Chapter 22: Exit

Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!

Last time, Kelsey and Kishan fought some birds and got the Divine Weaver's Scarf, made a magical parachute, and jumped out of the world tree.  They've had a conversation with Lokesh, and it seems like Mr. Kadam has an idea of where he might be.  The tension has been ramped up, so now it's time for the dramatic climax, right?

Right?

Wrong!  Rather than continuing the action, we're going to spend an entire chapter following Kelsey and Kishan on their way back out of Shangri-la.  Kelsey does angst a whole lot, though.  This basically removes any wind put in our sails by the last chapter.  It's so slooowwwww

Chapter Twenty-Two: Exit

Kelsey and Kishan are free-falling, and they hear another Stymphalian bird chasing after them.  Kishan flips them over so that Kelsey can blast it with some lightning.  Kelsey hits it a few times in the belly, which chases it off.  Kishan pulls the ripcord of the parachute and steers them toward some mountains.  I don't recall them passing mountains on the way to the world tree, but I guess this could be where the cave was in combination with the inability of this book to portray setting.

In the meanwhile, some more birds show up.  In a dazzling display of ineptitude, Kelsey decides that they're too far away to hit with lightning, so she pulls out her bow instead.

Yes, you read that right.  Kelsey has determined that they're moving too fast for lightning, which moves at the speed of light, so she decides to use a bow instead.

Wow.

Not to mention that from what we've seen in the interminable training scenes, Kelsey has incredible fine control of the lightning anyway?  She's able to control the whole arc, whereas with a bow, she can only control the arrow when it's still nocked on the bow.

This is painfully stupid.

That being said, she still uses her lightning powers!  She powers up her arrows, which if you remember is a Thing she can do now because shut up, and zaps one of the birds by shooting it in the neck.  This one doesn't blow up, unlike the last one, so it's good to see that things are consistently inconsistent.

Kelsey manages to chase a second bird off, but the third rips the parachute with its talons.  They free fall for a little bit, but the fabric magically repairs itself, so it's cool.

More birds start to swarm them, and Kelsey tells Kishan to land, but it looks like they'll be overtaken before they can do so.  Oh no!

A bird came right at us.  It was fast, and we didn't see it until the last moment.

This thing is the size of a small plane, and earlier when it flapped its wings it got a full-on "thump" as onomatopoeia.  How the hell do you miss something like that?

The wind conveniently changes, and blows them out of the way of the bird's closing beak, and it's all very exciting.  They manage to touch down on the ground, and Kishan pushes her down as he tries to unhook them from the parachute.  The bird is still on their tail, and rips into the fabric again.

It grabbed a beak full of parachute and yanked, tearing it in half.  I winced listening to the horrible rip of the special material.

Where was this reaction when it ripped the fabric the first time?  Which then immediately repaired itself, so there was no damage?  Which Kelsey watched happen?

Kishan pulls out his chakram and starts throwing it at the bird, and Kelsey asks the Scarf to knit back together, which it doesn't because Reasons.  Kishan does the whole, "Little help here!" thing that I've definitely never seen before in another piece of media, so Kelsey shoots some arrows.  Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the Scarf start to repair itself.  So, that little thing about the Scarf not repairing itself right away?  Pointless!

Kelsey tells Kishan to hold them off while she uses the Scarf, because again, remember that knowing what it does is just a Thing she can do now because shut up.  She asks it to "[g]ather the winds" and picks it up.  It grows into a large bag, and Kelsey finds herself in the middle of buffeting winds coming from every direction as they enter the bag.  Kelsey gets Kishan behind her, and opens the bag and "let[s] loose all the winds of Shangri-la" at the Stymphalian birds.

The Scarf shrinks down into a blue and gold scarf, which Kelsey decides to wear.  I might be reading too much into it, but it comes off like kind of a "so there," which I'll admit is kind of a cute detail that I would really like if it was surrounded by better stuff.

Kishan asks how she knew what to do, and Kelsey says she isn't sure, but it happened when Hugin gave her brain damage cleared her thoughts.  She remembers what the Divine Weaver told her, and some of the conversations she'd had with Mr. Kadam about mythology when they were spitballing about what the MacGuffin could be, and she recalls that Mr. Kadam shared the story of the Japanese god Fujin, who controlled the winds and carried them around in a bag.

I looked back at the Divine Weaver section, and she did say that the MacGuffin could "collect, craft, and cloak."  I guess you could extrapolate that into collecting wind, if you had the benefit of knowing that that's how you'd use it later.  Kelsey didn't, so this is dumb.

Regarding the Mr. Kadam exposition, I looked back through the entire book, and I couldn't find a single instance where she had this conversation with Mr. Kadam.  Which means that of all the endless stories that Mr. Kadam tells constantly, we never actually got to hear the one that was actually plot-relevant.  I'm actually speechless.

This is like if, in Harry Potter, Harry casts a spell that the reader had never seen before during the climax of the story, and said afterwards, "Gee, it sure is lucky I learned this in class!" even if he...didn't.  The closest example of this we actually get in the Harry Potter series is at the end of Goblet of Fire with the Priori Incantatum thing.  But this was set up at the beginning of the book when we see how to make a wand show the spells it had cast before, and even earlier in the series when Ollivander tells Harry that their wands use feathers from the same phoenix.  So even though we hadn't seen this exact thing happen before, it was still set up in-universe.

Kelsey also says that there's another thing the Scarf can do to save Ren, but she doesn't tell Kishan what it is.  This is because Houck decided to give Kelsey the knowledge to save Ren, but didn't want to spoil what would happen for the reader, even though it makes no sense for Kelsey not to say what it is in a first-person narrative.  She does say that she'll show him after they get away from the birds, though, so I guess that's a reasonable excuse.

"Alright, but there's something I need to do."

"What?"

"This."

He yanked me up against his body and kissed me.  Thoroughly.

SHE'S!  NOT!  INTO!  YOU!!  FULL STOP!!!

Seriously, why are we supposed to be okay with this?  I'd give it a pass if this was the first time it had happened, and it was played off like he finally got to a point where he's caught up in the moment and couldn't contain himself anymore, but he's constantly pawing all over her and she tells him to stop every single time!  Are we really supposed to think this is hot, or a romantic thing to do?

But it's okay.  Because he's Hot.

The thing is, this is played off like he's caught up in the moment and just happy they made it out, but the previous ten plus chapters show him constantly touching her, and kissing her, and confessing his love to her, all while she turns him down every single time.  So instead of coming off like it's intended, it literally just looks like he's looking for an excuse to kiss her against her wishes yet again, which is super gross!

Have I mentioned how much I hate this book?

Kelsey compares his relentless advances to an avalanche, so she just goes along with it, presumably for all the Kelshan fangirls out there.

They "banter" for a bit about it, despite just saying that they have to escape the birds that are chasing them, because Comedy.  I'm gonna break Kishan's dialogue down bit by bit, because I hate this conversation.

"I'm just happy to be alive!"

"Okay, fine.  But keep your lips to yourself next time."

Kishan sighed.  "Don't be upset, Kells."

"I've only demonstrated time and time again that I have no respect for your consent or your feelings.  Don't be upset."

"I'm not upset.  I'm . . . I'm not sure what I think about it.  It all happened too fast for me to even react."

A scoundrel's smile lit his face.  "I promise to slow it down next time."

"Even though you've told me multiple times that you're in love with Ren, and asked me multiple times to stop throwing myself at you, I fully intend to do so again."

"What next time?"

He frowned slightly.  "You don't need to make a big deal out of it. [. . .]"

"It's not that big a deal that I don't respect the boundaries you set in our relationship, and you're crazy for doing so."

"[. . .] It's just a natural reaction to narrowly escaping death.  It's like when soldiers come back from war and grab a girl to kiss right after they get off the boat."

"I'm going to compare this to a completely different situation, which is that famous picture of the soldier kissing the woman after the end of World War II.  I know about this photograph for some reason despite not knowing what a football is.

You know, this one.

"Additionally, I am going to completely ignore the fact that this happened completely against her will in the first place, since the soldier was drunk and thought she was one of the nurses who tended to soldiers during the war.  Also, it's completely unrelated because the woman hadn't been constantly rejecting my advances for months beforehand."

I retorted wryly, "Yeah, maybe so, but the difference is, this girl was on the boat with you.  Feel free to grab any girl you like when we get back to the mainland, sailor, but this girl is hands off."

He folded his arms across his chest.  "Really?  It felt more like your hands were on if you ask me."

"I am still ignoring your continued protests, and you actually wanted it the whole time anyway.  I know your feelings better than you do."

I sputtered in outrage, "If my hands were on you at all, they were there to push you away!"

"Whatever you have to tell yourself to have a clear conscience at the end of the day.  You just won't admit that you liked it."

"You were basically asking for it, and this is technically consensual because I think you liked it."

"Hmm, let me see.  You're right, Casanova.  I did like it.  After it was over!"

He shook his head.  "You are stubborn.  No wonder Ren had so many problems."

"I am further underscoring the fact that I am trying to do what my brother did to end up in a relationship with you while he's not here.  Also, rejecting my sexual advances is 'stubbornness' and not an actual rejection, because I'm just That Amazing."

Am I twisting this a bit?  Sure.  But I'm not twisting it that much, which is horrifying.  I also get that it's just a kiss, but that's the ultimate goal of trashy YA romance series, remember.

Also, look, I think this kind of flirtatious bickering can work--even if I'm not a huge fan of love triangles in general, they're popular for a reason.  The thing is, in literally every single one that's tolerable, the main character isn't already in a committed relationship with one of them?  It's framed as a choice between the two, not, "Well, one of them is unavailable for Plot reasons, so I'll just date the other one!"  There's also just something really...skeevy about Ren and Kishan that I just can't get over.  Remember, they're both twenty-something three-hundred-year-olds.  Kelsey is just barely eighteen, and she's never been in a relationship before.  That combined with the supreme manipulation tactics present in both Kishan and Ren's dialogue is super bad news.

Kelsey calls Kishan the "Kissing Bandit," like I wasn't just so sketched out by this conversation I had to take a couple days to work through it.

While they hike back to the Silvanae village (that's where they're going, by the way, because the book never actually tells us this), Kelsey thinks about her relationship with Kishan.

The problem with what happened between us was . . . he wasn't wrong.

Ugh.  Of course Kishan's right, because Kelsey's just a silly girl who can't know any better!

I had spent more time with him now than I had with Ren, and we'd been living under the same roof for months.

And whose fault is that?  You were hanging out doing nothing for those months while Ren was captured.

We'd been hiking through Shangri-la and spent day and night together for weeks.

WEEKS?????

I get that time doesn't work the same way inside Shangri-la (assuming it actually does work the same way as Kishkindha), but what have you been doing for weeks plural?  You spent a couple days walking in to the Silvanae village, stayed there for one (1) night, walked one day to the world tree (well, it takes one day to walk back, so I assume it took one day to get there), and spent a couple days walking up.  It's been like a week and a half of actual stuff that we've seen, so they must have been taking their sweet time climbing up that tree.

Day to day contact like that creates a level of closeness, an . . . intimacy between two people.

Yep, that's why any time someone has a roommate, they end up sleeping together.  Just think about what you are saying for once, I beg of you.

Anyway, Kelsey compares all of the kissing she's done in this book, because she did admittedly do a lot of that in this stupid book.  Kelsey felt in control with Li, and compares Ren to an "exotic paradise waiting to be discovered," (which is, uh, pretty loaded), and says that Kishan is more dangerous.  Just "dangerous."  I'm not sure how, exactly, but he's the Bad Boy, so he's Bad.

Like Ren, Kishan had a knack for charming his way out of difficult problems.  Before long, he made me completely forget that I had been upset with him.

This seems like a healthy basis for a relationship!

They camp for the night, and Kelsey uses the Scarf to make a tent, sleeping bag, pillows, and some pajamas.  Cool.  Kelsey goes to sleep without talking to Kishan and dreams about Ren and Lokesh again.

He looks bad, almost like he's been getting tortured for literal months while Kelsey did tourist things. It's worse than when she saw him during the Scarf vision, because Lokesh took his anger out on Ren when he didn't get the information he wanted.

Wait, if time doesn't pass at all in Shangri-la, or it passes really slowly, how did this have, ah, the time to happen?

Kelsey tells him to hold on a little bit longer, because they're close.  Ren says he's not sure he can, because Lokesh is obsessed with Kelsey and finding out information about her.

Wait, why does he have to get this information out of Ren?  He's not (only) torturing him for fun--he gets genuinely angry when Ren won't give him information about Kelsey.  But he already has information about her!  He was able to find her school!  And her house!  He's already told her he knows her last name!  What else could he possibly need to know about her that he couldn't be able to find through non-supernatural means?

I guess he could be looking for the Durga-related stuff, but I'm not sure if he actually knows about that in the first place.  He's not after any of the MacGuffins that the main crew are getting, he's after the Matt Damon amulets.  In fact, I think they surprise him later on with the fact that the MacGuffins even exist since I don't think he's even heard of them before.

Ren says that he's been using some sort of unspecified "dark magic" to give him hallucinations as part of the torture.  This is all the detail we get about what our antagonist can actually do.

Kelsey tells him to just spill the beans, and Ren says that he won't.  He does say that Durga has given him an option, but the price isn't worth it.  Kelsey says that it doesn't matter, because of course he should make a deal with Durga so that he can survive!

I'm just being reminded of the Shinigami Eye deal in Death Note, where you can exchange half of your remaining life to be able to see people's names above their heads to kill them more easily.  Except there we actually know what the deal is, so when any of the characters decide to take it, it actually has, you know, a real impact.

Kelsey, of course, never actually asks what the deal is, because that requires having more than one brain cell in order to form a synapse.

Ren asks Kelsey to kiss him before she leaves, even though it will cause him Extremely Manly Pain, because he's Tortured (uh, metaphorically and literally this time).  Kelsey notices that a few of his fingers are broken.  This is just for Angst reasons, but it really underscores (to me) the fact that Kelsey's just been frittering away time bickering with Kishan instead of actually, you know, accomplishing anything.

Even though he tells her that she has to leave right away, Ren takes the time to recite a whole-ass poem by Richard Lovelace.  He tells her to leave afterwards, and says that no matter what happens in the future he still loves her.  There's like a whole page of Kelsey trying not to leave while Ren keeps telling her to go, which is kind of funny and not the tone it's trying to hit.

Kelsey feels something snap and describes the connection that she's always felt but mentions for the first time right here disappear.  Oh no!

Kishan shakes her awake, and she's crying because Drama.

The next morning, Kelsey's a bit of a wreck, and she tells Kishan that she thinks Ren might be dead.  Kishan brushes her off and says it's probably residual fear from the birds.  But just to make sure, they should stop back with the Silvanae and sleep in the Grove of Dreams again.  Because that's what this book needs.  More convenient magical visions.  Also, a fucking detour right after we just found out that something horrible happened to Ren.

Ugh.

Kelsey asks Kishan what "hridaya patni" means, because Ren called her that in her dream, and Kishan tells her that it was a pet name the Rajaram used for Deschen, which means "wife of my heart."

The Drama.

They get back to the Silvanae after a day of hiking, and Faunus says that they can do whatever they want while they're here.  Kelsey eats dinner alone, and afterwards, Kishan walks in with a toddler.  It's Tarak!  Apparently the Silvanae mature very quickly.  I'm not sure why this is important information.

Kelsey makes some toys with the Scarf, and she and Kishan play with Tarak for a while, which makes Kelsey feel better.  Because she's a woman, and babies fix everything?  Ick.

The Silvanae prepared a bath for Kelsey, so she does that before heading to the Grove of Dreams.  Rest assured, Kelsey gets another naked oil and lotion massage from the Silvanae whose names I don't remember because they aren't repeated here.

It is interesting that Kelsey is wearing a silk dress given the Silvanae's earlier discussion of not harming animals.  Houck does know that silk comes from silkworm cocoons, right?  Which have to be steamed to kill the pupa inside to get to the silk?

Kishan's made a hammock for himself out of the Scarf, but he does take the time to ogle her in her new fairy clothes, because of course he does.  He says that she looks beautiful, and she says she probably does, but she feels "as empty as a plastic Easter egg," which is a weird vibe-killer for how sad she's supposed to be, and also makes me remember that Easter is a Thing in this world, which means that Jesus is a thing.  Where's Jesus hanging out during all of this?  With Hanuman and Odin and all the other gods that aren't in this for some reason despite being referenced all the time?

Kelsey doesn't dream about anything.

Without Ren, my life meant nothing.

Remember, kids, you're only worth something if you have a boyfriend!

Kelsey waxes poetic about how much everything Sucks now for a while.  I'll spare you the details, because it's just her saying that she's sad over and over again.  It's very purple, though.

As much as I hated that part in New Moon because of the similar implications, it was much more effective to have the narration disappear entirely for those few pages.  Or, hey, if you want a good example of the same kind of thing--there's a page in Gunnerkrigg Court where Annie mentally spirals out of control.  The art devolves in each panel, which reflects her mental state, and it's really effective!

Less is more, sometimes, is what I'm trying to say.  I don't actually know where I was going on this tangent.  Sorry.

Despite her very florid language, Kelsey is basically catatonic, and Kishan holds her while trying to get her to talk to him.  She feels a drop on her forehead, and she asks him if it's raining.

"Kishan?"  I looked at him and realized it wasn't rain but tears.

His golden eyes were full of watery tears.

The Drama.

Also, "watery" tears?  Is there a different kind of tear that I'm not aware of?

Kishan says that he thought Kelsey was "lost," whatever that means.

"Tell me.  What did you see to take you so far away from me?"

Why is Kishan talking like this all of a sudden?  It's also not that crazy that she'd be sad given that she told you the day before that she thought Ren might have died, yeah?

"No.  I saw nothing.  My dreams were filled with cold blackness.  I think it means he's dead."

No one talks like this.

Kishan says that he saw Ren in his dream, which perks Kelsey up immediately.  They were arguing on their yacht (they're very rich, always remember that), and it's not a conversation they'd had before, so it must happen in the future.  Kishan tries to tell Kelsey what they were arguing about a couple times, but she keeps cutting him off because she's so happy that he's not dead.  This is, of course, very Subtle Setup to the big stinger at the end of the novel.  Also, foreshadowing for the next book when they're on a boat!  But, spoilers, they don't actually use their yacht in the book, so this might actually be foreshadowing for a later book that I haven't read yet.  Or Houck just forgot what she wrote again.

You decide.

Now that Kelsey knows that things will turn out okay, they hurry out of the Silvanae village the next morning.  Would have been nice to see some pep in their step, uh, before we knew that things would turn out okay.  But that makes too much sense, I guess.

I hopped off his lap, moving quickly, gathering our things.  "Tell me later.  There's no time for that now.  Let's get going.  What are we waiting for?  A tiger needs to be rescued.  Come on.  Come on!"

See, I told you.  We saw none of this in the literal months leading up to this conversation when Ren had just been captured.  This book is stupid.

Kishan doesn't talk much on the way out, but Kelsey is so happy to go save Ren that she doesn't really wonder why.  She uses the Scarf to make them some new winter coats (because hers got ripped up by that random bear, remember), and uses her lightning power to open the gate back up.  Kishan hugs her (not kissing her this time), and they step through the gate.  Like Ren leaving Kishkindha, Kishan immediately turns back into a tiger, and the chapter ends.

Closing Thoughts

Hey, nothing happened in this chapter!  Well, something did happen with Ren, but it was all in a dream sequence and Kelsey remains willfully blind to the whole thing in order to preserve some mystery for the """""twist"""" at the end.  Even though it makes no sense for her to ask what Durga's deal was, considering she has always asked every single inane question that floats into her brain before this.  If you haven't had this already spoiled for you by me liveblogging my reading of this book a while ago, can you guess what the deal was?  Here's a hint: it's one of my least favorite narrative tropes!

Next time, Chapter Twenty-Three: Going Home!  It's another traveling chapter (sick of those yet?), but we do get to learn a bit more about how the Scarf works.  Also, there's some more exposition about Lokesh.  Because that's the perfect place to explain who your villain is--75% of the way through the second book in the series.

Look, I know Voldemort's backstory wasn't fully explained until the sixth book in the series, but we at least had a general idea of who he was as a villain before that.  He's a wizard terrorist bent on killing Harry!  That's, like, the bare minimum of information necessary, but we don't get that for Lokesh!