I’ve done my share of running up steep hills and crunching up my feet in arch-breaking tango shoes, so I’ve had my dealings with the pain barrier and what’s involved in breaking through it. However, the pain barrier isn’t limited only to athletic pursuits: anyone who counts themselves amongst the bookish set has no doubt experienced the literary pain barrier. George RR Martin’s uber-fat A Song of Ice and Fire series has one (everything up to the point where Bran falls). The Harry Potter series has one (the first chapter or two of The Philosopher’s Stone). A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich has one (the, er, entire book). And Tiger’s Curse certainly has one. Oh, the literary stitches and blisters you’ll endure as you hack through the first hundred pages or so of this book.

Recently orphaned Kelsey Hayes is thankful for her foster family, but is not especially enamoured of their vegan-friendly, organic-obsessed ways. Fortunately there’s respite on the way–in the form of a tiger babysitting job at the local circus. When Kelsey tells her new family that she plans to spend her summer looking after a caged beast, the vegans in question don’t bat an eyelid, but simply send her on her way after a quick pat on the shoulder. Fortunately for Kelsey, who has no experience around animals of any kind, her work at the circus turns out to be less about tiger-sitting and more about reading Shakespeare to said tiger in the evenings. Sonnets are recited, bonds are formed, and then a mysterious chap turns up at the circus spinning tales about tiger curses and wanting to take Kelsey and her pet feline back to India.

Kelsey’s unconscionably neglectful foster parents take about thirty seconds out from their vegan cookie baking to give her a quick “yes, love”, and Kelsey’s on her way to India…in a private jet that’s all about marble bathrooms and Michelin-quality food. Her tiger, Ren, it turns out, is rather more important–and wealthy–than she had anticipated, and it seems that all of that Shakespearean buttering up was for a good cause. Ren is far more than a mere sleepy giant feline: he’s none other than a prince of India transformed into tiger form after a bitter family feud. And it’s up to Kelsey to help transform him back into his bipedal state.

While at a glance this sounds like a rollicking fantasy novel, I have to admit that I truly, deeply struggled with the first hundred or so pages of this book. Houck’s prose is blunt and dull, and there’s little life to be seen in it. The most mundane of daily events are notated in detail, and there’s a good deal of repetition and hard-to-justify goings on. Why don’t Kelsey’s foster parents have any issues with her taking on a summer job at a circus–a summer job that involves working with caged animals, which is surely something that they as (presumably) animal rights activists would object to. Why don’t they so much as ask for a reference or two from Mr Kadan before letting Kelsey set off to India on a whim? (And has she even had her vaccinations?) Even the reasoning given for Ren’s continued state of tigerliness is pained and cumbersome, with awkward excuses given here there and everywhere for why things are one way and not the other. Handwavium is invoked regularly, with Mr Kadan essentially summing up the situation as “the curse was unbreakable until you, the chosen one, came along”.

The dialogue here, too, is a mood killer, with the pages filled with conversations more stilted than a high-walker on six-foot wooden poles. Although the highly formal conversational tone of the adults can be passed off to a degree, Kelsey’s speech patterns are in some dire need of some serious colloquialisms. It’s so problematic, in fact, that I first checked the back of the book to see whether the book is a translation (no), and then to see whether the book was self-published (yes, originally).

Things do pick up upon Kelsey’s arrival in India, however, largely because the setting looms large enough to distract from the awkward puppetry of the main players. The vibrant backdrop and the cultural tidbits Houck feeds us help us discount strained plot points such as the hermit monk who is an incessant spring of epigrams and platitudes, and the Indiana Jones-esque scenes inside a temple (I might have added an extra star had Harrison Ford made an appearance, but alas). While on the surface these scenes should entice and captivate, the prose, pacing and dialogue are so awkwardly rendered that it’s a struggle to feel at all invested in Kelsey’s journey and her efforts to transform Ren back to his human form–particularly when Kelsey’s character becomes so bizarrely changeable that it’s increasingly difficult to identify with her at all. While ambivalence is a necessary element of any sort of romance-oriented novel, there should be some sort of justification for these changes other than a need to progress the plot.

It’s a great concept, and I can see how it could intrigue, but I’m afraid that the poor pacing, the flabby prose, and the awkward dialogue made Tiger’s Curse a no-go in my book.

Rating: (okay)

Purchase Tiger’s Curse from Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Booktopia

With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy

Other books by Colleen Houck: