning are...not the same thing?  At all?  Why would being created from light give you lightning powers?

While it's true that Durga was born from the combined energies of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva to fight Mahishasura (note the correct spelling of the name), I can't find anything that suggests it has anything to do with light.  Durga also doesn't seem to be associated in any way with lightning or thunder.  Um, except for in Bayonetta, apparently, where you can get a set of gauntlets called the Durga Gauntlets that let you control fire and lightning.

A very accurate source of research for mythology, I'm sure.

Mr. Kadam also says that Durga has a necklace that flashes like lightning, which is even more attenuated than the above explanation.

After that weirdness, we get another repeated conversation!  Kelsey brings up that random incident where the girl proposed to Ren out of the blue, and she has...pretty much the same conversation about culture she had with Ren. 

Gah, this book.  Just when the plot starts actually moving forward, we get stuck literally rereading the same information.  To what, pass time?  This isn't a movie, you don't have to include filler to get to that 90-minute runtime.

Ugh.

She asks Mr. Kadam to tell her about Ren's parents, because that's an urgent conversation to have.  My boyfriend got captured and is actively being tortured by the bad guy as we speak?  Nah, let's talk about more backstory!

Ren's grandfather was named Tarak, a warlord who wanted to settle down in his later years.  As should not surprise anyone, I can't find any evidence of a real Tarak, but this is fiction, so that's fine.  "Tarak" does show up on Wikipedia as a name, though (even though the ones listed do not predate 1850 or so), so whatever.  It's also the name of a Bollywood movie, but that came out in 2017.

Anyway.  Tarak did so well for himself that he invited the other reigning warlords in the area to a summit so that they could sign a nonaggression pact.  So, a treaty?  Anyway, one of the warlords decided to betray the pact and ally with the other warlords to take over Tarak's kingdom and eventually all of India.  Why do all of Houck's wise and powerful rulers suck so hard at ruling a kingdom?  Gah.  Anyway, the other warlords siege Tarak's city (I thought he had a whole kingdom...) and Tarak sends messengers out to call for aid.

"Where did they go for help?"

"China."

"China?"

"Yes."

Just in case you were wondering what Kelsey was adding to the conversation.  Not much.

They specifically went to Tibet.  I totally called it!  Deschen is from Tibet!  I worked all that out with Wikipedia and trying to find out which countries would have been willing to marry out their princesses to India during the last book!  Also, the name Dechen is from Tibet!  Which is what I think Houck tried to use and fucked it up!

Yeah, so apparently Tarak was buddy-buddy with the Dalai Lama, which prompts Mr. Kadam to go off on a tangent.

"Yes, the Dalai Lama was and is a religious leader, but religion and the military had close ties with Tibet, especially after gaining the attention of the Khan family.  Centuries ago, Genghis Khan invaded but was satisfied by the tribute Tibet paid him, so for the most part, he left it alone.  After Khan died, though, his grandson, Ogedai Khan, wanted those riches and returned to take over the country."

We're literally getting backstory to the backstory while we're hearing it.  None of this matters, and this whole section is written like this.

Anyway, one of Genghis Khan's descendants (Batu Khan) heard Tarak's call for help and goes over to help repel the traitorous warlords.  Batu offered one of his daughters to Tarak's son.

"So, Ren's mother is related to Genghis Khan?"

"I haven't researched the genealogy, but one must assume there is some relation."

You...you just said a couple paragraphs ago that Batu Khan was a descendant of Genghis Khan!  I know this section is boring, Houck, but you wrote it!

I sat back in my chair shocked.

Hey, a missing comma in this published book!  Who would have guessed?

"What was his mother's name?"

"Deschen."

Kelsey knows this information already.  WHAT IS HAPPENING.

"What did she look like?"

"She looked a lot like Ren.  She had the same blue eyes, and her hair was long and dark.  She was very beautiful."

Which both tells us nothing interesting and tells us nothing new, because Kelsey has ALREADY HAD THIS SAME CONVERSATION WITH REN.  UGH.

Kelsey asks if they had a Hindu or Buddhist wedding, given the different cultural backgrounds of Deschen and Rajaram.  This sends Mr. Kadam off on a tangent about the customs of Hindu and Buddhist weddings, which is (again) neither interesting nor important.  I mean, it's interesting from a cultural perspective, but it's not at all interesting through the bland dialogue and the fact that Ren has been kidnapped by the bad guy and is actively being tortured as we speak.  In case you forgot.

Kelsey says that Mr. Kadam has done a lot for Ren and Kishan because he watched over their parents and has taken care of them since then.  Uh, has he?  Ren was imprisoned for most of that time (I think just after his parents died), and Kishan has been living the jungle as a tiger until a few months ago.  He's kind of done a terrible job.

Kelsey asks if Rajaram and Deschen ever knew about the whole tiger thing, and Mr. Kadam starts a massive paragraph with the phrase "as you know," which is never a good sign.  If a character already knows something, don't do this!  It's not fun to read!

Ren and Kishan went to Mr. Kadam as tigers because they couldn't get into their parents' chambers.  At first, Mr. Kadam was scared (because two tigers just broke into his house), but he sat quietly and watched them to see what they were going to do.  When they don't maul him to death, he gets them some food and they go to sleep.

I stayed awake all night, watching them.  I had trained my body to go several days without sleep, so I remained vigilant, though they slept as harmless as kittens.

Weird humblebrag, Mr. Kadam.

Eventually, the tigers woke up and turned into the princes.  Mr. Kadam, for some reasons, specifies that the white tiger turns into Ren and the black tiger turns into Kishan.  WE KNOW ALREADY!  I'VE BEEN READING THE STUPID BOOKS, I KNOW WHAT COLORS THEY ARE BY NOW.

Mr. Kadam got Deschen and Rajaram, and they freaked out when they saw the tigers.

"When I opened the door, Deschen let out a small scream when she saw the tigers.  Rajaram moved in front of his wife to protect her."

I thought Deschen was like a kickass martial arts expert warrior?  As described in the previous book? I guess it's just the woman's place to have to be protected at all times.  Jeez.

They turned back into humans and they hung out in Mr. Kadam's house all day.  Eventually, some runners came up to them and told them that Lokesh's army was on its way and that he'd razed some villages within the Mujulaain border.

Wait, what?  Wasn't Lokesh trying to forge an alliance between his unnamed kingdom and the Mujulaain Empire?  I get that he was mainly using that as an excuse to get the Matt Damon Amulets from Ren's family, but the whole point was that the Mujulaain Empire was the major military power in the area.  Why does the fact that Ren and Kishan are cursed mean that Rajaram and Mr. Kadam can't do their jobs and, you know, use their massive military to beat up Lokesh's army?  These things are totally unrelated!  Yeah, it sucks for Rajaram that his sons are cursed, but he's the king (or raja, or whatever)!  Mr. Kadam is his chief military adviser.  What is happening.

They eventually decided to take Ren and Kishan out of the area for Reasons, and Deschen went with them because she Couldn't Bear to Part with her Children.  Rajaram stayed back to fight Lokesh, but sucks at it for Other Reasons.

"Without his wife and sons, Rajaram no longer had the will to be king."

Rajaram sucks as king!

Mr. Kadam sent him a message that Deschen was sad, so Rajaram abdicated the throne and gave the power to his other advisers.  Yes, this is the literal worst plan.  But it's portrayed as noble because he's Sad.

"He had told his people the false story of Ren and Kishan's deaths and explained that his wife had fled to China to find solace."

I'm gonna skip over the whole China/Tibet thing because I don't wanna get into that whole discussion.  But.  Depending on who you ask, Tibet is, uh, not exactly the same thing as China.  At all.

Anyway, Rajaram and Deschen hung on for a few more years just...living out in the wild with Mr. Kadam and their two tiger sons, I guess.

"The boys hunted and brought us food, and Deschen gardened and grew vegetables."

Ah, the woman's job.  Barf.

Rajaram eventually got sick with "nephritis, or kidney disease," which is oddly specific.  Ren eventually gave Mr. Kadam his Matt Damon Amulet.

"At the time, we didn't know what it would do to me.  We only knew that it was powerful and important."

Hey, that's still all we know!  We have no idea what they do!  It's dumb!

Ren got captured by hunters, and then Rajaram died.  Deschen then died of grief.  Sucks to be Kishan, who's still around, I guess.  Deschen didn't love him enough.

Mr. Kadam drops another "as you know," and talks about what he did while trying to find Ren.  All I know is that he sure seems to be talking a lot instead of...well, finding Ren.

"Over the years, I invested their money, and it grew.  I began with the spice trade and then moved on, buying and selling companies until the boys became wealthy."

Um, the spice trade?  As in, the East India Company spice trade??  The one that had a devastating impact on India for hundreds of years because of the whole colonialism thing??????

Just for once, Houck.  Think about the things you write.

Mr. Kadam finally finishes his gigantic monologue that doesn't tell us anything useful, and is boring, and they decide to do some physical training.  But, since I can't have nice things, Mr. Kadam continues to lecture, this time about martial arts.

But first, Kelsey runs up to her room to get changed, and extracts Fanindra from the bag she was packed in.  Kelsey then rejoins Kishan and Mr. Kadam in the gym.  Mr. Kadam hands her some wooden sticks, which he refers to as "shinais" used in Kendo.

Pictured: shinai.

Note that the correct plural is just "shinai," and that they are in no way "sticks."  Awesome start.

Why is Kelsey learning Kendo now, when all of her (limited) experience is in wushu?  Don't worry about it.

Also, don't worry about the fact that Kelsey also never uses shinai or any of her other training thus far.

Also, why don't they teach Kelsey how to use a gun or something?  They're easier to use than swords, and Lokesh's private army is clearly open to using modern weapons, given that they use cattle prods and tranquilizer darts.

Kelsey practices for a bit while Mr. Kadam shouts tips at her.  They're a lot more reasonable than the stupid stuff that Ren was telling her earlier.  There is a pretty funny line, though:

"Don't be afraid to use other techniques if they will help you, like lightning power, for example."

God, this book is stupid.

He also says that it's easier to move out of the way than block a strike, but, you know, what about parrying?  You definitely have more options than "block the full force of a strike" and "get out of the way."

Kelsey practices for a bit more and complains in the narration about how sore she is.  She goes up to her room and finds some grilled chicken and vegetables under one of those chef cloche domes for some reason.  Rest assured, we still get to hear about every piece of food that enters Kelsey's mouth.  There's also a note from Mr. Kadam asking her to help him out with research the next morning.  Because Kelsey, an eighteen-year-old sheltered kid from America, is going to be tons of help to the immortal guy who speaks a gazillion languages.

Well, she is, but that's because this book is transparent wish fulfillment.

Kelsey goes through some of her stuff that they'd sent over to India before they left (highlighting the stupidity of just...not leaving when they should have), and finds a piece of honest-to-god parchment that Ren wrote some poems on in a language that Kelsey can't read.  So she decides to translate them the next morning, too, because that's something that absolutely needs to happen to rescue her kidnapped boyfriend who is being tortured.

Kishan pokes his head in to say goodnight, and when he sees the white tiger plushie (which, for some reason, was deemed important enough to ship to India), he flicks it on the nose.  Kishan is much more tolerable in this book, because that's kind of funny.  Well, it would be, if Ren hadn't been kidnapped twelve hours ago by the villain and is actively being tortured.  Too soon, Kishan.

(I'm okay with it, though, because in case it wasn't clear I absolutely despise Ren.)

Kishan promises that they'll find him, and calls her bilauta.  Kelsey asks what it means, since he's never deigned to tell her, and he says it means "kitten."  Because he's a caaaaat geddit????

"Hmm, well, don't say it around Ren anymore.  It makes him mad."

He grinned.  "Why do you think I do it?  See you in the morning."

Any character that annoys Ren just Because is A-OK in my book.

That night, I dreamed of Ren.

Oh, great another Prophetic Dream.  Why can Kelsey do this?  Don't worry about it.

Oh, wait, you wanted to actually see the dream?  Yeah, you'll have to wait until next time, because that's the end of the chapter.  Cliffhanger?

Closing Thoughts 

You know, it actually helps if your characters seem to care that things happen in a story?  We start off the chapter with Kelsey miserable on the plane, but once she starts talking with Mr. Kadam, she just kind of...forgets that Ren has been kidnapped and is being tortured?  We get treated to an absolutely massive section of exposition (lots of which we already knew), and Kelsey just listens along without using her brain.  How does she feel when they're talking about Ren?  Don't know, let's talk about Genghis Khan instead for no reason!  And then use a sword for no reason!

Next time, Chapter Twelve: Of Prophecies and Practicing!  More filler!  This is also the chapter where things start to go off the rails, and I fully expect to have a mental breakdown.  You thought the worldbuilding and mythology was bad up until now?  I laugh.  It's gonna be a rough one, folks.