Anfenwick

In theory, Tiger’s Voyage has a huge amount of potential as an adventure story. It’s an epic-sized book which includes a trek across the Indian jungle, a yacht trip half-way around India, and scuba diving around the magical world of some Chinese dragons on a quest for the goddess Durga’s black pearl necklace which is needed to break a curse.

In reality, as the synopsis indicates, all these fantastic possibilities take a back seat to Kelsey, Ren and Kishan’s love life. It goes on and on and on, sometimes descending into misogyny. Clearly a lot of people are getting a huge kick out of reading about it. Not me, but a lot of people.

I still have two complaints which I think are justified.

1.This is the third book in the series and I haven’t read the other two. I don’t expect the author to hold my hand and explain everything, but if Kelsey, the first-person narrator, spent even a fifth as much time thinking about the curse, quest and adventure as she does about her love life, I probably would have caught up. As it is, I still have very little idea what's going on, though I know exactly what went on between her and Kishan in Shangri La (book 2) and between her and Ren in Oregon (book 1).

2.As a story about a love triangle and in the spirit of ‘show don’t tell’ it would help if we didn’t just have Kelsey’s friends’ constant word for the fact that she’s fantastic and the center of the universe. After finishing the book, I tried making a list I called Kelsey’s Impressive Skills and Achievements. I’m not going to post them here because they would be spoilers but there are really only three or four of them anyway. They take up a fraction of the book. I thought she was a bit of a wimp. Then again, Ren's behavior is completely over the edge and no reason is given for that either.