Skip to main content

Books in '15 | Scion of Ikshvaku

Scion of Ikshvaku Scion of Ikshvaku by Amish Tripathi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

   Having their hopes spurned by Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh and others, the Indian readers turn to Amish. His advantage is the genre in which he writes, it's way different than those of the authors I mentioned. He has an open field and nobody to compete with (none that I know).

    That deer hunting scene reminded me of a similar scene from the movie 'Avatar', apologising to the animal after killing it.

    Dashrath: good man but a bad king. Raavan: bad man but a good king. Nice analogy to start with but it would fail eventually.

    The narrative was hasty at times, the mythological facts were relentlessly bombarded, not in a way people would find convincing.

    The entire Roshini episode should have been left out (especially those gory details). The only purpose it served was to rally Manthara against Ram, which didn't seem a strong enough reason as compared to all other possibilities: one of them being that Manthara was already a confidante of Kaikeyi.

    Something was missing in the book. There was no thrill. I was just skimming through the chapters. So many POVs steal the show away from the protagonist. It should have been restricted to a few people only. There was no hook at the end of chapters to keep things interesting, to make me anticipate about what was coming up. Nothing made me pause and read a sentence twice. However one caught my eye:

    "When the axe entered the forest, the trees said to each other: do not worry, the handle in that axe is one of us."

    Everyone loved the Shiva trilogy, I included. Since there is no manuscript related to Lord Shiva (none that I know about, and even if there is one, it's not so popular) the story sank easily. However, everyone has read Ramayana or seen it on TV. So this time it was much of a perilous task for the author to alter the storyline and the original characters backed by a scientific, rather than a mystical approach, and still make people like it. The author seemed so engrossed in building the mythology (and sometimes trying to link this book with the previous series) that the character of Ram suffered. He didn't come up as a strong main character.

    I'll wait for the next book to find out how Sita got kidnapped, which shouldn't have been left out. And what's the dispute between Vashishtha and Vishwamitra. And how Raavan ended up being the King of Lanka when he was just an army general. A military coup would be the obvious answer, still......

View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whispers and Words #1

*** Finding solace In an air-conditioned space, The city slept While I wandered the streets, Restless, Perfecting the ending Of a sentence. The cool breeze made me forget That it was a summer night. Then, out of nowhere, A cold whisper Sent a shiver down my spine. "You have to choose, my friend. Be a writer or be content." "Why can't I be both?" I asked the emptiness. And the whisper scoffed at me, "You and your consistent pursuit To get the best of both worlds. Buckle up then! You are about to be tested." I stumbled over a rock And found the ending I was looking for. "If a river wants to meet the sea, Twisting and turning, It will somehow find its way Even through the mountains." If a whisper could smile, It did, and said, "We will see." *** I don't have a million readers - not by choice, obviously - just a handful. But they mean to me as much as the millions would do. And one of those readers reminded me that I had taken a lon...
1 comment
Read more

LIFE AND LIES #61 | The Summit Within

Dehradun to Sankri On an early morning, towards the end of March, I was sipping a cup of tea in Dehradun, surrounded by a bunch of strangers loading their backpacks on a traveller which was going to take us to Sankri, the starting point of Kedarkantha Trek. A thought struck me. Somewhere around this place, not so long ago, Ruskin Bond was racking his brains to come up with the name of a fictitious town. Subsequently, he came up with the name: Dehra, having spent his early adolescent days in Dehradun, the place which inspired many of his characters and stories. Ingenious, huh? I am struggling with a similar challenge. Let’s see what I come up with. I finished my tea. And soon we headed on our way. The first view of the mountains came when we were about to reach Mussourie. A smile spread across my face automatically in its unique way, like it happens when you meet an old friend after a long time. I was hoping to spot Cambridge Book Depot on the way, or even Ruskin Bond if I w...
Post a Comment
Read more

LIFE AND LIES #57 | Neil Nitin Mukesh (#2)

"Krishna is a married man but he's always revered along with Radha, his lover. What if... say Rukmani, said to Krishna one day, that she'd rather be Radha?"  Nitin uttered his thought out loud then looked around the room. While the others had stopped long back, Neil was pouring himself another drink. Only he could drink so much on a Sunday night, because unlike the others, his Monday had been declared a Bank holiday. It was Mukesh who was sober enough to reply to his question. "Radha spent her years in sadness longing for Krishna. Rukmani would not want to be in her place." "What if...'' smiled Nitin. He always placed the actual question he wanted to ask as the second question. "One day, after reading my work, my wife says to me that she'd rather be one of the women I write about so passionately." "The women you choose to write about are also inherently sad," Mukesh was quick with a reply. "Ask your wife then, would ...
Post a Comment
Read more