Chapter 19: The Green Dragon's Hunt

Hello, and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!

Last time, Ren threw the biggest hissy fit I've ever seen from a romantic lead because Kelsey told him that she wanted to date Kishan instead. That's pretty much all that happened, but Ren as a character is deeply troubling because he acts like an entitled brat.

Before I move onto this chapter, I want to play a fun game! Houck keeps throwing random useless characters at me, so I'm going to make use of them even if she doesn't.

When Kelsey was going to class at WOU, she went on a date with Artie, who was awful. He "[stands] very close" to her, corners her after class, and simply tells her that they're going on a date. When they're on their date, which Kelsey doesn't want to be on, Artie flaunts the fact that he "date[s] lots of girls," trying to demonstrate his value to Kelsey by making her jealous (I think? Artie is not a very well-realized character). He talks about only himself on their date, showing that he's really self-centered. After their date, Kelsey tries to leave, and Artie physically stops her from getting into her car. When she turns him down, he simply keeps asking her out, failing to get the hint that she's not interested in him.

Now, let's run a comparison on (who else) Ren!

Waaay back in the first book, when she first meets human!Ren, he's extremely touchy, grabbing her waist and standing close enough that Kelsey feels the need to say, "I think I'd feel more comfortable if you moved a little farther away from me while we discuss this." Later on in the first book, Ren tricks her into going on a date with him without giving her a chance to refuse. Ren isn't in most of the second book, so we have to use the third book, where Ren tries (successfully) to make Kelsey jealous by parading Randi and a horde of nameless bikini-clad women in front of Kelsey. Many of their conversations in the third book about why Kelsey should date him instead of Kishan are almost entirely centered on his happiness, and he ignores every single one of Kelsey's comments about how she is choosing to date Kishan, and how this would hurt his brother, showing how self-centered he is. Just in the last chapter, Ren physically held Kelsey against a wall so he could kiss her despite her protests, and forcibly dragged her behind him to meet with the others. Ren spends the better part of the rest of this book and the next constantly harassing Kelsey into dating him instead of Kishan, failing to understand that she says she isn't into him (and while we know she is, he has no way of knowing that).

          

	Artie	Ren
Handsy	✔️	✔️
Tricks Kelsey  into going on a date	✔️	✔️
Parades other women  in front of Kelsey	✔️	✔️
Self-centered	✔️	✔️
Uses physical force  to restrain Kelsey	✔️	✔️
Constantly harasses  Kelsey to go on a date	✔️	✔️
Conventionally  attractive	❌	✔️

Kelsey (and, by extension, the narrative) treats Artie as an irredeemable, one-dimensional Nice Guy TM stereotype. Ren, however, is constantly lauded as a "warrior angel" or a "dark Poseidon," despite the fact that he's done the exact same shitty stuff that Artie gets demonized for. The only difference between what we've seen of Artie's behavior and the similar behaviors exhibited by Ren is that, in Ren's case, the man acting this way is Hot. Basically, acting like Artie can be completely excused (and even become a good thing!) if you're Hot.

Yuck.

Anyway, this time there's another dragon, so this chapter at least has that going for it.

Chapter Nineteen: The Green Dragon's Hunt

I was going to use a picture from The Hobbit movies, but this hit me with so much nostalgia I couldn't resist.

We pick up right where we left off as Kelsey heads to the deck to see the island they've arrived at. It looks like a tropical paradise and there are a lot of animals around. Kishan hears some big cats, but can't tell what they are. Ren identifies them as jaguars, which he heard at the zoo. Neat.

Mr. Kadam questioned, "You're thinking about heading through the jungle, then?"

Here's a pro tip: if your dialogue is a question, you don't have to use "questioned" as a dialogue tag. That's how you get lines like, "'Sorry,' apologized Brom." It's redundant and sounds bad when you can just use "said."

Ren points out where they'll enter the jungle, and Mr. Kadam says that Kelsey can use her powers as a flare if they get into any trouble. Fun fact! I don't think she ends up doing this, so bringing it up here is pointless. Kelsey, Ren, and Kishan take one of the small boats to the island, and as soon as they set foot on the beach they hear a loud telepathic voice ask who they are. Despite the fact that it's a telepathic voice, it makes the trees shake, which makes no sense. They let the voice know that they're looking for Durga's Necklace, and it's just as unhelpful as the others.

"What do you ask of us?" I ventured cautiously?

Oh, nothing . . . much. I just ask for entertainment. You see, I am often very lonely here on my island. Perhaps you could provide some . . . diversion for me.

While that sounds a bit, uh...salacious, it really wants them to play a "game" with it.

Kishan questioned, "Where are you, dragon?"

Oh my God, Houck did it twice.

Fun fact! With all the dialogue that is here (I've skipped over most of it; you're welcome), so far the word "said" has only been used twice in this chapter. Characters have asked (twice), explained, continued, questioned (twice), replied (twice), agreed, demanded, announced, and ventured. That's insane.

Oh, there's also this:

"Right," Kishan agreed as he leapt into the boat and held out his hand for me.

It's almost as good as that example from Eragon above, but not quite.

Just, ugh. I have no idea if I've been missing this problem up until now, or if it's just particularly bad in this chapter.

Anyway, they look around for the dragon, and Ren sees it up in a tree.

The dragon was perfectly camouflaged. Its head was brown and knobby like old driftwood, and its snout was long like a crocodile with pointed teeth.

Why specify that it's a crocodile with pointed teeth when all crocodiles have pointed teeth? That's a completely pointless description. Actually, based on the way this is phrased, it's entirely possible that the dragon's head is shaped like an entire crocodile, which is, uh...creative, to say the least, but would look really stupid. Or, it's possible that Houck is saying that its snout is as long as a crocodile and it has pointed teeth, but she used the wrong word "like." It's not a good sentence, is what I'm saying.

Just like the other dragons, it has antlers.

A brown beard and mane fell away from its head looking like rich cocoa waves of corn silk.

"It looks just like corn silk, in exactly the color that corn silk isn't." Brilliant.

It's green and smaller than the other two dragons, but it's still twice as long as the yacht (so, it's about 200 feet long, I think? I'm too lazy to look up how long megayachts are again). 

The dragon introduces itself as Lvselong. Note: I'm having issues formatting the "u with umlaut" symbol on Blogger, so since this is Chinese pinyin, I'm representing it with a "v" symbol, which is what you do with pinyin anyway. If you want the Chinese characters, those are 绿色龙.

For those who know Chinese, this name is stupid. The name is just "green dragon." Because "lvse" means "green" and "long" means "dragon"! Since Houck ran out of mythological dragon names, since she completely made up the dragon/compass system in this book, and she's not creative enough to just come up with an actual name, the remaining dragons are literally named "Green Dragon," "Gold Dragon," and "White Dragon." It's pretty lame.

It introduces itself as the Dragon of the Earth, which is interesting, because in the Chinese wuxing system, green isn't associated with earth. Green is for wood, while earth is represented by the color yellow. Oops.

Curious, I took a step closer. "I thought you were the dragons of the five oceans."

Well, they aren't, but they are in Houck's story. Looks like even Houck is getting confused, because the dragon explains that each of the five dragons were born in an ocean, they each have their own kingdoms, and he reigns over the land. Kelsey asks who their parents were, and the dragon says that the question is "too bold" and refuses to answer. This is probably because Houck couldn't come up with an answer, since we never actually learn who their parents are, if I remember correctly.

The dragon smacked its lips.

Lips? I thought it had a snout like a crocodile's, and a crocodile doesn't have lips!

Pucker up, babes!

Kishan says that they'll play its game, so it reads Ren and Kishan's thoughts, which is a thing it can do, apparently. It does not read Kelsey's thoughts, so it's probably smart enough to realize that doing so would be pointless.

The dragon laughs and says the game will be very interesting, and Kelsey asks what's so funny. It says that they "both seek the same prize." Kelsey (an idiot) doesn't know what the dragon means, when it's obvious to anyone with a brain cell that it's talking about her. It also does that thing where a female character is seen by her love interests as a prize to be won, which sucks!

The dragon tells Kelsey to come with it, and when Kelsey refuses it says, "Once the game has begun, it must be played to its conclusion."

It, uh, it hasn't started yet, though?

The dragon grabs her with its claws and she struggles, cutting her wrist. It tells her to stop moving or the prize will be damaged.

"Prize? What do you mean?"

UGHHH. Is this fun for people to read? Is it fun for the main character to never have any clue about what's going on?

Ren and Kishan threaten to kill the dragon, which says that it can't be killed. Ren says that they can't be killed either, which seems inaccurate, but I just realized that I don't think they've actually had a conversation about receiving so much damage they can't heal. Yikes.

Ren says that they'll hunt down the dragon, which says that that's what he hoped to hear. It takes off with Kelsey and stays just out of reach of Ren and Kishan, who both try and fail to attack it. It decides to tell them the rules--it turns out the most dangerous game is...man!!!

Well, in this case, it's Ren and Kishan. The dragon says that it'll turn into a human and hunt them in tiger form like he's on a safari. If they can make it to "the castle hedge" (despite the fact that Houck hasn't actually established that there is a castle yet) before he kills or traps them, they can go on to round two. Round two is a maze filled with monsters. Neat.

Once they get to the castle, the white and black nights will have to slay the dragon to rescue the princess.

"I thought you were immortal," Ren said.

Oh, I am, but if you can land what would normally be a killing blow for a dragon without being burned to a crisp, you win.

I thought we just established that dragons are immortal? But the way this is phrased, i.e., "what would normally be a killing blow for a dragon," it sounds like it's saying that not all dragons are immortal, which is directly contradictory.

"And if you win?"

Why, of course, if I win, then I will get the girl.

Every. Male. Character.

What would the dragon even want with Kelsey? She doesn't have anything to offer them that's remotely useful except for the fact that she's 1) attractive and 2) a girl. She's not even a princess, which is the traditional dragon familiar.

The dragon proclaims that the game has begun and forces Ren and Kishan into their tiger forms. Their weapons also disappear, although the dragon says that they'll get them back for the second round. Then it flies away with Kelsey.

Occasionally, it'd reach out a claw and push off from a tree that was too close, leaving deep, jagged claw marks in the trunk. I shivered. It's going to rip Ren and Kishan apart. It'll tear through them like butter.

That's not how the phrase goes! You don't "tear" through butter, so that's another nice mixed metaphor. The phrase should be "It'd go through them like a hot knife through butter."

Kelsey gets a better view of the island and sees that it's about five miles across. The dragon takes her to a second, smaller island with a "tall castle built of grayish seaweed-colored stone." I do not understand the logic behind providing two conflicting color descriptions for the castle. Seaweed isn't "grayish" at all.

Ah yes, gray.

There aren't any doors at the bottom, so we can immediately see that this is a Rapunzel kind of setup. Kelsey even says that it's like Rapunzel, but she doesn't have the long hair. So, uh, why is this German fairy tale (not even mythology! It's a fairy tale!) hanging out in this dimension populated by Chinese dragons?

The dragon lands on the roof of the tower and turns into a human.

White skinned and brown haired, he was handsome but in a dangerous way.

The way this is phrased, it looks like Kelsey considers him "handsome" because of his white skin and brown hair, which is weird. He's wearing an old-fashioned khaki hunting outfit. Kelsey accuses him of making the game unfair since Ren and Kishan don't know that they're on a different island, and the dragon basically says to suck it up.

Also he's a "he" now instead of an "it" now that Kelsey can determine how attractive he is.

"Why do you sound Russian?"

Uh, yeah, why does he have a European accent? This is dumb.

He laughed. "Didn't you know the world's best big-game hunters are Slavic?"

I...what???

Anyway, the dragon says that he's going to pay homage to the great big-game hunters, so he's going to use a gun. Kelsey notices that he seems pretty arrogant in his explanation, so she tries to manipulate him a bit and says that it's very brave of him to hunt as a human without the benefit of his dragon abilities. He says that he'll only hunt as a human to make things more interesting, and to prove to Kelsey that he's Man (Dragon?) enough to win even as a human, he'll add another rule to the game. If he uses any dragon abilities during the hunt, then Ren and Kishan will automatically win.

Additionally, he has a way for Kelsey to watch the hunt from the tower.

"I will allow my special mirror to show you the hunt."

Oh, great. The next section will literally just be Kelsey describing what she's watching on TV.

He leaves, and Kelsey immediately tries to blast the door down or send a flare to Mr. Kadam with her powers.

"Again, my lightning power was useless."

Yeah but why though

With all of her brain power consumed, Kelsey turns on the magical mirror TV to watch what Ren and Kishan are up to.

Here's a list off the top of my head about what she could do instead:

1. Collect anything flammable in the room and take it all up to the roof. Set a signal fire so that Ren and Kishan could see where she is, and also get the attention of Mr. Kadam.

2. Find something reflective and try to bounce sunlight in the direction of the yacht to get Mr. Kadam's attention.

3. Look through every inch of the room and try to find, like, a key or something. Unlikely to turn anything up, but at least you'd be doing something.

4. Do the cliche thing and tie a bunch of sheets/clothes together to scale down the side of the tower. (She doesn't have the Scarf.)

5. Try to break the door down by any other means than her lightning powers.

But, nah. Let's watch TV.

Kelsey hopes that Ren and Kishan will have enough skill to get to the tower. Kishan was a wild tiger for a lot longer, so he has a better chance.

If they could hide well enough during the day, the tigers might have a good chance of hunting the dragon at night when his human vision would be more limited.

This is true, but the tigers aren't hunting the dragon. They're trying to find the castle! I guess Houck forgot what the entire point of the chapter is.

She sees Lvselong looking for tracks to follow. She switches to Ren and Kishan, and sees them disarming tracks with, alarmingly, dozens of dead monkey bodies. Yikes.

Kishan gets stuck in a trap, which is boring. The traps don't add anything because there is absolutely zero consequence to triggering them, since Ren and Kishan heal so quickly. They work their way across the island slowly, avoiding traps when possible.

They moved back to the ground, and that's when they hit the worst of the snares: a Venus flytrap. I knew what it was from studying different types of warfare with Mr. Kadam.

When did this happen, exactly? Because this just sounds like Houck pulling exposition out of her ass when it would be inconvenient for Kelsey not to know what something is.

It's a deep pit with overlapping metal spikes angled inward.

Once caught in the Venus flytrap snare it was almost impossible to get the victim out without killing him.

What follows is a PG-13 rated torture porn scene (?!) for no reason. There's no reason for it to exist other than to describe how much Pain they're in. Ren drags himself out and bleeds a lot, and it takes Ren about an hour to heal partially.

There was no candle or lamp in my room, but food had somehow appeared on the windowsill. I broke off a piece of the bread and sipped from the flagon of water. Saving the apple for later, I bit into the cheese and sank back onto the bed to watch my tigers.

Thanks for keeping me up to date on your apple situation rather than anything interesting or important.

She falls asleep and wakes up to the sound of a gunshot, so she immediately checks on where Lvselong is. There's some blood on a leaf, so she freaks out and checks on the tigers. Kishan got grazed by a bullet.

As the morning passed into the afternoon, I wrung my hands and said, "Please be alright. Please be careful. I'm over here across the water. I'm on another island."

This is the most proactive Kelsey has been since getting trapped. She is so useless.

Weirdly, Ren lifts his head like he can hear her. This is never explained.

The two tigers hunt for some food. This goes on for more more than a page. It's very boring.

I searched for the hunter and found him just waking up near a burned-out fire. He held a cup of liquid in his hands and looked to one side, then the other, and secretly blew some fire into his cup to warm its contents.

This is literally a plot point in The Last Airbender, so that's neat.

Kelsey accuses him of cheating, and the dragon says that he's not using fire to hunt, so it's fine. That ends that discussion, I guess, because Kelsey doesn't even try to argue with him.

Kelsey hears big cats roaring, so she switches to Ren and Kishan and sees them fighting a bunch of jaguars. It goes on for a really long time. It's pretty bland, but not a ton of ridiculously stupid happens, so I'll just skip over most of  it (you're welcome).

The jaguars could still take bites out of them. How would they heal from that?

The exact same way they heal from every other animal fight they get into?

Hey, here's a horrifying hypothetical--what would happen if you bisected Ren right down the middle? Would only one half heal, or would both since it's exactly half?

Anyway, the jaguar fight gives Lvselong enough time to catch up with them. Each of them gets shot as they run away, and they apparently decide to fight the dragon head-on and hide to ambush him.

[Lvselong] stopped and carefully studied the surrounding bushes. A wet drop hit his cheek. He touched it and drew back his finger. It was blood.

His eyes widened, and he looked up but it was too late. [sic]

Wow. I've never seen that in any movie before.

Ren jumps out of the tree and grabs onto him, and Kishan jumps at him too. Lvselong freezes them in place in the air, which is a thing he can do, apparently. Kelsey yells at him for cheating and accuses him of breaking the rules, but the dragon says that it doesn't count because he didn't have his rifle up. Kelsey has apparently forgotten about trying to manipulate him into doing what she wants, because she doesn't even try.

Later that night, she traces Ren's ears with her finger over the mirror and says that it's not supposed to end like this. It goes on for like two paragraphs.

She feels her ~connection~ to him, which is apparently more than just a bad metaphor--she can literally feel his heart beating if she concentrates enough. Uh...what? Ren wakes up and stares straight at her through the mirror, and she sees her hands glowing. She pulls them away from the glass and they stop glowing.

I have read this entire series, and I have absolutely no idea why this is happening. If it's ever explained, it's not explained very well at all.

Ren wakes Kishan up and they start swimming towards Kelsey's island. Neat.

The next morning, the dragon finds their tracks leading into the water and turns back into a dragon. The mirror turns off, and the chapter ends.

Closing Thoughts

This is a pretty plot-heavy chapter, so there's not a ton to complain about. I mean, the "plot" is Kelsey literally watching and describing what's happening on another place on the island, and none of the traps are actually dangerous because they heal almost immediately, but things are still happening.

Kelsey is completely useless. She's locked into a room and, upon seeing that her powers don't work, she immediately gives up and resigns herself to her fate rather than using her brain to come up with an escape plan. She's a terrible protagonist.

Next time, Chapter Twenty: A Princess, a Dragon, and Two Knights! Ren and Kishan vs. the dragon, round two.