Chapter 25: Saving Ren
Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!
Last time, Kishan cemented himself as a terrible person, but more importantly, Kelsey & Co. have made some important steps in narrowing down where Ren is being held captive so they can (finally) go rescue him!
Stuff actually happens in this chapter since this is the climax! After this, the story just kind of peters out over three chapters, but we're in the home stretch now!
Lokesh is in this chapter, and even though he's cartoonishly evil to the point of absurdity, he's still kind of a fun character. I don't know how it's possible to chew the scenery in a novel, but Lokesh somehow manages it.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Saving Ren
Finally.
Mr. Kadam says that they've found the missing Baiga tribe that they already suspected of working for Lokesh. Mr. Kadam has some satellite footage that shows some technology nearby, which is unusual for the Baiga people. This technology is some cars and a large structure that Mr. Kadam thinks is a military compound. There are also some armed guards protecting the Baiga within the camp, which Mr. Kadam suspects is to watch for an assault by a tiger (aka Kelsey's crew).
Kelsey asks why they'd keep Ren in the middle of a jungle after constructing an entire military compound rather than somewhere else. Mr. Kadam exposits some more about the Baiga tribe, and says that the Baiga are said to be able to control tigers. Since they also believe in evil spirits, Mr. Kadam says that it's likely Lokesh was able to win them over to his side by demonstrating some undefined magic, and that he's using them to keep Ren from escaping. Knowing nothing about the Baiga except for what Wikipedia can tell me, this actually kind of checks out. That being said, if all of this information is readily available by satellite, I have no idea why the Indian government hasn't gotten involved at all. Especially since the Baiga have moved to that area illegally and someone is building random military compounds and seems to be building their own private army.
We also see that the only reason Houck picked the Baiga to use is because the Wikipedia article says the word "tiger," rather than for any thematic or dramatic reason.
But yeah, Kelsey and the others have to figure out how to infiltrate a heavily-guarded military compound that also has magical defenses in order to extract Ren. This is actually kind of an exciting setup!
Kelsey says that they should head out, but Mr. Kadam says that they should come up with a more concrete plan than "lol disguise," especially considering Mr. Kadam's two informants investigating the Mumbai office have disappeared. Kelsey asks if they're dead, and Mr. Kadam says that they probably are.
Kelsey says that even though the two of them are warriors, she isn't one. Um, lightning powers? Crack shot at archery? Chosen one of the goddess of war? Whatever. So, in order to make it so that the three of them can defeat an entire private army, they have to carefully plan out what they're going to do.
So, what would you do if you had to come up with a plan for infiltrating a dangerous military base? If your answer is "make a concept web like an elementary schooler learning how to write a five-paragraph essay," you'd fit in really well with this crew.
Houck helpfully includes an honest-to-God illustration of their tortured brains trying to figure out how to use the weapons at their disposal. It's downright adorable.
Last time, Kishan cemented himself as a terrible person, but more importantly, Kelsey & Co. have made some important steps in narrowing down where Ren is being held captive so they can (finally) go rescue him!
Stuff actually happens in this chapter since this is the climax! After this, the story just kind of peters out over three chapters, but we're in the home stretch now!
Lokesh is in this chapter, and even though he's cartoonishly evil to the point of absurdity, he's still kind of a fun character. I don't know how it's possible to chew the scenery in a novel, but Lokesh somehow manages it.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Saving Ren
Finally.
Mr. Kadam says that they've found the missing Baiga tribe that they already suspected of working for Lokesh. Mr. Kadam has some satellite footage that shows some technology nearby, which is unusual for the Baiga people. This technology is some cars and a large structure that Mr. Kadam thinks is a military compound. There are also some armed guards protecting the Baiga within the camp, which Mr. Kadam suspects is to watch for an assault by a tiger (aka Kelsey's crew).
Kelsey asks why they'd keep Ren in the middle of a jungle after constructing an entire military compound rather than somewhere else. Mr. Kadam exposits some more about the Baiga tribe, and says that the Baiga are said to be able to control tigers. Since they also believe in evil spirits, Mr. Kadam says that it's likely Lokesh was able to win them over to his side by demonstrating some undefined magic, and that he's using them to keep Ren from escaping. Knowing nothing about the Baiga except for what Wikipedia can tell me, this actually kind of checks out. That being said, if all of this information is readily available by satellite, I have no idea why the Indian government hasn't gotten involved at all. Especially since the Baiga have moved to that area illegally and someone is building random military compounds and seems to be building their own private army.
We also see that the only reason Houck picked the Baiga to use is because the Wikipedia article says the word "tiger," rather than for any thematic or dramatic reason.
But yeah, Kelsey and the others have to figure out how to infiltrate a heavily-guarded military compound that also has magical defenses in order to extract Ren. This is actually kind of an exciting setup!
Kelsey says that they should head out, but Mr. Kadam says that they should come up with a more concrete plan than "lol disguise," especially considering Mr. Kadam's two informants investigating the Mumbai office have disappeared. Kelsey asks if they're dead, and Mr. Kadam says that they probably are.
Kelsey says that even though the two of them are warriors, she isn't one. Um, lightning powers? Crack shot at archery? Chosen one of the goddess of war? Whatever. So, in order to make it so that the three of them can defeat an entire private army, they have to carefully plan out what they're going to do.
So, what would you do if you had to come up with a plan for infiltrating a dangerous military base? If your answer is "make a concept web like an elementary schooler learning how to write a five-paragraph essay," you'd fit in really well with this crew.
Houck helpfully includes an honest-to-God illustration of their tortured brains trying to figure out how to use the weapons at their disposal. It's downright adorable.
Seriously cute.
A couple highlights that I just love so much:
- Kishan listed under "Weapons" as "Kishan the Black Tiger." This is funny for a couple reasons--he's listed as a weapon when he's one of the people doing the infiltrating; we already know that he's a black tiger, so it's completely pointless to remind us that he is, in fact, a black tiger; and the fact that "Black Tiger" is capitalized as if it's some sort of title, when he has never once been referred to this way. It's just delightful.
- The fact that "lightning power" looks shoved in at the last second, like they completely forgot about it even though it's a divine power granted by the literal goddess Durga.
- Them thinking that filling a room with food would actually do anything when the biggest obstacle is getting past the armed guards that are all posted outside of the building.
- Putting taffy in guns is something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon and I love it.
- "Giant Net."
- The fact that they consider disguising themselves as Lokesh, the man they're there to try to bargain with in the first place. Like he wouldn't just notice another him running around the compound.
Also note: their eventual plan hinges on something not written down here, which makes it kind of pointless to share with us. But it made me laugh because it's so ridiculous.
[Mr. Kadam] thought the simplest plans were the easiest to follow, and our plan was pretty straightforward: Sneak in. Find Ren. Get out.
Kelsey, that's not a plan. The problem is that sneaking in and finding Ren is going to be hard to do! So you need a plan to be able to sneak in and find him!
It really says a lot when this guy has a better plan for how to win in a fight than these chuckleheads.
He prepared for every contingency. He asked dozens of what if questions. [I cut out a whole paragraph of uninteresting "what if" questions because they're literally the first things you'd think of when making a plan.]
He made a separate plan to overcome each problem and still have a successful outcome.
We don't actually get to hear what these are, mind. Because that would require effort to come up with different contingency plans, and everyone knows that writing is supposed to be easy. This also robs the actual infiltration of any tension, since the characters already know what to do before going in.
Anyway, they spend the rest of the day training new weapon combo breakers and combining the Fruit and Scarf to make some creative weapons. Again, we don't actually get to see how these combine, because that would be interesting. Kelsey tells us that she's bringing Fanindra with her even though they're not sure if she's actually going to do anything, which is kind of funny.
Something fluttered outside of my window. My fairy clothes! It seemed there weren't any fairies here.
Wow, so that was entirely pointless, and you just interrupted your planning session to let us know that it was entirely pointless. Thanks.
Mr. Kadam drilled us for a week before he felt we were ready to seek out the Baiga village.
No one wastes time like these characters. It's seriously unreal.
We get a line break, and all of a sudden we're outside of the Baiga camp and they're about to storm the military compound. Wait, what? I'm all for moving the pacing along a bit, but how did they get here undetected? Lokesh doesn't have scouts out in the jungle, or his own surveillance equipment? Like something as simple as thermal imaging?
Anyway. They use the Scarf to make their disguises, and we are very obviously not told what those disguises are. This is because Houck came up with one plan and decided to let that work perfectly, rather than having a plan go wrong at some point and making her characters think on their feet. So, even though the story is told from a first person perspective and it makes no sense that Kelsey doesn't tell us what's happening, we're gonna be stuck in the dark for a little while. Because we don't actually get a full explanation of what happens until two chapters from now. Which is idiotic.
Anyway. Suitably disguised, they split up and start their mission. And right off the bat we hit a potentially devastating plot hole. Kishan changes into a tiger, but remember what happens when he does that? Yeah, anything he's wearing gets poofed into the tiger ether.
So why doesn't his disguise disappear? It's worn like a full-body scarf, so it's actually a piece of clothing. But, even though it's not clear at all in this chapter in order to preserve some sense of mystery, Kishan is wearing a disguise the whole time even though he changes into a tiger and back. I suppose it's possible that his tiger magic doesn't affect the Scarf's magic, but his fairy clothes (which were also magic) disappeared when he turned into a tiger. So this is really dumb!
What this means is that Houck can't come up with a plan that works with the rules she's already established. Rather than go back to the drawing board to come up with something that would actually work, she just assumes her readers won't notice. But I notice.
Anyway, operating under the assumption that Kishan doesn't immediately destroy the disguise he's wearing, we get into another excessively violent action scene that doesn't fit the tone of the book (just like the one when Ren got captured). Kishan roars, which signals Kelsey to enter the compound. So much for being sneaky, I guess. If you look back to Mr. Kadam's pathetic plan, they didn't even get the first part right.
Kelsey's job is to take out the watchtowers and the floodlights. Which kind of defeats the purpose of roaring, since they already know that you're there. But whatever. She pulls out the Golden Fruit and tells it to do something, but she doesn't actually say what it does right away, which is incredibly annoying. Instead of actually telling us what the hell is going on, Kelsey tells us what the M in M-ATV stands for. Basically, they're mine-resistant, which makes them difficult to take out. Kelsey also notes the location of some Baiga grass huts, and resolves to avoid hitting those so that she doesn't take out innocent bystanders.
She's supposed to go for the generator that powers the lights, but doesn't know where it is, so she just takes the lights out individually. It's incredibly easy, since one zap with her lightning power destroys them right away. This is immediately noticed (of course), so someone gets into one of the armored cars. Kelsey reveals that she filled the gas tank with sponge cake, so it doesn't start, but the headlights are still on. So Kelsey zaps the car and blows it up.
My lightning hit the car with a thunderous boom that shot the ATV thirty feet in the air. It exploded in a fiery ball and slammed down on top another one, landing with a screeching of twisting metal.
Holy shit! Also, weren't those grass huts close by? Guess Kelsey forgot about those.
She blows up the other ATV, though. Since this plan is the opposite of subtle, people are looking for Kelsey.
I let loose a few golden arrows and heard a grunt and a thud as a body hit the ground.
Kelsey just confirmed killed someone, and it's given less fanfare than the fact that Kelsey put her fairy clothes outside of her window. I literally can't make this up.
She hears some darts hit the bushes around her, and guesses that they're supposed to take her alive. Uh, why? Lokesh is trying to get the Amulet, right? Why does that require them being alive during all this?
Kelsey blows up one of the watchtowers, which "explode[s] in a giant fiery bomb that [lights] up the area." I thought she said she wasn't trying to kill anyone!
While she's busy murdering people (literally phrased as "[taking] them out" because Kelsey is a stone-cold murderer now, I guess), Kelsey sees Mr. Kadam in his disguise rallying the Baiga people for aid. We don't get to hear what his disguise is for two chapters, so this is incredibly confusing. Kelsey plants the gada where he'll be able to find it and moves on to the next step of the plan.
She zaps a satellite with a lightning arrow. I think she means a satellite dish, because she's not hitting something in space. The men on the second tower start firing darts at her, but they miss. So she shoots the tower with a lightning arrow, and since it's really close the resulting explosion throws her into the air with enough force to cause the back of her head to start bleeding when she lands on the ground.
Despite the fact that she should be concussed, she's able to grapple with one of the guards on the ground. She punches him in the stomach and stands up. Wouldn't he be wearing something like body armor if he's a guard? I guess not.
Kelsey jumps up on his back to put him in a strangle hold (instead of, you know, anything that would make sense in a fight), but he turns around and slams her on a rock, so she lets go. The guard literally grins at her and stretches his arms out to strangle her, which again seems like not a great move when you could literally punch her in the head until she's unconscious, but whatever. Kelsey shoots him in the chest with a lightning bolt. He flies back and hits the tower and falls to the ground with his head drooping. I think Kelsey just murdered someone on-screen.
So Kelsey just runs through the camp trying to find Ren. Again, I thought the point was to be subtle, what with taking out the watchtowers and spotlights? Guess not, since Kelsey just zaps people left and right while dodging darts.
When I approached, they spoke several words in a different language. I nodded briefly, and one of them used his key to let me in.
Again, this only makes sense if you've already read the explanation that we get later on. We have no idea who she's disguised as, so we can only assume it's one of the soldiers or Baiga tribespeople. She's also incredibly lucky that nodding was the correct answer to whatever question they asked her.
Unfortunately, the door shut behind me and locked itself automatically. I ignored the problem, figuring I'd just zap my way out later.
Which begs the question: why didn't they just blast their way in? Kelsey's lightning powers are extremely overpowered. If she's not even worried about being stuck, this kind of makes the whole subterfuge plan pointless, doesn't it? They don't even have to depend on the plan to give Lokesh a fake amulet, since they could have just...made one? Without all this song and dance?
While she's sneaking through the hallways, she runs into the guy she's impersonating, so she zaps him too. Totally exciting, and not at all a boring thing to happen.
Fanindra lights up the halls for Kelsey to see, and she hears Lokesh and Kishan (still mysteriously disguised) arguing in the next room. Horrifyingly, there's a literal pile of bodies that Kishan made getting into Lokesh's office. It doesn't explicitly say that they're dead, but since they're literally piled up I don't think it's that far of a stretch.
Kelsey enters the office, and instead of focusing on Lokesh and Kishan like a normal person, we're treated to a detailed description of the room they're in. I'll skip it, unless you're invested in hearing about the carpeting (which, yes, is described).
Weirdly, there are glass cases with different eras of weaponry in them. Why would these be here? It doesn't seem like this is a permanent base that Lokesh has been using--it literally only exists because Lokesh needs the Baiga to keep Ren there. Is there a reason Lokesh carted out what appears to be an entire museum into the middle of the jungle? Without anyone noticing?
Kishan was playing his part well.
Again, this means absolutely nothing to anyone who hasn't already read ahead.
Kelsey then describes Lokesh's outfit in detail for Reasons. She specifically points out that he's wearing a bunch of rings, but unless I'm forgetting something major, there's no actual significance to the number of rings he's wearing. If I had to guess, they might have something to do with his magic, but that might just be because I'm used to reading about Harry's kinetic rings in the Dresden Files series.
"I can rip you apart with a mere word, but I enjoy watching people suffer. [. . .]"
They say Ulfric Stormcloak murdered the high king with his voice...shouted him apart...
Lokesh compliments Kishan for getting past his elite trained guards. He also offers Disguised!Kishan a position working for him, which Kishan of course refuses. Then he flips through the air and roundhouse kicks Lokesh in the face. This is not physically possible. I actually have no idea what this is even supposed to look like. He's doing a flip and kicking him while he's in the air? Is he throwing a tornado kick, and Kelsey/Houck just don't know what that's called? Also, kicks to the head/face are just not practical in an actual fight.
Lokesh is bleeding from the mouth, and Kelsey gets grossed out because he seems to like it. So he's a masochist because he's evil? What?
Lokesh tells Disguised!Kishan to hand over his piece of the Matt Damon amulet because Lokesh has control of the "other three." Hey, there are five pieces of the Amulet! You're forgetting about one, Lokesh. Lokesh then says that if he hands it over, he'll give them Ren and let them have a head start while he hunts them.
Lokesh isn't doing a very good job of convincing them to give him what he wants.
Kishan and Lokesh throw some lame banter back and forth, and Kishan eventually goads Lokesh into attacking him by calling him "Old Man," which is some elementary-school-level backtalk.
Electricity sparkled between [Lokesh's] fingers.
Lokesh began muttering enchantments, opened his palms, and lifted his arms. Loose materials in the room rose in the air and began swirling in a whirlwind, moving faster and faster.
He's an airbender!
Kishan gets hit by a rogue pair of scissors and cuts his forehead open, but he starts healing right away, because always remember that putting your characters in danger is too exciting.
Lokesh yells at Kishan to give him the amulet again, and in response Kishan picks up a few of the larger items flying around the room and crushes them.
Wait, what? What is that supposed to do? This is also a ridiculous image.
He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. The ground started shaking.
Oh, great, he's an earthbender too.
Evil dripped off him in waves. It blackened everything around him. His darkness choked me. Even though he wasn't aware of me yet, I felt like black, misty fingers were making their way toward me, seeking to strangle the life from my body.
I've mentioned a few times that Kelsey likes to say the exact same thing several times in a row in slightly different ways. Here's another example of this--any one of these would have been fine on their own. But they're just stuck right on top of each other, and it comes across as overdone, overdramatic, and just sounds really stupid.
Kelsey lobs a lightning bolt at him, which misses completely but hits the glass display case of weapons. Broken glass and random weapons get caught up in the whirlwind and further cut Kishan up. Good going, there. A large piece of glass stabs Kishan and he pulls it out.
Blood streamed down and joined the spinning miasma of the whirlwind.
Kelsey's tortured brain remembers that the Golden Fruit, you know, exists, and wishes for jawbreakers, which destroy everything in the room as a storm of candy appears from thin air.
This book really has an issue with tone. We just read a scene where Kelsey sneaks by a pile of dead bodies, and now they're being saved by candy.
During the scramble to escape, Kishan grabs the amulet around Kishan's neck and breaks the chain. Even though he has a knife to Kishan, and is close enough to cut him badly, he leaves through a hidden door for no reason and gets into a car to drive away. Kelsey knows that she could stop up his engine with the Golden Fruit, but doesn't because she's scared of him and doesn't want to face him again.
Lokesh was too powerful. We wouldn't win.
Except you just did. He's gone, you're all still alive, and you have access to Ren. Kelsey is so stupid.
He was a monster. That was all. Just another thing to fight. But, this monster had a human face. It seemed worse, somehow.
I guess none of the multiple soldiers Kelsey murdered in cold blood count.
While Mr. Kadam and Kishan regroup, Fanindra comes to life and helps them look for Ren. There's yet another hidden door behind a bookcase, and Kelsey blows up the lock with lightning. Kelsey recognizes the room as Lokesh's Torture Dungeon (TM), and there are a lot of scary-looking tools hung up on the wall.
I saw wood, screws, nails, pliers, ice picks, leather straps, an iron muzzle, a modern drill, nail-studded collars, a vice that could be used to crush whatever limb was placed in it, and even a blow torch. I touched the items as I passed by and wept bitterly.
Again, the tone is all over the place. They just beat Lokesh by making a candy storm, and now we're reading about instruments of torture.
There's a scene in Night Watch that handles this kind of thing really well (yeah, I'm using Terry Pratchett as a comparison again, sue me). There's a point where Vimes goes into the Tanty, which was used as a place to torture people for confessions. We don't get an itemized list of every single thing inside, because that's not the most effective way to get the emotion of the scene across. Instead, we see the characters' reactions to what's inside, and it's a genuinely powerful scene. Kelsey's the only one who really reacts, and it's limited to crying.
Well, Kishan does the whole "Don't look at it, it'll upset you" thing, because he's a Strong Manly Man and Kelsey is a Weak Emotional Woman.
There's a cage in the corner of the room, and Ren is inside. He doesn't seem to recognize them at first, and this is honestly a pretty effective part. Well, two paragraphs of it, anyway. He doesn't say a word, and he just stares at Kishan--it really shows how much of an effect Lokesh has had on him. He still shows obvious signs of torture, but he's already starting to heal from that.
What shocked me is that he was so gaunt. Lokesh had been starving him. He was likely dehydrated too. His strong frame was thin, much thinner than I'd imagined he would be. His bright blue eyes were circled with dark hollows. His cheekbones were sharp and pronounced, and his silky dark hair hung lifeless and dank.
Oh no, the worst part is that he isn't Hawt anymore!
Also:
Closing Thoughts
Hey, Houck just because you want to preserve some mystery for tension, this does not mean that you can just omit details. It's really hard to tell what's going on in this chapter, and I've read through it a couple of times already. And by the time we get to the chapter where this is actually explained, enough has happened that it's hard to remember what happens in this chapter, so it's not a satisfying explanation.
You know how Scooby Doo cartoons work? Where they come up with a detailed plan for how to capture the monster, but then it goes wrong, and then they still capture it anyway through some wacky hijinks? That's how this should go. It's kind of made fun of because the formula in Scooby Doo was so obvious, but even in dramatic fiction it's still better than being really confused during the climax of the novel.
And yeah, the tone problems of this book are the most obvious here. Houck can't decide if she wants to write something whimsical or something really violent, so she just does both.
Also, Lokesh is kind of lame? Houck's trying to build him up to be this incredible mastermind, but everything he does is really, really dumb. He gives away more information than he gets, and all of his scheming for "power" doesn't really go anywhere. I guess he really likes to torture people though, so that's something.
Anyway, next time, Chapter Twenty-Six: Baiga (Edit: Also, Chapter Twenty-Seven: War Stories)! Kelsey misses the extremely obvious, but that's really not a surprise at this point.
He prepared for every contingency. He asked dozens of what if questions. [I cut out a whole paragraph of uninteresting "what if" questions because they're literally the first things you'd think of when making a plan.]
He made a separate plan to overcome each problem and still have a successful outcome.
We don't actually get to hear what these are, mind. Because that would require effort to come up with different contingency plans, and everyone knows that writing is supposed to be easy. This also robs the actual infiltration of any tension, since the characters already know what to do before going in.
Anyway, they spend the rest of the day training new weapon combo breakers and combining the Fruit and Scarf to make some creative weapons. Again, we don't actually get to see how these combine, because that would be interesting. Kelsey tells us that she's bringing Fanindra with her even though they're not sure if she's actually going to do anything, which is kind of funny.
Something fluttered outside of my window. My fairy clothes! It seemed there weren't any fairies here.
Wow, so that was entirely pointless, and you just interrupted your planning session to let us know that it was entirely pointless. Thanks.
Mr. Kadam drilled us for a week before he felt we were ready to seek out the Baiga village.
No one wastes time like these characters. It's seriously unreal.
We get a line break, and all of a sudden we're outside of the Baiga camp and they're about to storm the military compound. Wait, what? I'm all for moving the pacing along a bit, but how did they get here undetected? Lokesh doesn't have scouts out in the jungle, or his own surveillance equipment? Like something as simple as thermal imaging?
Anyway. They use the Scarf to make their disguises, and we are very obviously not told what those disguises are. This is because Houck came up with one plan and decided to let that work perfectly, rather than having a plan go wrong at some point and making her characters think on their feet. So, even though the story is told from a first person perspective and it makes no sense that Kelsey doesn't tell us what's happening, we're gonna be stuck in the dark for a little while. Because we don't actually get a full explanation of what happens until two chapters from now. Which is idiotic.
Anyway. Suitably disguised, they split up and start their mission. And right off the bat we hit a potentially devastating plot hole. Kishan changes into a tiger, but remember what happens when he does that? Yeah, anything he's wearing gets poofed into the tiger ether.
So why doesn't his disguise disappear? It's worn like a full-body scarf, so it's actually a piece of clothing. But, even though it's not clear at all in this chapter in order to preserve some sense of mystery, Kishan is wearing a disguise the whole time even though he changes into a tiger and back. I suppose it's possible that his tiger magic doesn't affect the Scarf's magic, but his fairy clothes (which were also magic) disappeared when he turned into a tiger. So this is really dumb!
What this means is that Houck can't come up with a plan that works with the rules she's already established. Rather than go back to the drawing board to come up with something that would actually work, she just assumes her readers won't notice. But I notice.
Anyway, operating under the assumption that Kishan doesn't immediately destroy the disguise he's wearing, we get into another excessively violent action scene that doesn't fit the tone of the book (just like the one when Ren got captured). Kishan roars, which signals Kelsey to enter the compound. So much for being sneaky, I guess. If you look back to Mr. Kadam's pathetic plan, they didn't even get the first part right.
Kelsey's job is to take out the watchtowers and the floodlights. Which kind of defeats the purpose of roaring, since they already know that you're there. But whatever. She pulls out the Golden Fruit and tells it to do something, but she doesn't actually say what it does right away, which is incredibly annoying. Instead of actually telling us what the hell is going on, Kelsey tells us what the M in M-ATV stands for. Basically, they're mine-resistant, which makes them difficult to take out. Kelsey also notes the location of some Baiga grass huts, and resolves to avoid hitting those so that she doesn't take out innocent bystanders.
She's supposed to go for the generator that powers the lights, but doesn't know where it is, so she just takes the lights out individually. It's incredibly easy, since one zap with her lightning power destroys them right away. This is immediately noticed (of course), so someone gets into one of the armored cars. Kelsey reveals that she filled the gas tank with sponge cake, so it doesn't start, but the headlights are still on. So Kelsey zaps the car and blows it up.
My lightning hit the car with a thunderous boom that shot the ATV thirty feet in the air. It exploded in a fiery ball and slammed down on top another one, landing with a screeching of twisting metal.
Holy shit! Also, weren't those grass huts close by? Guess Kelsey forgot about those.
She blows up the other ATV, though. Since this plan is the opposite of subtle, people are looking for Kelsey.
I let loose a few golden arrows and heard a grunt and a thud as a body hit the ground.
Kelsey just confirmed killed someone, and it's given less fanfare than the fact that Kelsey put her fairy clothes outside of her window. I literally can't make this up.
She hears some darts hit the bushes around her, and guesses that they're supposed to take her alive. Uh, why? Lokesh is trying to get the Amulet, right? Why does that require them being alive during all this?
Kelsey blows up one of the watchtowers, which "explode[s] in a giant fiery bomb that [lights] up the area." I thought she said she wasn't trying to kill anyone!
While she's busy murdering people (literally phrased as "[taking] them out" because Kelsey is a stone-cold murderer now, I guess), Kelsey sees Mr. Kadam in his disguise rallying the Baiga people for aid. We don't get to hear what his disguise is for two chapters, so this is incredibly confusing. Kelsey plants the gada where he'll be able to find it and moves on to the next step of the plan.
She zaps a satellite with a lightning arrow. I think she means a satellite dish, because she's not hitting something in space. The men on the second tower start firing darts at her, but they miss. So she shoots the tower with a lightning arrow, and since it's really close the resulting explosion throws her into the air with enough force to cause the back of her head to start bleeding when she lands on the ground.
Despite the fact that she should be concussed, she's able to grapple with one of the guards on the ground. She punches him in the stomach and stands up. Wouldn't he be wearing something like body armor if he's a guard? I guess not.
Kelsey jumps up on his back to put him in a strangle hold (instead of, you know, anything that would make sense in a fight), but he turns around and slams her on a rock, so she lets go. The guard literally grins at her and stretches his arms out to strangle her, which again seems like not a great move when you could literally punch her in the head until she's unconscious, but whatever. Kelsey shoots him in the chest with a lightning bolt. He flies back and hits the tower and falls to the ground with his head drooping. I think Kelsey just murdered someone on-screen.
So Kelsey just runs through the camp trying to find Ren. Again, I thought the point was to be subtle, what with taking out the watchtowers and spotlights? Guess not, since Kelsey just zaps people left and right while dodging darts.
When I approached, they spoke several words in a different language. I nodded briefly, and one of them used his key to let me in.
Again, this only makes sense if you've already read the explanation that we get later on. We have no idea who she's disguised as, so we can only assume it's one of the soldiers or Baiga tribespeople. She's also incredibly lucky that nodding was the correct answer to whatever question they asked her.
Unfortunately, the door shut behind me and locked itself automatically. I ignored the problem, figuring I'd just zap my way out later.
Which begs the question: why didn't they just blast their way in? Kelsey's lightning powers are extremely overpowered. If she's not even worried about being stuck, this kind of makes the whole subterfuge plan pointless, doesn't it? They don't even have to depend on the plan to give Lokesh a fake amulet, since they could have just...made one? Without all this song and dance?
While she's sneaking through the hallways, she runs into the guy she's impersonating, so she zaps him too. Totally exciting, and not at all a boring thing to happen.
Fanindra lights up the halls for Kelsey to see, and she hears Lokesh and Kishan (still mysteriously disguised) arguing in the next room. Horrifyingly, there's a literal pile of bodies that Kishan made getting into Lokesh's office. It doesn't explicitly say that they're dead, but since they're literally piled up I don't think it's that far of a stretch.
Kelsey enters the office, and instead of focusing on Lokesh and Kishan like a normal person, we're treated to a detailed description of the room they're in. I'll skip it, unless you're invested in hearing about the carpeting (which, yes, is described).
Weirdly, there are glass cases with different eras of weaponry in them. Why would these be here? It doesn't seem like this is a permanent base that Lokesh has been using--it literally only exists because Lokesh needs the Baiga to keep Ren there. Is there a reason Lokesh carted out what appears to be an entire museum into the middle of the jungle? Without anyone noticing?
Kishan was playing his part well.
Again, this means absolutely nothing to anyone who hasn't already read ahead.
Kelsey then describes Lokesh's outfit in detail for Reasons. She specifically points out that he's wearing a bunch of rings, but unless I'm forgetting something major, there's no actual significance to the number of rings he's wearing. If I had to guess, they might have something to do with his magic, but that might just be because I'm used to reading about Harry's kinetic rings in the Dresden Files series.
"I can rip you apart with a mere word, but I enjoy watching people suffer. [. . .]"
They say Ulfric Stormcloak murdered the high king with his voice...shouted him apart...
Lokesh compliments Kishan for getting past his elite trained guards. He also offers Disguised!Kishan a position working for him, which Kishan of course refuses. Then he flips through the air and roundhouse kicks Lokesh in the face. This is not physically possible. I actually have no idea what this is even supposed to look like. He's doing a flip and kicking him while he's in the air? Is he throwing a tornado kick, and Kelsey/Houck just don't know what that's called? Also, kicks to the head/face are just not practical in an actual fight.
Lokesh is bleeding from the mouth, and Kelsey gets grossed out because he seems to like it. So he's a masochist because he's evil? What?
Lokesh tells Disguised!Kishan to hand over his piece of the Matt Damon amulet because Lokesh has control of the "other three." Hey, there are five pieces of the Amulet! You're forgetting about one, Lokesh. Lokesh then says that if he hands it over, he'll give them Ren and let them have a head start while he hunts them.
Lokesh isn't doing a very good job of convincing them to give him what he wants.
Kishan and Lokesh throw some lame banter back and forth, and Kishan eventually goads Lokesh into attacking him by calling him "Old Man," which is some elementary-school-level backtalk.
Electricity sparkled between [Lokesh's] fingers.
Lokesh began muttering enchantments, opened his palms, and lifted his arms. Loose materials in the room rose in the air and began swirling in a whirlwind, moving faster and faster.
He's an airbender!
Kishan gets hit by a rogue pair of scissors and cuts his forehead open, but he starts healing right away, because always remember that putting your characters in danger is too exciting.
Lokesh yells at Kishan to give him the amulet again, and in response Kishan picks up a few of the larger items flying around the room and crushes them.
Wait, what? What is that supposed to do? This is also a ridiculous image.
He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. The ground started shaking.
Oh, great, he's an earthbender too.
Evil dripped off him in waves. It blackened everything around him. His darkness choked me. Even though he wasn't aware of me yet, I felt like black, misty fingers were making their way toward me, seeking to strangle the life from my body.
I've mentioned a few times that Kelsey likes to say the exact same thing several times in a row in slightly different ways. Here's another example of this--any one of these would have been fine on their own. But they're just stuck right on top of each other, and it comes across as overdone, overdramatic, and just sounds really stupid.
Kelsey lobs a lightning bolt at him, which misses completely but hits the glass display case of weapons. Broken glass and random weapons get caught up in the whirlwind and further cut Kishan up. Good going, there. A large piece of glass stabs Kishan and he pulls it out.
Blood streamed down and joined the spinning miasma of the whirlwind.
Yeah, that's not the right word.
Kelsey hears a loud banging noise from outside, and knows that it's Mr. Kadam with the gada.
Kelsey shoots an arrow at Lokesh, but he turns at the last second and it hits him in the shoulder. He just now realizes that Kelsey is in the room with him, and the airbending/earthbending dies down. A safe drops right down on Kishan's foot, breaking it. He deserves it based on how much I hate him.
Lokesh starts shouting at Kelsey in a language she doesn't understand, and starts chanting again. He pulls the arrow out of his shoulder and it starts flying back towards Kelsey (more airbending I guess, or telekinesis, maybe?) and it stops a couple inches away from her face and drops into her hand. I have no idea why this happens. She's not using her lightning powers, but she's somehow able to use magic to make it stop? What?
Kelsey gets knocked over with more undefined magic, and Kishan throws his chakram (not italicized in the text even though it usually is, because this book was edited by monkeys) at the lights overhead, plunging them into darkness. Kelsey tries to call up some more lightning, but can't, for Reasons. It literally isn't explained why she suddenly isn't able to zap him. Kishan gets ahold of Lokesh and holds his chakram against his throat, and Lokesh says that he can kill "him" (referring to Kelsey) from here. Kishan wimps out of just cutting his throat before he can do any magic, and Lokesh freezes him like he froze Kelsey. Oh, that's the reason why she can't zap him. It really wasn't clear before!
Lokesh monologues for a while, apparently completely forgetting that someone is attacking the room from the outside, even though the gada is forceful enough to make the foundations shake. He literally talks for like an entire page about how weak and feeble they are and how great he is, and how he's going to take the amulet and torture them for a little bit. It also does not remotely sound like anything resembling human speech.
I tuned him out when he started speaking of dismembering Kishan piece by piece. It was nauseating. If I could have vomited, I would have.
Again, saying the exact same thing twice in a row, telling and then showing! Houck, if your character talks about wanting to vomit, you don't also have to describe them as being nauseated! That's what wanting to throw up means! You're making your writing worse by just repeating yourself constantly!
I wished that I could have covered my ears. My poor Ren had been abused by this psychotic fiend for months. My heart broke at the thought.
Whose fault is that, huh? You're the one whose been sightseeing and having tea parties and hanging out in the pool for all those months!!!!!
Lokesh had the conniving persona of Emperor Palpatine mixed with the sadistic cruelty of Hannibal Lecter. He craved power at any price, like Lord Voldemort, and he displayed the pitiless brutality of Ming the Merciless who, like him, had killed his own daughter.
See, my villain is great because he's like all these other good villains rolled together!
Also, stop reminding me of better stories in the middle of your terrible one! Also also, I'm not sure if Palpatine really counts as conniving, unless you count the prequels (which, no). As the Emperor, he's just kind of an evil guy? And I definitely wouldn't call Hannibal Lecter cruel, since in Silence of the Lambs he seems much more cold than cruel. I can't speak about the other movies, though, because I haven't actually seen those.
Kelsey's tortured brain remembers that the Golden Fruit, you know, exists, and wishes for jawbreakers, which destroy everything in the room as a storm of candy appears from thin air.
This book really has an issue with tone. We just read a scene where Kelsey sneaks by a pile of dead bodies, and now they're being saved by candy.
During the scramble to escape, Kishan grabs the amulet around Kishan's neck and breaks the chain. Even though he has a knife to Kishan, and is close enough to cut him badly, he leaves through a hidden door for no reason and gets into a car to drive away. Kelsey knows that she could stop up his engine with the Golden Fruit, but doesn't because she's scared of him and doesn't want to face him again.
Lokesh was too powerful. We wouldn't win.
Except you just did. He's gone, you're all still alive, and you have access to Ren. Kelsey is so stupid.
He was a monster. That was all. Just another thing to fight. But, this monster had a human face. It seemed worse, somehow.
I guess none of the multiple soldiers Kelsey murdered in cold blood count.
While Mr. Kadam and Kishan regroup, Fanindra comes to life and helps them look for Ren. There's yet another hidden door behind a bookcase, and Kelsey blows up the lock with lightning. Kelsey recognizes the room as Lokesh's Torture Dungeon (TM), and there are a lot of scary-looking tools hung up on the wall.
I saw wood, screws, nails, pliers, ice picks, leather straps, an iron muzzle, a modern drill, nail-studded collars, a vice that could be used to crush whatever limb was placed in it, and even a blow torch. I touched the items as I passed by and wept bitterly.
Again, the tone is all over the place. They just beat Lokesh by making a candy storm, and now we're reading about instruments of torture.
There's a scene in Night Watch that handles this kind of thing really well (yeah, I'm using Terry Pratchett as a comparison again, sue me). There's a point where Vimes goes into the Tanty, which was used as a place to torture people for confessions. We don't get an itemized list of every single thing inside, because that's not the most effective way to get the emotion of the scene across. Instead, we see the characters' reactions to what's inside, and it's a genuinely powerful scene. Kelsey's the only one who really reacts, and it's limited to crying.
Well, Kishan does the whole "Don't look at it, it'll upset you" thing, because he's a Strong Manly Man and Kelsey is a Weak Emotional Woman.
There's a cage in the corner of the room, and Ren is inside. He doesn't seem to recognize them at first, and this is honestly a pretty effective part. Well, two paragraphs of it, anyway. He doesn't say a word, and he just stares at Kishan--it really shows how much of an effect Lokesh has had on him. He still shows obvious signs of torture, but he's already starting to heal from that.
What shocked me is that he was so gaunt. Lokesh had been starving him. He was likely dehydrated too. His strong frame was thin, much thinner than I'd imagined he would be. His bright blue eyes were circled with dark hollows. His cheekbones were sharp and pronounced, and his silky dark hair hung lifeless and dank.
Oh no, the worst part is that he isn't Hawt anymore!
Also:
A much better version of the same kind of thing.
Kelsey holds a hand out to Ren, and he punches her in the face, and Kelsey gets knocked unconscious. Well, that was sudden.
That's also how the chapter ends!
Closing Thoughts
Hey, Houck just because you want to preserve some mystery for tension, this does not mean that you can just omit details. It's really hard to tell what's going on in this chapter, and I've read through it a couple of times already. And by the time we get to the chapter where this is actually explained, enough has happened that it's hard to remember what happens in this chapter, so it's not a satisfying explanation.
You know how Scooby Doo cartoons work? Where they come up with a detailed plan for how to capture the monster, but then it goes wrong, and then they still capture it anyway through some wacky hijinks? That's how this should go. It's kind of made fun of because the formula in Scooby Doo was so obvious, but even in dramatic fiction it's still better than being really confused during the climax of the novel.
And yeah, the tone problems of this book are the most obvious here. Houck can't decide if she wants to write something whimsical or something really violent, so she just does both.
Also, Lokesh is kind of lame? Houck's trying to build him up to be this incredible mastermind, but everything he does is really, really dumb. He gives away more information than he gets, and all of his scheming for "power" doesn't really go anywhere. I guess he really likes to torture people though, so that's something.
Anyway, next time, Chapter Twenty-Six: Baiga (Edit: Also, Chapter Twenty-Seven: War Stories)! Kelsey misses the extremely obvious, but that's really not a surprise at this point.
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