A Side of Panache

Welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense! Last time, Kelsey and Kishan escaped to India, leaving Ren in the hands of Lokesh to be tortured in order to find Kelsey's whereabouts and the location of the other pieces of the Matt Damon Amulet (which are in the possession of Mr. Kadam and Kelsey).  Instead of immediately trying to figure out where Lokesh is keeping Ren (seriously, they don't even talk about this as an option despite the fact that  Ren just got kidnapped ), Kelsey listens to Mr. Kadam exposit about Ren's parents, and she learns some Kendo for...some reason. That pretty much continues in this chapter.  They talk about the prophecy some more, and Kelsey trains a bit more.  Because that's what I want to read right after an exciting action sequence where one of the major characters was taken by the villain and whose life is in mortal danger.  Training sequences. We also get to hear some actual worldbuilding about how the universe of...

Welcome back to our irregularly scheduled nonsense!  Last time, we got to experience the entire first act of a narrative happen in about ten pages, and witnessed several extremely graphic tiger maulings. And I think Kelsey murdered someone! I was talking with a friend recently about how this just feels so out of place in this story (you can check out his excellent spork of the Iron Druid Chronicles here ).  So I want to explore that a bit before moving on to Chapter 11. From what I can tell, Tiger's Curse and its sequels were intended to be a bit more of an action-oriented paranormal romance.  There are clear influences from Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider ,   what with all the temple scenes and basically everything that happens in Hampi from the first book.  That's honestly one of the reasons why I picked this series up in the first place!  I like books that mix together action and romance (which means I am frequently disappointed, because YA books with ...