Chapter 20: The Tests of the Four Houses

Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!

Last time, Kelsey and Kishan made it to the world tree, talked with the character equivalent of falling asleep on the keyboard, and started climbing up, ready to take on the four tests referred to in the prophecy: the test of birds, the test of bats, the test of gourds, and the test of sirens.

And, uh, only two of them really fall under the definition of "test," but okay.

Chapter Twenty: The Tests of the Four Houses

Yeah, all of them happen in this chapter.  Would have helped the pacing immensely if each got its own chapter here, and most of the first half of the book was cut out.  But I can't have nice things.

Fanindra's eyes light up in the dark passageway (because she's part glow stick, if you remember from the last book) while Kishan gets their flashlight out.  There's an inner tree trunk about five feet in front of them with a spiral staircase between the inner and outer trunks, so they start heading up.  After a couple hours, they find a knobbly door.  Kelsey remembers that she has a weapon, so she nocks an arrow while Kishan opens the door, but there's no one inside.  Instead there are a bunch of gourds everywhere.

Note: both the prophecy itself and the snake said that the test of birds came first, so I guess they were both wrong.  Some prophecy.

Anyway, yeah, lots of gourds!  But Houck decided to squish all four tests into one chapter, so this whole scene is written at breakneck pace with no concern for things like "atmosphere" or "adequate description."

Some were solid; some were hollowed out.  Many of them had beautiful, elaborate designs and were lit within by flickering candles.

Some pumpkins were depicted with carvings far beyond anything I'd ever seen on Halloween.  We walked past shelf after shelf admiring the designs.

It's like I'm there.  Yeah, we don't really get any idea of what they look like other than "beautiful" and "elaborate" "designs," so feel free to imagine what these could be on your own!

Like nothing I've ever seen before on Halloween.

Kishan reaches out to grab one that looks like a jewel, and Kelsey reminds him that this is one of the tests, so they should figure out what to do before touching anything.  Which, yeah, fair point.  They pull out their Handy-Dandy Mr. Kadam Notebook (TM) to see if there's anything helpful inside.  Even an entire dimension away, Mr. Kadam still finds a way to lecture us about different myths and folklore.  Ugh.

Kelsey quickly dismisses the African-American slave song, "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" as irrelevant, but decides to relay the information that the song is about following the stars, specifically the Big Dipper, as slaves traveled north on the Underground Railroad.  Because Houck wanted to show off that she did her research.  She similarly discounts stories of gourd boats (origin unspecified) and a myth about throwing a gourd on the ground to summon a sea monster (origin also unspecified). These two aren't referred to as being irrelevant, and it's framed as not needing those things right now. Which doesn't mean that those aren't part of the test, just that they're inconvenient.

Kishan laughed.  "How about this one?  The one about gourds and fertility?  Want to give it a try, Kells?  I'm willing to make the sacrifice if you are."

What the hell, Kishan.  You know she's not into you, stop propositioning her for sex!  I've been on your side only because Ren is worse!

Kelsey points out a Chinese myth where a boy had to choose the gourd that would govern his life--each gourd had something different inside, even including the elixir of life.

From what I can find, this isn't even close to an actual myth.  Gourds occupy an important place in Chinese mythology, usually as a symbol of longevity and the universe as a whole.  There are stories of things kept inside of gourds (since hollowed gourds were commonly used to transport water and medicine).  Some myths involve gourds with firebirds inside of them, but the only one I could find that was even tangentially related to Kelsey's notes is the story of Li Tieguai, an important religious figure in Taoism as one of the Eight Immortals.  Before becoming one of the immortals, Li could leave his mortal body behind to speak to the other immortals, and left his body in the care of one of his disciples with the instruction to cremate his body if he didn't return in seven days.  His disciple had to leave to take care of his sick mother on the sixth day, so he burned Li's body on the sixth day.  When Li came back and found the ashes of his body, he took over the body of a beggar and turned his crutch into a magic crutch that could transform things; he transformed the pills in his medicine gourd into the elixir of life.

So, yeah, nothing like what Kelsey said.

Also, why a Chinese myth would be relevant at all inside of (what I assume is) Yggdrasil, which is located next door to Ancient Greece, I have no idea.

"Maybe we'll get lucky.  Perhaps we should just pick one."

This is dumb.  They just guess that this is the exact situation that they're in, so they just start picking gourds up and smashing them.  And of course they're right, because they're the protagonists and otherwise the story wouldn't happen.

Kishan picks up a gourd and smashes it on the ground and a pear rolls out.  Kishan eats it before Kelsey can tell him not to, but nothing bad happens.  That sure was random.

You know what else is random?  The items produced by the gourds!  It's really wacky!!!

Kelsey breaks open a gourd and a black snakes comes out and tries to bite her, so Kishan kills it with his chakram.  The next one Kishan breaks has milk in it, and it turns out they can't break another one until someone drinks it.  It's milk, so it's fine.

They break some more gourds, and it's very lolrandom!  Here's a list of all the random things they get:

- Moonlight

- Sand

- Music

- Seawater

- A black mist of "disease" that Kelsey inhales in order to give this scene any amount of tension.  No, I have no idea if this is just the concept of "disease" or if Houck can't write.

- A scorpion

- Wind

- A fish

- A star (I think?)

- Fruit juice

- Water

- Chocolate

- Rubbing alcohol

- Clouds

- A tarantula

- A ruby

- A vitamin pill

- Cheese

- A ring

- A weird liquid that Kelsey drinks, which immediately cures her unspecified "disease" and makes her feel really strong

- Rice

- A butterfly

- A hot pepper

- Snow

- A feather

- A lily

- A cotton ball

- A mouse

- Another snake

- A worm

- Thread

- Drum sounds

- Vanilla scent

If you think you're missing out on reading the wacky adventures of breaking open gourds, you're not missing much.  Almost all of those are presented like, "We broke a gourd that had [x] in it, so we [ate/killed/looked at] what came out." 

This scene reminds me a lot of that scene in Deathly Hallows where Harry & Co. rob Bellatrix's vault in Gringotts.  Except in Harry Potter (which is good), the characters actually know what they're looking for, which makes the things they pick up in the vault seem a lot less "lolrandom" and more like a frantic search.  And they're in actual danger because of the charm that multiplies all the treasure into burning copies.

They find a gourd that has tigers carved into it, and there's a fortune cookie note inside of it that says, "The hidden vessel will show the way."

They break open some more gourds (the items are listed above), and one of the ones Kelsey breaks doesn't have anything in it, but it disappears like the others, so something happened.  They suddenly feel a draft, which leads over a pile of gourds, behind which is a blank wall.  There's a tiny gourd growing out of the wall.  Kelsey tries to pick it up to break it, but it's stuck.  Kishan grabs it and laughs, because the tiny gourd is a doorknob.  Behind it, the stairway continues, so they continue up.

So, uh, in what way was that a test?  It was random guessing until they guessed the right gourd, yeah?   There's a couple of ways this could have gone, and neither of them involved a "test."  Either the "hidden gourd" was the doorknob and was physically hidden behind a bunch of gourds, and there was no point in breaking the gourds in the first place, OR the "hidden gourd" was the one that Kelsey broke that had nothing in it and made the door appear, which wasn't "hidden" in any way and they selected at random.

A "test" has to actually, you know, test something.  The tests in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade  are a good example of how this kind of thing would actually be, uh, good.  The most relevant one here is the test where he has to select the Holy Grail from a bunch of cups.

You know, this scene.

Just picking a cup at random isn't a test!  The bad guy picks the fanciest cup and gets it wrong, and Indy picks the right cup by using his brain!  It's a test of humility!

"You know, I'm never going to look at pumpkin pie the same way again."

Hurr hurr hurr

When they take a break for some food, and Kishan gets some curry from the Golden Fruit.  Kelsey thinks this is gross and gets scalloped potatoes, glazed ham, and green beans with almonds.  None of this is interesting, but the book likes to keep me updated on what Kelsey puts in her mouth, so I'm just relaying the message.

Kishan keeps stealing bits of food off of her plate instead of just using the Golden Fruit to make more, because Comedy I think?  It's not funny and it doesn't make sense given how the Golden Fruit works, so I dunno.

After a while, they get to the next door, and they hear laughing behind it.  They get their weapons ready again, and when they open the door there's a bunch of beautiful women inside, who ask them to come in.

A gorgeous woman with thick waves of long brown hair, green eyes, downy soft, ivory skin, and cherry lips dressed in a shimmering, blush-colored gown took Kishan's arm.

That seems like too many commas to me, the expert in over using commas.  Also, again with the weird emphasis of her light skin color.  She says that they can take a bath if they want to, and rest a bit before they keep going.  The girls (there are at least two, and the scene isn't described very well but I think there are supposed to be more) lead Kishan off.

Six feet of tanned, muscular, bare chest, blue-eyed, blond male turned all of his attention to me.

This is the first time he's mentioned, by the way.  Kelsey was much more into describing the gaggle of super hot women when she first walked in.  Hmm.

Also, that should be "bare-chested" because otherwise that sentence makes absolutely no grammatical sense.  Editing, what's that?

He greets Kelsey and says that he and his sisters are glad to have visitors.  This is enough to make Kelsey blush, but I'm willing to be lenient and assume there's some sort of supernatural glamour or something going on.  Because these are obviously the sirens from the prophecy.

Another guy comes out, and he's even hotter.  He says that they'd love for her to stay awhile, since they only have their book collection to keep them occupied, which Kelsey perks up at.  Kelsey follows the two hot guys to their book collection, and she notes that all of the books are her favorites. We don't get to hear what these are, because that would provide characterization.

"Here, try one of these tarts.  They are amazing.  Our sisters are excellent cooks."

Hey, if this is supposed to be the ultimate female fantasy, why is it that we're sticking with the outdated gender roles, hmm?

Kelsey refuses, and they offer the bathroom so she can shower.  Kelsey changes out her her dirty clothes, leaving them on the branches of the tree so the fairies can fix them.  Hey, I thought Faunus said that the world tree was out of their influence?  Why can the fairies come here but not the Silvanae?  Anyway, Kelsey changes into a golden gown left to her by the sirens.

She flips through Mr. Kadam's notes about sirens to try to figure out what's going on.  She skips over the stuff from the Oddysey, because those were mermaids and these are tree nymphs.  Anyway, the notes say that they can stay beautiful forever, "ride through the air" (whatever that means), live for a long time, can become invisible, and have "special times"  (whatever that means) at noon and midnight, as well as cause madness or stroke or "besotted infatuation."  Oh, also:

Slip through small holes.  Hmm, that's a new one.

Hee hee.

She leaves the bathroom and the two guys just stare creepily at her.  They essentially force her to sit down in a fancy chair that molds itself to her body.  She asks where Kishan is, and they say they didn't see anyone walk in with her.

"It was impossible to notice anything after you stepped in the room," the other man said.

"Yes, I agree.  You're quite lovely," said his brother.

See, this is supposed to be a foil to Ren and Kishan.  They're two brothers that love Kelsey.  But the sirens' behavior is literally indistinguishable from what Ren and Kishan do!  Why is it okay when Ren and Kishan do it, and not the sirens?  They say the same kind of shit!

The two sirens try to get her to eat again, and she says no.  One of them starts massaging her shoulders, and kisses her neck.  This is exactly what Ren does.  Why is it okay when Ren does it, and not these guys?  Because Ren is the designated love interest!

The two guys are all over her for a while, and she kisses them back, forgetting all about Ren.  But something feels Wrong.

I murmured, "No," weakly and tried to shake the men off, but they wouldn't leave me alone.

Y I K E S

One of the sirens massages her neck like Ren, which makes her remember that he, uh, exists.  I mean, in every single chapter leading up to this, Kelsey's been wasting time while still not thinking about Ren.  The sirens seem upset, and start singing, but this doesn't work either because Kelsey just thinks about the song that Ren wrote for her.  They try to pull her over to the bed, which again, yikes.  Nothing they say or do works, because Ren is the Love Interest, and hotter than either of them.  Kelsey uses the phrase "love slave," which makes me immeasurably uncomfortable.

Anyway, the two sirens finally give up and tell her that she's free to go, but Kishan has to pass the test himself.  Then they turn into smoke and leave through a knot in the wall of the tree, because that's a Thing they can do now.  Kelsey goes to sleep in a sleeping bag on the stairs outside of the room, and in the middle of the night Kishan joins her.  They immediately go to sleep and head out the next morning.

Points for this one actually being a test.  You know, of like temptation and stuff.

The stairs open up, so they're no longer climbing up in complete darkness.  They're really high up, and the branches are really big.  That's pretty much the extent of the description we get of the freaking World Tree.  They eventually come back to a hole in the trunk and go back inside.  Wow, that sure was pointless!

This part of the tree is different--it looks damaged and rotting.  They eventually get up to a wall with a small hole, which means it's time for the next test!  The hole is a passage of petrified wood (I think???  It's really hard to tell, but Kelsey says it feels like stone), and it's about twenty-five feet long, so it's hard to climb through.  Kelsey gets through, and while she's waiting for Kishan to get through, notices some flapping sounds in the dark.

Something or a few somethings flapped toward me again.  Maybe they're giant moths.

HMM, THE ONLY TWO TESTS LEFT ARE THE TEST OF BIRDS AND THE TEST OF BATS.  I WONDER IF THEY'RE MOTHS?

It's bats.  They say "SCREEEEEE" and everything.  They're big enough that they're able to pick Kelsey up off of the ground.  These must be magical bats, because I legitimately don't think it's physically possible for something to be light enough to fly while still big and strong enough to pick up a human being, but whatever.  Despite the room being completely dark, as described a couple paragraphs ago, Kelsey can somehow see Kishan on the ground as she's flown up to the ceiling, because editing is for chumps.  More of the bats show up and swarm Kelsey.

The bat drops Kelsey, and she lands on a ledge about a hundred feet above Kishan.  Kelsey turns on her flashlight and there lots of bats hanging from the ceiling, watching to see what Kishan will do.  Return of bland narration!

They were noisy.  They chattered with clicks, pops, and smacks as they hung and watched us.

I feel nothing when I read this.

There's a lot of references to Kishan's "progress" on the way up to the ledge, but I have no idea what he's actually doing.  Is he climbing up the wall?  Are there stairs?  I have no idea!  Kishan tries to "climb up" and has to "backtrack" a couple of times, so I think he's rock climbing.  Maybe.  He says it's impossible, and the bats start to talk.  And, if you can believe it, the bats' speech pattern is even worse than the snake's from the last chapter!

"Iiiiiimpossiiiible heeeee thiiiinks," it clicked and flapped.

How do you click a sentence that is mostly vowels and literally only has one possible "clicking" sound (the "k" at the end)?  How do you flap a sentence?

"Iiiitt's possiiiible, Tiigerrr."

Hate.

Kelsey asks how they know he's a tiger, and the bat says that "[h]eeeees speeerit eees splittt."

Oh, so now the letter "i" is pronounced as "ee," but only sometimes?  Hate.

The bat explains that his grief is keeping him from succeeding, and if he recovers from it, he'll be able to rescue her.  Well, actually, it says:

"Meeean heee eeeendure grieeeeef.  Heeee heeeeal hiiiis stiiiing . . . heeee reeescue youu."

Hate.

Kelsey asks how that's possible.  I'm including a screenshot of the bat dialogue, like I did with the snake, because trying to accurately quote the dialogue makes my brain hurt after a while.

Counting out how many letters get arbitrarily lengthened is not fun.

But, what?  Half bird and half mammal?  What??

Some bats fly around the room and blast sonar into the walls, where stones embedded into it start to glow.  What the fuck is happening?  The bat says that the lights will fail when his time's up, because now there's an arbitrary time limit imposed.  Even though the test had already started, and only after he said he couldn't do it?  What???

Kelsey relays the bat's instructions to Kishan to use his tiger half.  Now that the room is, uh, lit, there are a bunch of stalagmites growing from the ground with flat tops that a tiger could jump between.  So now we're in a platforming puzzle in a video game, I guess.

Also, remember that they're in a tree.  That just has a stone cave inside that's supposedly also made out of rotting wood?  I have no idea what this place is supposed to look like.

So he tosses the chakram from ledge to ledge as he jumps up, and each platform gets smaller the higher it gets.  Kishan falls at one point, but he turns into a human on the way down and climbs up some vines.

Kishan did a series of complicated acrobatic stunts.

It's like I'm there.

Anyway, he keeps changing back and forth between tiger and human on the way up, and seamlessly uses both halves to get to the top.  At the top, he apologizes that he couldn't bring the backpack up, and the bats go grab it for them, because having to use limited resources and your brains is boring.  We have pancakes we have to eat, baby.

They try to figure out where the next stop is, and the bats say that they'll take the two of them to the next test.  Convenient.

Also, this wasn't a test for Kelsey!  It was a test for Kishan, and Kelsey just had to sit this one out as a damsel in distress!

Also also, what mythology are the bats from?  Everything else is (allegedly) from a real myth, but the bats are just...bats, I guess.

The bats take them up the tree, saving them several hours of climbing, and warn them to "[b]eee viiiiggiiilaaant."  Then they leave, and I don't have to put up with their abjectly terrible dialogue anymore.

So, since Houck has already fucked up most of the worldbuilding we've done so far in just a couple of chapters, she must have figured, ehh, what's a little more?  Kelsey says it's a shame that the fairy clothes Kishan was wearing poofed into the "tiger ether" when he changed back and forth.  Because that's a thing that happens, remember--we established this with Ren in the first book, and they specifically brought a change of clothes for Kishan in case he needed to burn through a set of climbing gear.  But the fairy clothes are in their bag, and the only explanation we get is that it's "fairy magic"!  I'm not sure why fairy magic overrides tiger magic.

They set their sleeping bag out on one of the thicker branches, and Kelsey is afraid that she'll fall off if she goes to sleep, so Kishan says he'll hold onto her so she doesn't.  This is so we have another excuse for the whole "and there's only one bed!!!" trope that we've seen a gazillion times already, with the added bonus that Kishan has to have his arms around her.  The fanfiction tropes.  They hurt.

Hey, do you remember that Kishan loves Kelsey, but she doesn't love him?  You do?  Because we've had at least one conversation about it per chapter ever since Ren got kidnapped?  Well, Houck doesn't trust that you, the reader, his picked up on this incredibly subtle character dynamic, so we get another conversation about the exact same thing.

"You . . . you're very important to me."

"You're important to me too."

"No.  That's not what I mean.  I mean . . . I feel . . . and I have reason to believe . . . that we could come to mean something to each other."

"You mean something to me now."

"Right, but I'm not talking about friendship."

Etc., etc.  You can guess how this goes.  Oh, but I'm in love with Ren.  But what if Ren wasn't around.    Etc.

This whole conversation is pretty lame considering Kishan's already shared his Prophetic Vision that Kelsey has a literal baby with one of the two of them.  If that conversation happened later in the book, this conversation would make more sense, because then the reader would be wondering why Kishan is so persistent about pursuing Kelsey, and why he keeps wanting to talk to Kelsey about it.  But this book has very serious structural issues, so none of the things the characters do make sense.

Anyway, they keep climbing up.  The stairs eventually disappear, and there's a rope hanging down from a treehouse.  Kelsey says that she won't be able to climb up, and Kishan tells her to hold onto him and he can climb them both up.

When she's all situated (and unable to move her arms, because they're strapped into the backpack somehow), Kishan kisses her.

"Kishan."

"Sorry.  I couldn't resist.  You were trapped and for once you couldn't turn away from me.  Besides, you're very kissable.  You should be happy that I restrained myself as much as I did."

Y I K E S

Hey Houck, this is maybe not the best message to send to your audience of young teenage girls?

It's pretty despicable, actually.  She's already turned up down more times than I can count on one hand.  It's not romantic, it's not hot.  It's literally saying that he can't help himself because she's asking for it.  This is what rapists say.

Kishan starts climbing up the rope, and Kelsey likes it.

Tarzan-like men are my weakness, apparently.

HAHA HERE'S A FUNNY JOKE TO DISTRACT YOU FROM THE FACT THAT OUR TWO LOVE INTERESTS ARE SEXUALLY PREDATORY HAHAAHAHAH

They wait for a little while, since this is supposed to be the house of birds.  Kelsey asks if anyone is there, and two ravens fly up to them.  Kelsey asks what they want, and they come closer.

A black tongue tasted the air from the beak's rictus as the birds moved closer.

What an odd sentence.

Anyway, the birds can understand them, and Kelsey asks who they are.

One said, "Hughhn," and I could have sworn the other one said, "Muunann."

So yeah, it's Hugin and Munin.  You know, Odin's ravens from Norse mythology.  Except the story that Kelsey told us before, about Odin's ravens, that we're supposed to accept as true, that one of them got captured and never returned.  But they're both here.

Kelsey asks if they stole the bracelet and the amulet from her as she slept, and they nod.  She asks for them back, and they get angry, but they do fly up and land on her shoulders.  Kishan gets worried, but Kelsey says that in the myth she told him earlier, they would whisper thoughts and memories to Odin.  So she decides to listen to them.

One of them sticks its beak in her ear and starts pulling on something, but it doesn't hurt.  Kelsey asks what it's doing.

"Thoughtsrstuck."

I felt another gentle tug, a snap, and then Hugin hopped away with a filmy, web-like strand hanging from his beak.

Oh come on, this is taken in its entirety from Harry Potter!  Especially when I tell you that this is a memory that Hugin pulled out of Kelsey's head in a silvery strand of something mystical.

Hmmm.

I covered my ear with my hand.  "What did you do?  Did you steal a part of my brain?  Do I have brain damage?"

Think back to the multiple-day long concussion you had in the last book, Kelsey.  The answer is yes, but not for the reasons you think.

Ha, is it weird that I'm able to have more consistency between blog posts of this spork than Houck does in her published book series?

Anyway, Kelsey's thoughts are abnormally clear now.  She also somehow knows exactly where the MacGuffin is, what it does, and how to use it to save Ren.  I have no clue how she now knows information that she was never even once exposed to, outside of "the MacGuffin is called the Divine Scarf."  But even though she only knows what it's called, the information was, what, inside her all along?  I have no idea what's even happening anymore.

Munin jumps up onto Kishan's shoulder, and Kelsey asks if he's doing the same thing to Kishan.  It turns out that Munin is doing something different to Kishan, pulling a black strand out of Kishan's ear and eating it.  Kishan says that the bird showed him his all of his memories from an objective perspective, which made him realize some things.  When I say "some things," I really mean his relationship with Yesubai, because everything must relate back to romance.

"It's not different . . . it's clearer.  I could see that Yesubai was a sweet girl who cared for me, but she was encouraged to seek me out.  She didn't love me the same way I felt for her. [. . .]"

Because the love interest can't be sullied with having had a real relationship before the protagonist shows up!  I've mentioned this loads of times before, but it was mostly speculation from some of the dialogue.  But now it's actually confirmed that this is the case!

Kishan asks what Hugin did to Kelsey, and she says she got her brain "Hoovered," which is a very British way to say "vacuumed" for an American teenager.  This is just to set up the """""""joke""""""" that Kishan doesn't know what "Hoovered" means.  Comedy!

Kelsey goes to the birds' nest and takes back the Matt Damon Amulet and the bracelet.  The birds look annoyed, so they give them a fishhook, and glow stick, and a compass instead.  How delightfully random!  Wait, why do they even have a fishhook?  They were climbing up Mount Everest, which isn't exactly known as a prime fishing destination.

Kelsey thanks them, and they head off to go find the MacGuffin.

So that was the test of birds, but it wasn't a test!  They didn't have to prove themselves in any way, they just got magical upgrades from some birds!  Whatever.

Closing Thoughts

So those were the tests of the four houses that have been teased since really early on in the book, aaaall the way back when Kelsey was taking classes at WOU.  Yeah, mentioning the names was pretty much all the setup we got.  Also, pretty much every piece of information gave us the wrong order for the tests, because this book was edited by monkeys.

I mentioned this in my spork above, but...how were these "tests"?  A test is supposed to make you prove yourself in some way--showing you're worthy, or showing you're strong enough, or whatever.  I have no idea what the tests were actually supposed to, you know, test them on?

The house of gourds wasn't a test.  They relied on information supplied by someone else to figure out the myth that it was based on (let's ignore the fact that it's not a real myth).  Then they just guessed at random until one of them made the door appear.  Unless this was a test of luck (which, lame), this isn't a test.  And even if it's supposed to test their reasoning skills, the hint given by one of the gourds to look for the "hidden vessel" wasn't even a hint because they found it by brute forcing their way through the puzzle!

The house of sirens was a test, I guess.  I suppose it tested them to see how committed they were to getting to the MacGuffin, but it was used as a jumping off point for another repetitive conversation about Kishan's unrequited love for Kelsey.  We also never got to hear about how Kishan passed the test (although if I remember correctly, that's talked about later, and even if it isn't, it's pretty bleeding obvious that he passed because he's in love with Kelsey).

The house of bats was a test for Kishan, but what did Kelsey prove?  That she can get picked up by a bat and sit down on a ledge?  She just sat there being worried the whole time.

The house of birds wasn't a test for anyone, it was a magical upgrade!  There's no way to fail!

So, yeah, pretty lame, honestly.  I thought the whole point of the quest was "having faith" or whatever, right?  Why do literally zero of the tests relate back to that in order to have any kind of thematic cohesion?  It's probably because "having faith" is so undefined that it's impossible, but some kind of effort would have been nice.  As it is, the characters don't really learn anything from most of the tests.  Kishan learns to accept his tiger half, I guess, but since they're doing this to get rid of his tiger half, this seems pretty counter-productive.  And Kelsey knows exactly what to do for the rest of the book, which 1) removes tension from the narrative, which could have existed if the characters faced any kind of difficulty and 2) comes right out of nowhere and doesn't even seem possible based on her knowledge from before the bird upgrade.

It's just...filler.  At least it's action filler, though, because I don't think I could take another chapter about Kelsey's dating life.

Hey, since this is already super long, how about I extend it even more with some good examples!  I've already mentioned the tests in The Last Crusade, which I think work really well.

Another example of this being done really well is in The Sorcerer's Stone, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to make it through all of the different tests to get to the titular stone before Voldemort.  Each character uses their strengths in order to make it through--Harry's skill at flying, Hermione's intelligence, and Ron's skills in playing chess and not being an idiot (in the Devil's Snare room).  The tests actually relate back to the actual characters, and even tie back to the overall theme of the series--working together with friends makes you stronger, because they could only get through with all three of them.

Anyway.

Next time, Chapter Twenty-One: The Divine Weaver's Scarf!  They still have those guardians left, so the whole chapter is basically a fight scene.

By the way, we're just over 70% of the way through the book.  Does it feel like it?  The answer is no!  We're gonna have to squish a lot of action in the last 30% of this book.  At least the pacing isn't glacial anymore.