Chapter 17: Spirit Gate
Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!
I know I just posted a chapter yesterday, but this one is pretty short and I wanted to finish up this section. Because the next chapter will probably take a little while to get out, due to it being Bonkers and me having stuff I need to do for school in the next couple weeks.
Last time, our protagonists finally decided to pay attention to the Plot, and set off to find the second MacGuffin in order to have a magical vision to determine where Ren is so they can go rescue him. We're finally--finally--getting to the action in our action-adventure-romance story. A mere seventeen chapters into a twenty-eight chapter long novel. Ouch.
This chapter is relatively painless (well, compared to what comes before it) but, you know. It's in Tiger's Quest.
Chapter Seventeen: Spirit Gate
Kelsey's cold, so she's going to complain about it. She's also wearing Gore-Tex gloves, in case you were curious. Just in case you forgot Ren and Kishan are rich and can afford expensive things. (I assume they're nice climbing gear. I have no idea.)
They set up camp, start a fire, and eat a warm meal conjured from the Golden Fruit. Then Kelsey gets into her sleeping bag, and Kishan joins her as a tiger. Ooh, now we're doing the sharing a bed trope from fanfiction! Houck doesn't do anything spicy with it, though, other than saying that he helps to keep her warm. Which is kind of a nice surprise.
The next morning, Kelsey makes some oatmeal for herself and Kishan, as well as a bunch of raw venison (because he's still a tiger to conserve warmth). I'm not sure why it's specifically venison, because you'd think eating more fatty meats would be better in the cold. Maybe it tastes better? Kishan eats both because Comedy. I'm not sure this joke has been bashed into our heads enough yet. Kelsey cleans up camp (which I won't complain about for being the Woman's Job, because she is the only one with hands) and they set off again.
They do the same thing for the next four days, which is mercifully skimmed over. You'd think that this would be a good place to really see what's happening from the eyes of our protagonist--how the air starts thinning, the ache in her legs as she climbs, the constant sight of so much more mountain left being discouraging. But no, we just get:
The upward climb was challenging. If I hadn't been working out with Kishan, and Mr. Kadam, I wouldn't have been prepared for it.
And:
Breathing was harder the higher we went because there was less oxygen, so we stopped frequently to drink and rested often.
Which is just so beige. This is boring to read! Our protagonists are climbing Mount Everest! This should be exciting!
Also, I have no idea where they're actually climbing up on the mountain. There's no mention of other people, so we can assume it's not on the main climbing path that every other person goes up. But if you look at these pictures of the route (especially the north side, because they're starting from Tibet), there really only looks like there's one way up. And there are a bunch of camps along the way, because, again, Mount Everest is a decently popular tourist spot. The west and east sides of the mountain look like sheer cliffs, which they're not dealing with. So I literally have no idea where they are.
Now that they've hit the snowline, Kelsey says that Kishan is easy to see contrasted against the snow. So, uh, ignore what I said last time about the snow, because there wasn't any below the snowline. And Houck did use the exact example that I gave for how it could be better. Minus one point for me.
But hey, if he stands out so much, why can't anyone else see that there's a fucking tiger on Mount Everest? Don't worry about it.
Kelsey thinks about how they're lucky he's so big because otherwise they'd have to worry about predators. And then Kelsey has a stroke:
I wonder if polar bears live here? No, polar bears live at the poles. Hmm, maybe there are other bears out here, or possibly mountain lions. Sasquatch? The Yeti? What was the snow monster in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer called? Ah, the Bumble. I giggled as I imagined a puppet-like Kishan attacking the Bumble and hummed the "Misfit" song from the movie.
Now, if this wasn't intended to be a joke (which it is, and it is painfully unfunny), this looks symptomatic of hypoxia. You know, not getting enough oxygen to the brain, which makes you go a bit loopy. It would actually be incredibly effective if that's what this is supposed to be, but it's literally only intended to be a joke. It doesn't work because it makes Kelsey look like a flipping idiot. Like, seriously? Polar bears???
Kelsey starts seeing animal tracks in the snow, and plays a "game" with herself to try to figure out what they are, eventually growing bored. Gee, I'm glad Kelsey's so invested in what happening. Also, they're up above the snow line, so there really shouldn't be very many animals. There's forests at the base of the mountain, which is where most of the animals live. But not very many animals are able to withstand the cold and the elevation (the exceptions being snow leopards and mountain sheep).
After about a week, they still haven't found the gate.
I started to get nervous.
Beeeeiiiige,
As Kelsey trudges through the snow, she hears Kishan trying to get her attention.
I turned and stopped in my tracks, gasping in horror. A large brown bear was galloping toward me in attack mode.
Holy shit! Also, there are no brown bears that live near Mount Everest! There are black bears that live in the forests at the base, but they don't go up above the snow line because there's nothing for them to eat up there! So this makes no sense.
The bear came to a stop five feet away, stood on its hind legs, and bawled at me again, swiping at me with its claws.
Why is it so hard to find bears that attack things realistically in fiction? This isn't how bears attack things. Why would it run at something full speed, stop its momentum, and then stand up? When it can barrel into you and murder you to death with its sharp teeth?
Kelsey drops down to the ground to pretend she's dead because she remembers hearing that this is the best way to survive a bear attack. This has absolutely no effect, and the bear swipes at her back, ripping her backpack up. It holds her leg down while it attacks her backpack some more, and the only reason her leg doesn't break is that she's on top of snow.
Kishan roars at it, and the bear turns to fight him, scratching both of Kelsey's legs with its claws in a very repetitive sequence.
The bear looked up and hollered back [hollered??], defending its dinner. It turned to face the tiger and raked its claws down the back of my thigh on one leg and across the calf of my other. I gasped in paid as Freddy Krueger claws with about six hundred pounds behind them sliced open the back of my thigh and calf.
Seriously. That's literally the same sentence twice in a row. Houck likes to show and tell.
Kelsey knows that this injury didn't even have a lot of intent behind it, and that it'll come back to finish her off after taking care of Kishan.
Just a--hey, I'll be right back, honey. I've just got to take care of the intruder first before I eat you, but I'll be back before you know it--kind of injury.
That's the first time I think I've ever seen multiple sentences between dashes like that. I can barely even parse the grammar.
While Kishan fights the bear, Kelsey tries to look at her legs, and it's very painful.
I couldn't really twist my head enough to see the wounds, but great drops of carmine blood reddened the snowdrift creating a macabre snow cone.
Carmine??
The bear forgets how to fight again and stands up on its hind legs to roar at Kishan, so Kishan rushes it.
As they collided, the bear wrapped its arms around Kishan's body, tearing at his back, giving me a new perspective on the term "bear hug."
Hurr hurr so funny.
Kelsey realizes that she's an idiot and remembers that, oh yeah, she has fucking divine lightning powers!
What an idiot I was. Some kind of fighter I turned out to be.
HAHAHAHAHA
She zaps the bear hard enough to chase it off, and Kishan quickly goes back to her to assess the damage to her legs. He ties some T-shirts to the wounds to stop the bleeding and carries her away, and she passes out.
When she comes to, Kishan has set up camp and is busy trying to treat her legs. He's used the Golden Fruit to get ingredients for an herbal poultice that he's putting into the cuts, and props to Houck, this is actually a creative way to use the Golden Fruit that isn't the first thing you'd think of. He says that she'll need stitches at some point. Kelsey asks him to tell her how he learned to treat wounds to distract her from the pain in her legs.
He says that Mr. Kadam brought him out to take care of some bandits. I know Kishan is the younger brother, but he's still a prince. He's backup in case Ren gets offed while he's off fighting in the war that's going on. Why would you risk Kishan's life to take care of some random bandits? Especially when Kishan is only sixteen, which means he's a dumb teenager? Kelsey, being an idiot, asks if the bandits were a Robin Hood type of bandit.
"No. They were murderers. They robbed caravans, raped women, and then killed everyone."
This book is too chaste to use the word "sex," but apparently "rape" is A-Okay. That's a good image for your YA paranormal romance.
Anyway, the bandits ambushed them one night, and Kishan had to learn "battle triage." So Kishan knows the word "triage," but Ren has to ask what a date is?
He finishes patching up Kelsey's legs, and Kelsey says it isn't fair that Kishan's already healed. He gives Kelsey a couple of aspirin tablets. HAHAHAHAHA
They stop for the night because Kishan is worried that moving her now would break her wounds back open. He sets up camp, and Kelsey goes to sleep. She dreams about Ren, who's tied up to a post being whipped by Lokesh. Kelsey grabs the whip, and Lokesh recognizes her. So he whips her legs, which hurts. She scratches his face and chest with her fingernails. It's unclear as to whether this is actually happening or not, since the other ones seem to be real, but whatever.
Kishan wakes her up, and she's actually scratched him. Kelsey starts crying, and finally starts to show some of the human emotion she hasn't been showing up until now.
"Shh, Kelsey, it's going to be alright."
"You don't know that. Lokesh may kill him before we find the stupid spirit gate." I cried while Kishan rubbed my back
Maybe you should have thought about that in the months that you sat around playing board games?
Kishan says that there's no point in continuing with her legs injured, so they'll turn back and come back after she's healed, because having narrative tension and consequences for failure is for chumps.
The next couple days, they can't travel very far, and one of the cuts on Kelsey's leg becomes infected. While the Golden Fruit can make herbal medicine, it can't make antibiotics, so she's kind of screwed. Kelsey wonders if Fanindra will save her life again, but it's too cold for Fanindra to function because she's a snake. A big storm picks up and they get lost, so they have no idea if they're heading back toward Mr. Kadam or not.
Huh. Is this what having stakes is like? I almost forgot what it felt like. This is nice.
Kelsey starts to become delirious with fever from her infected leg. This is actually kind of an effective sequence, because Kesley's normal "hyperactive five-year-old on crack" style of narration actually works here. There's a section where she wants to ask Kishan about oddly specific details of his stories that he's telling her while she's too weak to speak, and it actually seems like she's losing it. She keeps drifting in and out of sleep.
I dreamed of tracing my finger down an icy window. I had just made a heart with Ren + Kelsey in the middle and had drawn a second heart with Kishan + . . . when someone shook me awake.
Everything! Must! Relate! To! Romance!
Kishan says that he thinks they found the Spirit Gate. The sky is described as "amethyst-gray," which I actually like! Wow! Also, the storm is picking up, so they're stuck in some heavy sleet.
The gate itself is a couple of wooden poles covered in colored flags. There's a handprint on the side, just like there's been at the temples, so they're sure this is the right place. Kishan asks if they should leave and come back, but Kelsey says that they'll never be able to find it again, and besides, it's supposed to be a test of faith. Even though I've already said that the whole "faith" angle doesn't really make sense, because there's no faith in anything. There's another sentence I like:
I whispered, feeling the wind gobble up my words and tear them away just as they passed my lips.
I can't tell if this is actually a good sentence or if the writing in this book has warped my perception.
Kishan picks her up and takes her to the handprint, but she's too cold to use her lightning power. This gives Kishan an excuse to warm her up against his bare chest, and after a while she's warm enough to activate the handprint. The lightning sparks between the poles and it's really colorful. Then they're somewhere warm.
Then there's green grass and it's sunny, and there are a lot of animals grazing, but Kelsey can still feel the cold rain on her face. Which actually kind of makes sense because this is a gate to another world or whatever! Eventually the cold storm goes way completely, and then Kelsey passes out again. That's the end of the chapter.
Closing Thoughts
Hey, there's some potential in this chapter! If you ignore the beige prose at the beginning and the fact that there are no brown bears in the Himalayas and no black bears that live above the snow line on Mount Everest, we see--for the literal first time in the series--a potential consequence for failure. They can't just leave and come back later because Kelsey will die. They can't just rely on random snake powers from Fanindra to save Kelsey. Emotions are running high because Kelsey finally realizes that they have a time limit in which to complete their quest, and their failure means that Ren will also die.
This is exciting! I don't know how intentional some of it was, but it was actually kind of engaging to read, at least after the stupid bear attack.
That being said, what's up with Kelsey just forgetting all of the training that she's done over the past million chapters? She's been constantly doing wushu, and sparring, and learning how to sword fight, and use a bow, and use her lightning power. Before this, she says that she feels like she can defend herself and fight. And I know that this is a bear and not a human or whatever, but she still completely forgets that she knows how to do anything. Which makes all of the training sequences we've seen before this completely pointless. UGH.
By itself, the chapter is honestly pretty okay, as long as you remove it from the context of what's around it. Before, we have half a book of complete nothingness that you can charitably describe as buildup to the action in the second half, but none of the buildup actually pays off in any way, which makes it frustrating. It makes you wonder what the book could have been like if someone had realized that the pacing was complete garbage.
As for after...well, you'll see soon. The next chapter is really insane, guys. Buckle up.
Next time, Chapter Eighteen: Good Things! I lose my fucking mind.
I know I just posted a chapter yesterday, but this one is pretty short and I wanted to finish up this section. Because the next chapter will probably take a little while to get out, due to it being Bonkers and me having stuff I need to do for school in the next couple weeks.
Last time, our protagonists finally decided to pay attention to the Plot, and set off to find the second MacGuffin in order to have a magical vision to determine where Ren is so they can go rescue him. We're finally--finally--getting to the action in our action-adventure-romance story. A mere seventeen chapters into a twenty-eight chapter long novel. Ouch.
This chapter is relatively painless (well, compared to what comes before it) but, you know. It's in Tiger's Quest.
Chapter Seventeen: Spirit Gate
Kelsey's cold, so she's going to complain about it. She's also wearing Gore-Tex gloves, in case you were curious. Just in case you forgot Ren and Kishan are rich and can afford expensive things. (I assume they're nice climbing gear. I have no idea.)
They set up camp, start a fire, and eat a warm meal conjured from the Golden Fruit. Then Kelsey gets into her sleeping bag, and Kishan joins her as a tiger. Ooh, now we're doing the sharing a bed trope from fanfiction! Houck doesn't do anything spicy with it, though, other than saying that he helps to keep her warm. Which is kind of a nice surprise.
The next morning, Kelsey makes some oatmeal for herself and Kishan, as well as a bunch of raw venison (because he's still a tiger to conserve warmth). I'm not sure why it's specifically venison, because you'd think eating more fatty meats would be better in the cold. Maybe it tastes better? Kishan eats both because Comedy. I'm not sure this joke has been bashed into our heads enough yet. Kelsey cleans up camp (which I won't complain about for being the Woman's Job, because she is the only one with hands) and they set off again.
They do the same thing for the next four days, which is mercifully skimmed over. You'd think that this would be a good place to really see what's happening from the eyes of our protagonist--how the air starts thinning, the ache in her legs as she climbs, the constant sight of so much more mountain left being discouraging. But no, we just get:
The upward climb was challenging. If I hadn't been working out with Kishan, and Mr. Kadam, I wouldn't have been prepared for it.
And:
Breathing was harder the higher we went because there was less oxygen, so we stopped frequently to drink and rested often.
Which is just so beige. This is boring to read! Our protagonists are climbing Mount Everest! This should be exciting!
Also, I have no idea where they're actually climbing up on the mountain. There's no mention of other people, so we can assume it's not on the main climbing path that every other person goes up. But if you look at these pictures of the route (especially the north side, because they're starting from Tibet), there really only looks like there's one way up. And there are a bunch of camps along the way, because, again, Mount Everest is a decently popular tourist spot. The west and east sides of the mountain look like sheer cliffs, which they're not dealing with. So I literally have no idea where they are.
Now that they've hit the snowline, Kelsey says that Kishan is easy to see contrasted against the snow. So, uh, ignore what I said last time about the snow, because there wasn't any below the snowline. And Houck did use the exact example that I gave for how it could be better. Minus one point for me.
But hey, if he stands out so much, why can't anyone else see that there's a fucking tiger on Mount Everest? Don't worry about it.
Kelsey thinks about how they're lucky he's so big because otherwise they'd have to worry about predators. And then Kelsey has a stroke:
I wonder if polar bears live here? No, polar bears live at the poles. Hmm, maybe there are other bears out here, or possibly mountain lions. Sasquatch? The Yeti? What was the snow monster in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer called? Ah, the Bumble. I giggled as I imagined a puppet-like Kishan attacking the Bumble and hummed the "Misfit" song from the movie.
Now, if this wasn't intended to be a joke (which it is, and it is painfully unfunny), this looks symptomatic of hypoxia. You know, not getting enough oxygen to the brain, which makes you go a bit loopy. It would actually be incredibly effective if that's what this is supposed to be, but it's literally only intended to be a joke. It doesn't work because it makes Kelsey look like a flipping idiot. Like, seriously? Polar bears???
Kelsey starts seeing animal tracks in the snow, and plays a "game" with herself to try to figure out what they are, eventually growing bored. Gee, I'm glad Kelsey's so invested in what happening. Also, they're up above the snow line, so there really shouldn't be very many animals. There's forests at the base of the mountain, which is where most of the animals live. But not very many animals are able to withstand the cold and the elevation (the exceptions being snow leopards and mountain sheep).
After about a week, they still haven't found the gate.
I started to get nervous.
Beeeeiiiige,
As Kelsey trudges through the snow, she hears Kishan trying to get her attention.
I turned and stopped in my tracks, gasping in horror. A large brown bear was galloping toward me in attack mode.
Holy shit! Also, there are no brown bears that live near Mount Everest! There are black bears that live in the forests at the base, but they don't go up above the snow line because there's nothing for them to eat up there! So this makes no sense.
The bear came to a stop five feet away, stood on its hind legs, and bawled at me again, swiping at me with its claws.
Why is it so hard to find bears that attack things realistically in fiction? This isn't how bears attack things. Why would it run at something full speed, stop its momentum, and then stand up? When it can barrel into you and murder you to death with its sharp teeth?
Kelsey drops down to the ground to pretend she's dead because she remembers hearing that this is the best way to survive a bear attack. This has absolutely no effect, and the bear swipes at her back, ripping her backpack up. It holds her leg down while it attacks her backpack some more, and the only reason her leg doesn't break is that she's on top of snow.
Kishan roars at it, and the bear turns to fight him, scratching both of Kelsey's legs with its claws in a very repetitive sequence.
The bear looked up and hollered back [hollered??], defending its dinner. It turned to face the tiger and raked its claws down the back of my thigh on one leg and across the calf of my other. I gasped in paid as Freddy Krueger claws with about six hundred pounds behind them sliced open the back of my thigh and calf.
Seriously. That's literally the same sentence twice in a row. Houck likes to show and tell.
Kelsey knows that this injury didn't even have a lot of intent behind it, and that it'll come back to finish her off after taking care of Kishan.
Just a--hey, I'll be right back, honey. I've just got to take care of the intruder first before I eat you, but I'll be back before you know it--kind of injury.
That's the first time I think I've ever seen multiple sentences between dashes like that. I can barely even parse the grammar.
While Kishan fights the bear, Kelsey tries to look at her legs, and it's very painful.
I couldn't really twist my head enough to see the wounds, but great drops of carmine blood reddened the snowdrift creating a macabre snow cone.
Carmine??
The bear forgets how to fight again and stands up on its hind legs to roar at Kishan, so Kishan rushes it.
As they collided, the bear wrapped its arms around Kishan's body, tearing at his back, giving me a new perspective on the term "bear hug."
Hurr hurr so funny.
Kelsey realizes that she's an idiot and remembers that, oh yeah, she has fucking divine lightning powers!
What an idiot I was. Some kind of fighter I turned out to be.
HAHAHAHAHA
She zaps the bear hard enough to chase it off, and Kishan quickly goes back to her to assess the damage to her legs. He ties some T-shirts to the wounds to stop the bleeding and carries her away, and she passes out.
When she comes to, Kishan has set up camp and is busy trying to treat her legs. He's used the Golden Fruit to get ingredients for an herbal poultice that he's putting into the cuts, and props to Houck, this is actually a creative way to use the Golden Fruit that isn't the first thing you'd think of. He says that she'll need stitches at some point. Kelsey asks him to tell her how he learned to treat wounds to distract her from the pain in her legs.
He says that Mr. Kadam brought him out to take care of some bandits. I know Kishan is the younger brother, but he's still a prince. He's backup in case Ren gets offed while he's off fighting in the war that's going on. Why would you risk Kishan's life to take care of some random bandits? Especially when Kishan is only sixteen, which means he's a dumb teenager? Kelsey, being an idiot, asks if the bandits were a Robin Hood type of bandit.
"No. They were murderers. They robbed caravans, raped women, and then killed everyone."
This book is too chaste to use the word "sex," but apparently "rape" is A-Okay. That's a good image for your YA paranormal romance.
Anyway, the bandits ambushed them one night, and Kishan had to learn "battle triage." So Kishan knows the word "triage," but Ren has to ask what a date is?
He finishes patching up Kelsey's legs, and Kelsey says it isn't fair that Kishan's already healed. He gives Kelsey a couple of aspirin tablets. HAHAHAHAHA
They stop for the night because Kishan is worried that moving her now would break her wounds back open. He sets up camp, and Kelsey goes to sleep. She dreams about Ren, who's tied up to a post being whipped by Lokesh. Kelsey grabs the whip, and Lokesh recognizes her. So he whips her legs, which hurts. She scratches his face and chest with her fingernails. It's unclear as to whether this is actually happening or not, since the other ones seem to be real, but whatever.
Kishan wakes her up, and she's actually scratched him. Kelsey starts crying, and finally starts to show some of the human emotion she hasn't been showing up until now.
"Shh, Kelsey, it's going to be alright."
"You don't know that. Lokesh may kill him before we find the stupid spirit gate." I cried while Kishan rubbed my back
Maybe you should have thought about that in the months that you sat around playing board games?
Kishan says that there's no point in continuing with her legs injured, so they'll turn back and come back after she's healed, because having narrative tension and consequences for failure is for chumps.
The next couple days, they can't travel very far, and one of the cuts on Kelsey's leg becomes infected. While the Golden Fruit can make herbal medicine, it can't make antibiotics, so she's kind of screwed. Kelsey wonders if Fanindra will save her life again, but it's too cold for Fanindra to function because she's a snake. A big storm picks up and they get lost, so they have no idea if they're heading back toward Mr. Kadam or not.
Huh. Is this what having stakes is like? I almost forgot what it felt like. This is nice.
Kelsey starts to become delirious with fever from her infected leg. This is actually kind of an effective sequence, because Kesley's normal "hyperactive five-year-old on crack" style of narration actually works here. There's a section where she wants to ask Kishan about oddly specific details of his stories that he's telling her while she's too weak to speak, and it actually seems like she's losing it. She keeps drifting in and out of sleep.
I dreamed of tracing my finger down an icy window. I had just made a heart with Ren + Kelsey in the middle and had drawn a second heart with Kishan + . . . when someone shook me awake.
Everything! Must! Relate! To! Romance!
Kishan says that he thinks they found the Spirit Gate. The sky is described as "amethyst-gray," which I actually like! Wow! Also, the storm is picking up, so they're stuck in some heavy sleet.
The gate itself is a couple of wooden poles covered in colored flags. There's a handprint on the side, just like there's been at the temples, so they're sure this is the right place. Kishan asks if they should leave and come back, but Kelsey says that they'll never be able to find it again, and besides, it's supposed to be a test of faith. Even though I've already said that the whole "faith" angle doesn't really make sense, because there's no faith in anything. There's another sentence I like:
I whispered, feeling the wind gobble up my words and tear them away just as they passed my lips.
I can't tell if this is actually a good sentence or if the writing in this book has warped my perception.
Kishan picks her up and takes her to the handprint, but she's too cold to use her lightning power. This gives Kishan an excuse to warm her up against his bare chest, and after a while she's warm enough to activate the handprint. The lightning sparks between the poles and it's really colorful. Then they're somewhere warm.
Then there's green grass and it's sunny, and there are a lot of animals grazing, but Kelsey can still feel the cold rain on her face. Which actually kind of makes sense because this is a gate to another world or whatever! Eventually the cold storm goes way completely, and then Kelsey passes out again. That's the end of the chapter.
Closing Thoughts
Hey, there's some potential in this chapter! If you ignore the beige prose at the beginning and the fact that there are no brown bears in the Himalayas and no black bears that live above the snow line on Mount Everest, we see--for the literal first time in the series--a potential consequence for failure. They can't just leave and come back later because Kelsey will die. They can't just rely on random snake powers from Fanindra to save Kelsey. Emotions are running high because Kelsey finally realizes that they have a time limit in which to complete their quest, and their failure means that Ren will also die.
This is exciting! I don't know how intentional some of it was, but it was actually kind of engaging to read, at least after the stupid bear attack.
That being said, what's up with Kelsey just forgetting all of the training that she's done over the past million chapters? She's been constantly doing wushu, and sparring, and learning how to sword fight, and use a bow, and use her lightning power. Before this, she says that she feels like she can defend herself and fight. And I know that this is a bear and not a human or whatever, but she still completely forgets that she knows how to do anything. Which makes all of the training sequences we've seen before this completely pointless. UGH.
By itself, the chapter is honestly pretty okay, as long as you remove it from the context of what's around it. Before, we have half a book of complete nothingness that you can charitably describe as buildup to the action in the second half, but none of the buildup actually pays off in any way, which makes it frustrating. It makes you wonder what the book could have been like if someone had realized that the pacing was complete garbage.
As for after...well, you'll see soon. The next chapter is really insane, guys. Buckle up.
Next time, Chapter Eighteen: Good Things! I lose my fucking mind.
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