by Colleen Houck
Published: 2011
In this third installment of Houck’s Tiger series, we pick up directly following the close of Tiger’s Quest. Throughout the story, Kelsey, Ren, and Kishan must now work together to travel on a journey meeting with several magical dragons who give them items that the trio need to complete their overall quest. Once again, the writing was good and the story intriguing, but there was just toooooo much Kelsey/love triangle drama for my taste. Overall, a 3/5, because the dragons were awesome. See below for spoiler-filled ranting if you are interested. :-D
So, basically, Ren and Kelsey are trying to make a go of it even though Ren can hardly stand (physically) to be around Kelsey. But then Ren decides that he can’t do it any more, so he tells Kelsey that they are finished and he’s given up trying to remember her, yadda yadda, and she should go date Kishan. And she’s like, “If I date Kishan, you can never have me back!” And he’s like, “I will never want you back! Begone!” (or something like that). So then Kelsey starts dating Kishan but she’s SUPER conflicted and spends most of the book blathering in her mind about whether or not she ought to be dating Kishan and she can’t understand why she can’t love him the same way that she loves Ren because Kishan is a super nice guy blah blah blah blah BLAH.
And of course, then Ren gets his memory back and then he’s all like, “OH MY GOSH I FREAKING LOVE YOU!” and he wants her back and Kelsey is like, “No! For I have promised myself to Kishan now, and I will be a good wife unto him!” And Kishan is like, “HA! Win!”
For me, it’s just boring. It’s very, very obvious that Kelsey and Ren belong together, and that Kishan is going to end up marrying the goddess Durga somehow, so all of this just dragging along griping about how she can’t decide who she should love is INCREDIBLY BORING.
But the dragons are amazing and it’s just really disappointing to me that we can’t have a good fantasy/YA story without creating a love triangle. It’s completely unnecessary. The story would have been just as dramatic if Ren had lost his memory and Kelsey had still stayed faithful to him, even after he cast her away. Writing it that way would have also made the eventual coming together much more satisfying as well. But more on that in the review of the final book…
The Aroma of Books 