Chapter 21: The Divine Weaver's Scarf
Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense! Last time, Kelsey and Kishan made it through the tests of the four houses with very little difficulty, and got ready to get to the MacGuffin in this chapter. It's all very exciting.
Before we get started with this chapter, I wanted to expand on some of the stuff I've been saying throughout the last couple of chapters. Specifically related to what exactly I mean by "tension" and how this book utterly fails to make any of the action scenes accomplish anything.
My main beef with how a lot of this is handled in the book is the fact that Kelsey and/or Kishan are immediately handed a solution to a problem as soon as it pops up. Oh no, we don't know what to expect! Don't worry, Mr. Kadam prepared very detailed, accurate notes that tell us how everything works. Oh no, we don't know where the omphalos stone is! Don't worry, I had a magical vision that showed me where it is. Oh no, we don't know where the world tree is! Don't worry, I had a magical vision that showed me where it is. Oh no, we don't know where the MacGuffin is! Don't worry, I...had a magical vision that showed me where it is.
Wow, there are a lot of convenient magical visions in this book.
This makes things so boring because the characters are always a step ahead of everything that happens. To use one of the examples I brought up before, it's like if in Sorcerer's Stone Harry and his friends already knew what each of the teachers had put in place to protect the stone. If your characters already know what to expect and (more importantly) already know how to beat each of them, then they don't really do anything to work for their goals.
Tension comes from the reader not being sure how the scene is going to turn out. Sure, on some level, you know that Harry will get to the stone, or Kelsey will get to the MacGuffin, because that's how stories work. And that's not a bad thing! Stories don't have to constantly subvert expectations to be engaging and filled with tension.
But! Even when you know that the characters will succeed, there has to be two extra things in order for tension to exist--a chance to fail, and consequences for failure (stakes, basically). This can be as simple as the characters crossing a rickety old bridge over a ravine--if you're watching a movie, the camera will invariably cut to some rocks falling off of the cliff, or pan to the extreme drop between the slats of the bridge. Yes, you know the characters will make it across, because otherwise the story wouldn't happen, but there's still the possibility of failure, so you stay invested in what's happening. I mean, this is the actual point of the Red Shirts in Star Trek--establish danger and consequences of failure, while allowing the protagonists to survive the dangerous stuff.
As an added bonus, this lets us see that the characters are actually working towards their goal, so it doesn't feel like the happy ending just falls into their lap at the end.
For something a little more complicated than crossing a bridge, you have to put more effort into showing the possibility of failure and the potential consequences. There's not much of that in Tiger's Quest (or the Tiger's Curse series as a whole, really, although this is marginally better in the third book, if I remember correctly). When the characters have convenient visions that tell them exactly what to do and where to go, it removes both the possibility and consequences of failure. They physically can't fail because they know exactly what they need to do. Which completely robs every scene of tension and kills any possible investment I could have had in what's going on. Additionally, it means that they don't have to work for success. It just feels like they're going through the motions-- it's an action story, so the action scenes need to happen.
I think the only one of the tests that was actually, you know, engaging to read was the test of sirens. Because it was actually a test, as it was a temptation thing, that had the possibility of failure (Kelsey could choose to stay with the sirens, even if you know she won't at a metatextual level) and the consequences of failure are very clear--she stays with them until she dies. Ignoring the fact that it plays out exactly how you think it will (with the exception of the books, which I think was actually kind of good), and the fact that the sirens didn't really try all that hard, it's the only test where Kelsey actually shows that she has that extra something that justifies her being a protagonist.
This isn't to say that the stakes of the scene have to be really high! You don't have to constantly put your characters in mortal peril for a scene to have tension and be interesting. This is largely a genre thing, because a romantic comedy is going to have very different stakes from Game of Thrones. But this still isn't an excuse for Tiger's Quest, which I suppose you could argue is more of a romance than an action story. (It's kind of both, but whatever.) A good romance still has stakes, even if it's as simple as "does she get the guy," but there's still tension involved. And I have never once felt that Kelsey won't end up with Ren at the end of the series. I'm having a harder time articulating why that is, but I think it's because their relationship never really has any internal conflict? It's always broken up by external events, so you just know that once they beat the bad guy they'll get together.
(As an aside, I think it's possible to get away with telling a story without a lot of tension, but it's really difficult, and I think it has to be a comedy. There's a movie I like called The Trip, and it's literally about two guys driving around England writing restaurant reviews and talking about nonsense. But this movie works because 1) it's a comedy, so its primary goal is to make you laugh instead of tell a complex story, and 2) there are actual character arcs relating to their marriages and families at home, so while these aren't the driving force in the narrative (or lack thereof--seriously, there's no real Plot but it's still a fun movie) the characters still, you know, develop.)
Wow, that went on a lot longer than I meant it to! But now I think you have a better idea of why I decided to spork this series. There are a lot of problems, but one of the big ones is a fundamental misunderstanding of how narratives are put together. By no means is this an easy thing to do (I should know, I'm currently working on a kind of terrible novel), but that doesn't mean that you should just say, "Ehh, it's good enough for my audience of teenage girls," and leave it at that.
Anyway!
Chapter Twenty-One: The Divine Weaver's Scarf
Anyway. After getting their stuff back from Hugin and Munin, Kelsey pulls on a rope hanging from the ceiling of the treehouse and a ladder extends from a hidden trapdoor.
Okay, hold on, one more thing before I keep going. We've seen Hugin and Munin, but where's Odin? Is he hanging out in Shangri-la somewhere? Or is he dead? He was "defeated" in the story that Kelsey told earlier. Or is he gone because people don't believe in him anymore? That's how a lot of stories deal with this kind of thing, but we've had so little worldbuilding of how the supernatural world works, I have no idea where he could be.
And where are any of the other gods? Hinduism has a very full pantheon, but we've only seen Durga. We've been to Hanuman's kingdom, but he was conspicuously absent. Why aren't Zeus or Thor running around in here, since all myths are true and Shangri-la is apparently full of Greek and Norse mythology? And what about the Judeo-Christian God, since Noah's ark was a real thing?
Kelsey tells Kishan that they'll have to climb up the branches to get to the scarf, which is surrounded by iron birds.
"Iron birds?"
Come on, Kishan, it's not that surprising. The prophecy itself says, "iron guardians round you fly," missing apostrophe before 'round and all. Why do the characters who have a roadmap of what to expect still require magical visions to tell them what to do? It makes them look wildly incompetent. I'm also not sure how Kelsey knows this, given the fact that she's a complete moron, but somehow getting her thoughts "unstuck" means she's really smart now.
People who are familiar with Greek mythology might recognize these iron birds as Stymphalian birds. Mr. Kadam's notes has a picture and a description, which reads, "Terrible flesh-eating birds with iron beaks, bronze claws, and toxic droppings. They usually live in large colonies."
They're also pretty good myth units in Age of Mythology, since they're reasonably cheap, have decent health, and can attack any unit, but as a flying unit can only be attacked by archers. This makes them a good way to fight an enemy Titan ransacking your town centers.
For real though, Stymphalian birds were part of the sixth labor of Hercules, which isn't mentioned by Kelsey. Mr. Kadam's notes seem to be correct, but Hercules killed them with a bow and arrow tipped with the Hydra's poisonous blood. They, uh, don't have that, but there's nothing to suggest that the birds need to be killed this way.
Kishan tells Kelsey to stay close to him, because they're not sure she can heal quickly here. Why is this place different? They're still in Shangri-la, right? Unless that's more of this undefined "fairy magic." Still, I appreciate the effort, because it means Houck is at least trying to make it seem dangerous.
Kishan also tells Kelsey to climb up the ladder in front of him, so that if she falls he can catch her. She does fall, because of course she does, and he grabs her foot and pushes her back up onto the ladder. They stop for a rest, and Kishan tosses her some sugar-free lemonade. I'm not sure why this is specified as sugar-free lemonade, but it's apparently important enough to mention, so there you go. There's some "chartreuse" goo on one of the branches, which has eaten through some of it, which they assume is the toxic bird poop. Hey, if the birds have been living up on the tree for thousands of years, and their poop literally destroys the tree, how is it still standing?
Kishan wrinkled his nose. "And this is old, maybe as long as two weeks ago. The smell is nasty. It's sharp and bitter." He blinked and rubbed his eyes. "It's burning my nostrils."
No one talks like this. Also, why is he rubbing his eyes when he says it hurts his nose? Yes, I know it's probably because his eyes are watering, but it doesn't say that.
After another hour, they find a giant nest on one of the branches. Kelsey gives us some more of her Hi-Larious Reference Humor (TM) that Kishan doesn't understand!
"Wow, that's huge! Much larger than Big Bird's."
"Who's Big Bird?"
"A giant yellow bird on kid's television. You think any of the birds are close?"
HA HA HA IT WAS SO FUNNY THE FIRST BILLION TIMES
Anyway, it turns out these birds are freaking huge, since the nest is the size of a "large swimming pool." Kelsey immediately ruins the image by comparing it to a giant Easter basket. They climb up to look inside, and there are five giant bronze eggs sitting on some fabric material. It's the Divine Weaver's Scarf! The MacGuffin!
I've just realized that we didn't really get a backstory about the Scarf like we did for the Golden Fruit.
It's very beautiful:
The cloth looked alive. Colors shifted and swirled in geometric patterns on the Scarf's surface. A kaleidoscope of pale blue shifted into hot pink and yellow, which twisted into soft green and gold, and then slid into blue-black raven billows. It was mesmerizing.
This is the second time a piece of fabric has been referred to with the noun "billows." Is it just me, or is that just a really weird word choice? I don't think I've ever really seen it as a noun before this.
They start rolling the eggs off of the Scarf, and find a feather nearby. It's made out of some kind of metal, sharp, and heavy enough that Kishan can't even lift it. I would give this a pass if Kishan had normal human strength, but this dude can deadlift Kelsey with one hand. Even a magical bird shouldn't be able to fly with a bunch of those things hanging off if it.
They hear a screech, and see a bird flying towards them. Oh no!!
Thump.
I think this is supposed to be the bird flapping its wings, but Kelsey never actually comes out and says that the flapping is loud. If you pair this with a description of the noise, or the feeling of being buffeted by wind, it would be fine. But it's not, so it's weird.
Another bird shows up, and it's really big, in case you couldn't tell from the comically oversized nest, or comically oversized eggs, or comically oversized feather. They have a wingspan of about forty feet, "or about half the length of Mr. Kadam's plane," just in case you forgot for a second how rich Ren is. Its feathers are also range in size from longer than Kelsey's arm to the length of a surfboard.
Let's do some math! I want to figure out how much this thing weighs, because even including "magic" as an explanation, I still don't think it should be possible. Helpfully, I found a source that says that bald eagles have around 7000 feathers. We already know that the feathers--regardless of size--are heavy enough that Kishan can just barely lift them, which gives us a decent guess for how much they weigh. Since Kishan can easily lift Kelsey, they weigh at least as much as an eighteen year old girl in reasonably good shape. The ideal weight for average height is about 130 pounds, so let's use 150 pounds as a nice round number (even though the real number is likely higher, given that Kishan can literally lift Kelsey with one hand. That gives us a weight of OVER ONE MILLION POUNDS. That's FIVE HUNDRED TONS OF FEATHERS.
For reference, if you scale this thing down to the size of a bald eagle, it would have a wingspan of about 7.5 feet and weigh almost 200,000 pounds. That's about 100 tons, or the weight of a Boeing 757.
Before we get started with this chapter, I wanted to expand on some of the stuff I've been saying throughout the last couple of chapters. Specifically related to what exactly I mean by "tension" and how this book utterly fails to make any of the action scenes accomplish anything.
My main beef with how a lot of this is handled in the book is the fact that Kelsey and/or Kishan are immediately handed a solution to a problem as soon as it pops up. Oh no, we don't know what to expect! Don't worry, Mr. Kadam prepared very detailed, accurate notes that tell us how everything works. Oh no, we don't know where the omphalos stone is! Don't worry, I had a magical vision that showed me where it is. Oh no, we don't know where the world tree is! Don't worry, I had a magical vision that showed me where it is. Oh no, we don't know where the MacGuffin is! Don't worry, I...had a magical vision that showed me where it is.
Wow, there are a lot of convenient magical visions in this book.
This makes things so boring because the characters are always a step ahead of everything that happens. To use one of the examples I brought up before, it's like if in Sorcerer's Stone Harry and his friends already knew what each of the teachers had put in place to protect the stone. If your characters already know what to expect and (more importantly) already know how to beat each of them, then they don't really do anything to work for their goals.
Tension comes from the reader not being sure how the scene is going to turn out. Sure, on some level, you know that Harry will get to the stone, or Kelsey will get to the MacGuffin, because that's how stories work. And that's not a bad thing! Stories don't have to constantly subvert expectations to be engaging and filled with tension.
But! Even when you know that the characters will succeed, there has to be two extra things in order for tension to exist--a chance to fail, and consequences for failure (stakes, basically). This can be as simple as the characters crossing a rickety old bridge over a ravine--if you're watching a movie, the camera will invariably cut to some rocks falling off of the cliff, or pan to the extreme drop between the slats of the bridge. Yes, you know the characters will make it across, because otherwise the story wouldn't happen, but there's still the possibility of failure, so you stay invested in what's happening. I mean, this is the actual point of the Red Shirts in Star Trek--establish danger and consequences of failure, while allowing the protagonists to survive the dangerous stuff.
As an added bonus, this lets us see that the characters are actually working towards their goal, so it doesn't feel like the happy ending just falls into their lap at the end.
For something a little more complicated than crossing a bridge, you have to put more effort into showing the possibility of failure and the potential consequences. There's not much of that in Tiger's Quest (or the Tiger's Curse series as a whole, really, although this is marginally better in the third book, if I remember correctly). When the characters have convenient visions that tell them exactly what to do and where to go, it removes both the possibility and consequences of failure. They physically can't fail because they know exactly what they need to do. Which completely robs every scene of tension and kills any possible investment I could have had in what's going on. Additionally, it means that they don't have to work for success. It just feels like they're going through the motions-- it's an action story, so the action scenes need to happen.
I think the only one of the tests that was actually, you know, engaging to read was the test of sirens. Because it was actually a test, as it was a temptation thing, that had the possibility of failure (Kelsey could choose to stay with the sirens, even if you know she won't at a metatextual level) and the consequences of failure are very clear--she stays with them until she dies. Ignoring the fact that it plays out exactly how you think it will (with the exception of the books, which I think was actually kind of good), and the fact that the sirens didn't really try all that hard, it's the only test where Kelsey actually shows that she has that extra something that justifies her being a protagonist.
This isn't to say that the stakes of the scene have to be really high! You don't have to constantly put your characters in mortal peril for a scene to have tension and be interesting. This is largely a genre thing, because a romantic comedy is going to have very different stakes from Game of Thrones. But this still isn't an excuse for Tiger's Quest, which I suppose you could argue is more of a romance than an action story. (It's kind of both, but whatever.) A good romance still has stakes, even if it's as simple as "does she get the guy," but there's still tension involved. And I have never once felt that Kelsey won't end up with Ren at the end of the series. I'm having a harder time articulating why that is, but I think it's because their relationship never really has any internal conflict? It's always broken up by external events, so you just know that once they beat the bad guy they'll get together.
(As an aside, I think it's possible to get away with telling a story without a lot of tension, but it's really difficult, and I think it has to be a comedy. There's a movie I like called The Trip, and it's literally about two guys driving around England writing restaurant reviews and talking about nonsense. But this movie works because 1) it's a comedy, so its primary goal is to make you laugh instead of tell a complex story, and 2) there are actual character arcs relating to their marriages and families at home, so while these aren't the driving force in the narrative (or lack thereof--seriously, there's no real Plot but it's still a fun movie) the characters still, you know, develop.)
Wow, that went on a lot longer than I meant it to! But now I think you have a better idea of why I decided to spork this series. There are a lot of problems, but one of the big ones is a fundamental misunderstanding of how narratives are put together. By no means is this an easy thing to do (I should know, I'm currently working on a kind of terrible novel), but that doesn't mean that you should just say, "Ehh, it's good enough for my audience of teenage girls," and leave it at that.
Anyway!
Chapter Twenty-One: The Divine Weaver's Scarf
Anyway. After getting their stuff back from Hugin and Munin, Kelsey pulls on a rope hanging from the ceiling of the treehouse and a ladder extends from a hidden trapdoor.
Okay, hold on, one more thing before I keep going. We've seen Hugin and Munin, but where's Odin? Is he hanging out in Shangri-la somewhere? Or is he dead? He was "defeated" in the story that Kelsey told earlier. Or is he gone because people don't believe in him anymore? That's how a lot of stories deal with this kind of thing, but we've had so little worldbuilding of how the supernatural world works, I have no idea where he could be.
And where are any of the other gods? Hinduism has a very full pantheon, but we've only seen Durga. We've been to Hanuman's kingdom, but he was conspicuously absent. Why aren't Zeus or Thor running around in here, since all myths are true and Shangri-la is apparently full of Greek and Norse mythology? And what about the Judeo-Christian God, since Noah's ark was a real thing?
Kelsey tells Kishan that they'll have to climb up the branches to get to the scarf, which is surrounded by iron birds.
"Iron birds?"
Come on, Kishan, it's not that surprising. The prophecy itself says, "iron guardians round you fly," missing apostrophe before 'round and all. Why do the characters who have a roadmap of what to expect still require magical visions to tell them what to do? It makes them look wildly incompetent. I'm also not sure how Kelsey knows this, given the fact that she's a complete moron, but somehow getting her thoughts "unstuck" means she's really smart now.
People who are familiar with Greek mythology might recognize these iron birds as Stymphalian birds. Mr. Kadam's notes has a picture and a description, which reads, "Terrible flesh-eating birds with iron beaks, bronze claws, and toxic droppings. They usually live in large colonies."
They're also pretty good myth units in Age of Mythology, since they're reasonably cheap, have decent health, and can attack any unit, but as a flying unit can only be attacked by archers. This makes them a good way to fight an enemy Titan ransacking your town centers.
For real though, Stymphalian birds were part of the sixth labor of Hercules, which isn't mentioned by Kelsey. Mr. Kadam's notes seem to be correct, but Hercules killed them with a bow and arrow tipped with the Hydra's poisonous blood. They, uh, don't have that, but there's nothing to suggest that the birds need to be killed this way.
Kishan tells Kelsey to stay close to him, because they're not sure she can heal quickly here. Why is this place different? They're still in Shangri-la, right? Unless that's more of this undefined "fairy magic." Still, I appreciate the effort, because it means Houck is at least trying to make it seem dangerous.
Kishan also tells Kelsey to climb up the ladder in front of him, so that if she falls he can catch her. She does fall, because of course she does, and he grabs her foot and pushes her back up onto the ladder. They stop for a rest, and Kishan tosses her some sugar-free lemonade. I'm not sure why this is specified as sugar-free lemonade, but it's apparently important enough to mention, so there you go. There's some "chartreuse" goo on one of the branches, which has eaten through some of it, which they assume is the toxic bird poop. Hey, if the birds have been living up on the tree for thousands of years, and their poop literally destroys the tree, how is it still standing?
Kishan wrinkled his nose. "And this is old, maybe as long as two weeks ago. The smell is nasty. It's sharp and bitter." He blinked and rubbed his eyes. "It's burning my nostrils."
No one talks like this. Also, why is he rubbing his eyes when he says it hurts his nose? Yes, I know it's probably because his eyes are watering, but it doesn't say that.
After another hour, they find a giant nest on one of the branches. Kelsey gives us some more of her Hi-Larious Reference Humor (TM) that Kishan doesn't understand!
"Wow, that's huge! Much larger than Big Bird's."
"Who's Big Bird?"
"A giant yellow bird on kid's television. You think any of the birds are close?"
HA HA HA IT WAS SO FUNNY THE FIRST BILLION TIMES
Anyway, it turns out these birds are freaking huge, since the nest is the size of a "large swimming pool." Kelsey immediately ruins the image by comparing it to a giant Easter basket. They climb up to look inside, and there are five giant bronze eggs sitting on some fabric material. It's the Divine Weaver's Scarf! The MacGuffin!
I've just realized that we didn't really get a backstory about the Scarf like we did for the Golden Fruit.
It's very beautiful:
The cloth looked alive. Colors shifted and swirled in geometric patterns on the Scarf's surface. A kaleidoscope of pale blue shifted into hot pink and yellow, which twisted into soft green and gold, and then slid into blue-black raven billows. It was mesmerizing.
This is the second time a piece of fabric has been referred to with the noun "billows." Is it just me, or is that just a really weird word choice? I don't think I've ever really seen it as a noun before this.
They start rolling the eggs off of the Scarf, and find a feather nearby. It's made out of some kind of metal, sharp, and heavy enough that Kishan can't even lift it. I would give this a pass if Kishan had normal human strength, but this dude can deadlift Kelsey with one hand. Even a magical bird shouldn't be able to fly with a bunch of those things hanging off if it.
They hear a screech, and see a bird flying towards them. Oh no!!
Thump.
I think this is supposed to be the bird flapping its wings, but Kelsey never actually comes out and says that the flapping is loud. If you pair this with a description of the noise, or the feeling of being buffeted by wind, it would be fine. But it's not, so it's weird.
Another bird shows up, and it's really big, in case you couldn't tell from the comically oversized nest, or comically oversized eggs, or comically oversized feather. They have a wingspan of about forty feet, "or about half the length of Mr. Kadam's plane," just in case you forgot for a second how rich Ren is. Its feathers are also range in size from longer than Kelsey's arm to the length of a surfboard.
Let's do some math! I want to figure out how much this thing weighs, because even including "magic" as an explanation, I still don't think it should be possible. Helpfully, I found a source that says that bald eagles have around 7000 feathers. We already know that the feathers--regardless of size--are heavy enough that Kishan can just barely lift them, which gives us a decent guess for how much they weigh. Since Kishan can easily lift Kelsey, they weigh at least as much as an eighteen year old girl in reasonably good shape. The ideal weight for average height is about 130 pounds, so let's use 150 pounds as a nice round number (even though the real number is likely higher, given that Kishan can literally lift Kelsey with one hand. That gives us a weight of OVER ONE MILLION POUNDS. That's FIVE HUNDRED TONS OF FEATHERS.
For reference, if you scale this thing down to the size of a bald eagle, it would have a wingspan of about 7.5 feet and weigh almost 200,000 pounds. That's about 100 tons, or the weight of a Boeing 757.
Imagine this, but with a pair of comically undersized bird wings on top.
So yeah, these things shouldn't be able to fly.
Kelsey tries to shoot an arrow at the bird, but its cry is so loud that it vibrates her arms, so she misses. Some more birds show up, and start swooping towards them, trying to snag them out of the nest. Kelsey decides to use her lightning to blast them out of the sky, but the bolt just bounces off of its feathers. Its metal feathers. Made out of a conductive metal.
My head.
Kishan throws his chakram at the bird, but wah, wah, he misses! Kelsey berates him for missing that big of a target, because she forgot that it works like a boomerang, so on its way back it slices a wing off and the bird falls to the ground thousands of feet below.
Kelsey tries to shoot another arrow, and hits its chest, but this just makes it angry. Kishan tells her to aim for the neck or eyes, so she does. She's able to hit a moving target right in the eye on her first attempt, which is...no. She only trained using stationary targets, yeah? This is dumb.
One of the birds manages to pick up Kishan, so she blasts it in the eye with lightning. This time it works, and the bird drops him back into the nest. Its claws cut him pretty badly.
He panted. "It's okay. It hurts. It feels like hot knives pressed against my skin, but it's healing. Don't let them get near you."
How does he have time to monologue about how his injury feels in the middle of a chaotic action scene?
Oh, yeah, their claws are also covered in acid for Reasons.
While the birds are regrouping, they "banter" for a little bit, but it's not clever. Kishan says he would have preferred the monkeys, so Kelsey says they'll rent King Kong and The Birds so that he can decide.
"Are you asking me out on a date? Because if you are, it will definitely give me more incentive to come out of this alive."
"Whatever works."
"You're on."
So yeah, even though every other romantic advance from Kishan has made Kelsey immediately dismiss him, she doesn't this time because "Comedy."
The birds start coming back, and Kelsey tries to describe how it looks with her ruined brain.
All at once, they dove for us. Shrieking, the flock attacked.
This literally conveys the same information twice in a row. It's repetitive.
(See what I did there?)
I'd once seen a colony of seagulls display mobbing behavior. They all pecked and harassed a man with a sandwich at the beach until he ran away screaming. They were violent, determined, and aggressive, but these birds were worse!
Comedy? Also, gotta love how she describes the birds as violent and aggressive, as if those didn't mean almost the exact same thing.
Kishan takes out a few with his chakram and Kelsey takes some out with her arrows and lightning, and Kishan asks Kelsey to keep them off of him while he moves the rest of the eggs. So, displaying some actual creativity, Kelsey imbues one of her arrows with lightning and shoots it at the bird, which basically explodes its head. Holy shit! This got really violent again out of nowhere. The headless corpse of the bird lands in the nest, which jostles Kelsey out of it and she starts to fall, but she manages to catch herself (getting pretty scraped up along the way). Kishan runs over and helps her back into the nest.
Is this..could it be? Narrative tension? Am I finally feeling invested in what's going on?
The birds just keep on coming, and Kelsey picks up a broken branch and shoves it through a bird's eye, and blasts another one out of the air with lightning. Holy shit! But the headless corpse finally unbalances the whole nest, so it starts to shift and it's going to fall out of the tree! It breaks in half, and the rest of the eggs fall out, breaking on the tree limbs below them. They land back in the remaining half of the nest, and the Scarf is stuck on some branches a couple feet below them. Kishan hoists Kelsey around by the leg so she can reach it.
Predictably, she complains the whole time, to the point that Kishan has to tell her to "shut up."
"Why couldn't they pick a girl from Cirque du Soleil to do these tasks? Hanging upside down from a broken branch thousands of feet in the air is just too much to ask from a girl in beginner wushu!"
And thus ends wushu's relevance in the story, as it dies a pathetic death, knowing that its only purpose was to be the punchline in a terrible joke (?) while Kelsey complains about something.
Anyway, it's difficult, but she manages to just grab hold of it, and as she does she gets sucked into another magical vision. This one is at least justified, since they knew about it going in and it's just a Thing that happens when they get the MacGuffin they're after, so I'm okay with it here. However, the vision here works completely differently from the vision at the end of Tiger's Curse, so it's still dumb. Because, see, now they're able to talk to each other for some reason.
Kelsey sees Mr. Kadam (presumably because he has a piece of the Matt Damon Amulet and not because he's involved in cursing Ren and Kishan in the first place, unless there's a mother of a twist coming in the later books), and he tells her that he can see her and Kishan. Kelsey sees another figure coming into view, and Mr. Kadam says, "Don't say anything. Don't let him provoke you into speaking. Just pay attention to every detail--anything that could help us find Ren." Yeah, he has to remind her about the whole reason they wanted to trigger the vision in the first place, because Kelsey can't do anything for herself.
Now Kelsey can see Lokesh.
His dark hair was slicked back, and I noticed that he wore several rings.
Rings of EVIL.
His medallion is much larger than either Kelsey's or Mr. Kadam's, so I guess Lokesh is just compensating for something.
Lokesh says that he'll let Ren go in exchange for Kelsey's Matt Damon Amulet.
"If you don't . . ." He took a knife out of his pocket and tested its sharpness on a thumb. "I will find you, slit your throat . . ." He looked directly into my eyes to conclude his threat, "and take it from your bloody neck."
At least he's upfront about how cartoonishly evil he is.
Mr. Kadam cuts in, completely forgetting the exact advice he gave to Kelsey, and tells Lokesh that he can have Mr. Kadam's Matt Damon Amulet instead. Lokesh says that he has no idea who Mr. Kadam is, and he wonders out loud how he was able to get a piece of the Amulet. Wait, Lokesh had presumably had some form of interaction with Ren's father at some point, right? Since he sent Yesubai and arranged her marriage to Ren? Mr. Kadam was one of Rajaram's chief advisors, so why wouldn't Lokesh know who Mr. Kadam is? This also cuts out some potentially interesting conflict between characters, but that's exciting, so we can't have that.
On the other hand, having the villain literally interrupt his evil monologue to say, "Who the fuck are you?" is a really funny image.
Lokesh also tells Mr. Kadam that if he wants to negotiate, he can go to his office in the penthouse of the tallest building in Mumbai.
Did...did the villain just let them know where his evil lair was? For no reason? Why? Why would he do that???
While Mr. Kadam talks to Lokesh to stall for time (he's very good at that), Kelsey tries to get an idea on where Lokesh could be with Ren. There's a servant with a bun on the top of his head, and he has Sanskrit words tattooed onto his bare chest. He pulls another man from behind him, and he looks really beat up, with matted hair. Kelsey realizes that it's Ren. She tries to get his attention, which Lokesh notices, and Lokesh tries to get an idea of where she is, and Kelsey isn't sure if he recognized Kishan behind her.
Lokesh laughs and says that, yeah, he's been torturing Ren basically the whole time he's been captured, but he hasn't told him where she is or even what her name is. But Lokesh has already figured out her name from other sources, even though he doesn't actually share what those are. Just in case you forgot how cartoonishly evil Lokesh is:
"I have to admit, I've quite enjoyed torturing him. It's the best of both worlds seeing him suffer both as a man and as an animal. The exquisite lengths I can go to are unheard of. He heals so quickly that even I have been unable to test his limits. I assure you, though, I am making every effort."
Hey, so why does he talk like Count Rugen from The Princess Bride now?
Lokesh tries to goad Kelsey into a reaction, and when she doesn't give him one, he says that he might kill Ren. This makes Kelsey dramatically shout, "No!" But the vision fades out so she can't hear what he says. Mr. Kadam does wink at her when she disappears, so I guess he at least got something useful out of the vision.
Kishan hoists Kelsey back up into the branch, and the Stymphalian birds are still circling them trying to attack. Kelsey puts the Scarf into the backpack with the Golden Fruit, along with her bow and quiver. This would be dumb if she didn't have her lightning power, so it's acceptable. It does call into question why she needed to learn how to shoot a bow in the first place, since her lightning power is also a ranged weapon and can do everything the arrows can against the birds.
They head back down the branches, and the birds stop following them for Reasons. After a while they stop to rest, make some food with the Golden Fruit, and tend to Kelsey's injuries that she got from almost falling out of the tree. She has a splinter under her fingernail, which Kishan works out from her skin while telling her about how tigers mark their territory by rubbing up against trees and getting porcupine quills stuck in them. How delightfully random? This random aside goes on for like a whole page.
(Also, tigers tend to mark territory by shooting urine everywhere, but that's not sexy.)
Kishan says that it'll take them days to get back down, but Kelsey says that whatever the ravens did showed her what the Scarf was able to do. Again, they cleared her own thoughts, they didn't give her any new information. She just Knows, because otherwise the rest of the book couldn't happen.
Kelsey asks the Scarf to give them a two-person parachute, and it turns into a parachute. This actually begs an interesting question--does the Scarf itself know what a parachute is? Or is it taking Kelsey's perception of what a parachute is? The latter seems to be what the Golden Fruit does, since it's able to make Mr. Kadam's mother's cooking from his memories. But Kelsey has never been skydiving, so how does she know exactly what a parachute looks like and how it functions? If that isn't how the MacGuffins work, how do inanimate objects just happen to know what modern technology looks like?
Kishan argues about it, since he doesn't trust the parachute to work (which, same), and Kelsey reminds him that the Ocean Teacher said to "have faith." Yeah apparently that's what the "faith" was referring to--faith in the Divine Scarf. How lame.
Kelsey says she's going to jump regardless of if Kishan is coming. How does she know how to work a parachute? Dunno!
They "banter" a bit more.
"Did anyone ever tell you that you're stubborn? Were you this stubborn with Ren?"
"Ren had to deal with stubbornness and sarcasm, so consider yourself lucky."
"Yeah, but at least he got some kissing for his effort."
"You got a few kisses yourself."
"Not voluntary ones."
"True, you stole them."
"Stolen kisses are better than none."
N O P E
Is...is this seriously the kind of message you want to convey to your audience of impressionable teenage girls?
Also, something tells me that if it were, say, Artie saying this, we'd be led to disagree with him, right? I mean, there was a whole section dedicated to the fact that Artie felt entitled to a relationship with Kelsey and wasn't able to take the hint that she wasn't interested. But Kishan does the exact same thing! And it's okay when he does it! Because he's Hot!
I just...my brain...
Anyway, Kelsey somehow knows "it's the way [they're] supposed to get down," so they put the parachute on. There's a little section where she's too short to get strapped in properly so he picks her up and holds her against his muscular chest, but I'm still reeling from the frankly abysmal dialogue I quoted above to comment on it.
Kishan jumps off of the branch, and the chapter ends.
Closing Thoughts
Well, stuff happened! The fight scene with the Stymphalian birds is at least competent, even if I'm still disgusted at the fact that this book has Stymphalian birds in the first place.
Kishan has descended to Ren-level creepiness. Seriously, how I supposed to view his and Ren's constant disregard for Kelsey's feelings and, more importantly, consent? Titillating? Deeply problematic? I do know that I hate it.
One the one hand, I have no idea why Lokesh is so evil, other than just Because. On the other, I kind of enjoy how cartoonish he is, because he at least has a character. He probably kicks puppies in his spare time.
Next time, Chapter Twenty-Two: Exit! Kelsey and Kishan get out of Shangri-la. Yes, that's all that happens. Well, we get the setup to one of my least favorite narrative tropes, but that's a problem for later.
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