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review, Thriller |
Don’t you hate it when life creeps up on you at unexpected times? That is exactly what happened to me and Blood in the Paradise
. I had received from The Tales Pensieve a few months ago for a review. I read it almost immediately. But then life happened. Shifting my residence and then moving out of the country took its toll on me, and I missed reviewing it. So here I am to review a book that I read months ago, would my memory be able to do justice for this whodunnit?
Book Name: Blood in the Paradise – A tale of an impossible murder
Author: Madhav Mahidhar
Genre: Fiction – Thriller
Characters: Madhumitha and Vikas Nandan, DCP Vishwaroop, Anupriya Gautam
Settings: India
Disclaimer: Thanks to the Author and The Tales Pensieve for the free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
The story begins with a suicidal note and the eventual suicide attempt of Madhumita Nandan and her husband Vikas calls up for help once he gets to the place. But before the police could reach the area, Vikas is murdered. On a surprising turn of events, Madhu bounces back while Vikas does not. The case is handed to DCP Vishwaroop, a perfect combination of intelligence, honesty, and diligence.
He is suspicious about Madhu’s involvement in her husband’s death, and her persistent marital woes don’t help her either. Her friend Anupriya, an activist herself comes to her rescue by bringing in media’s attention and involving a competent lawyer. To add to the DCP’s problems, he has not found the weapon involved yet. So is it a murder at all? Or is there a simple explanation to all of these and it was indeed just an accident. Read Blood in the Paradise to find out more.
Blood in the Paradise is steady paced, and the author’s efforts to do the ground work on the plot shows well. The characters are etched to perfection, and no one acts out of character which made the plot grounded. The part about Madhu and Vikas’ marital troubles sticks to the reality of the life in an Indian society and is commendable.
Even though guessing the murderer was anyone’s game, the writing kept me through the end. Except for the dialogues that kept interrupting the flow of the story and could have done very well without. Some things were bit of Bollywood-ey, while I agree that there is an audience who might like it, it just didn’t appeal to me.
Blood in the Paradise could have used another round of editing to weed off those typos and errors and could have ended 15 pages earlier, with the right editing effort. The author has made it a point to talk about the meaning of feminism and the impact of media and activists’ intrusion into the legal system. If you like to solve an impossible murder, then you should pick Blood in the Paradise this weekend.
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Drama, review |
I am known to be avoiding the fantasy genre for a while, these days. The number of blood sucking vampires and werewolves and dragons have gone too many on my ARCs shelves that I even have lost count of them. So when I was approached for the review of Harappa – Curse of the Blood River, I took a moment to think over. While I would love to read historical fiction, the blurb explained that the story would be borderline the fantasy, hence the hesitation. But curiosity won over me. Read on to know how it turned out.
Book Name: Harappa – Curse of the Blood River
Author: Vineet Bajpai
Genre: Fiction – Historical, drama
Characters: Vidyut, Damini, Vivasvan Shashtri, Naina, Bala
Disclaimer: This Book Review is a part of The Readers Cosmos Book Review Program and Book Promotions. To know more log on to The Readers Cosmos.
Meet Vidyut, a young and powerful businessman who is a jack of all trades, who lives with the love of his life Damini. His perfect life is disturbed by a call from his great grandfather from Varanasi, who seems to be in his death bed. Vidyut leaves to a place which holds several secrets not only concerning his life but the entire human race. Unbeknownst to him, several events that were set off all over the world once he starts to his journey from Delhi.
We are told of the happenings in the Harappan civilization of the ancient past -the past that sees the effects of treachery and blood thirst. What is the relationship between modern day Vidyut and the fallen civilization? Only one man tell it all, his great grandfather who is running out of time and the strong and treacherous enemies are at bay. Read Harappa – Curse of the Blood River to find out more.
First of the premise is intriguing making us wonder if our school history text books were in fact, nothing but an elaborate ruse? Following the pattern laid by the likes of Dan Brown, Ashwin Sanghi and the new comer Luke Gracias, the story alternates between the past and present and the author does that with quite the flair.
I had known the book was the first of the series of four books, but I had not realized until I came to it, that it ends in a cliffhanger and it doesn’t answer many of the questions. This might be disconcerting to some of the readers, including me. There were few scenes in the middle that were clichéd and could have been very well done without.
The rich history and the strong story line related to Harappan civilization is well executed. The author makes us ponder where does the line between mythology and history lie. The dialogues were kinda off-putting especially the modern day’s, where no one uses that many slangs (yaa, yaar etc) in real life. And the writing gets kinda repetitive after a while. Yet, none of these reduce the pace set by the author until the very last.
The introduction kinda gave away the entire plot, at least the plot of the first book. And then there is a prologue which piqued the interest but again once we have read the introduction there is very little suspense to keep up. There are a few misgivings like how long does it take for a person to narrate a simple tale. But if we do overlook such logical reasoning, I would not be surprised if the Harappa – Curse of the Blood River ends up to be a best seller.
![Book Review: Blood in the Paradise]()
review, Thriller |
While the entire blogger fraternity is going crazy with their resolutions to read more and blog more, it has been almost a month since I have read anything, much longer since I reviewed.
Though it is unlike me to not pick a book for such a long time, especially when I have quite a backlog with the review copies, it has been somehow difficult to do just that. One can easily blame it to the fact that I have moved country just now, but the truth is I was on a reading slump. Or still I am. How does one simply get out of a reading slump?
Search inspiration from other readers? Check.
Sweet talk yourself into getting more books? Check.
Take a break? Check and (WARNING) that doesn’t work at all.
Well, an almost threatening message from the author / friend might just as well work, at least in my case it did.
About the book
Book Name: India Shining, the Novel
Author: Alcatraz Dey
Genre: Fiction Thriller
Settings: India
Disclaimer: Thanks to the author for the free copy of the book. I also had the opportunity to beta read this fast paced thriller.
The Plot
The story starts with the suicidal note of Shantanu, a lovesick 31 year old and his nostalgic thoughts about the winter morning when he fell in love with Nishi about 17 years ago, who has a frightening profession being a mercenary, who works for an organization against corruption called FUCK (you heard it right!).
Meanwhile Nishi is stuck at the prison for 10 years for a murder she didn’t commit and loathing Shantanu for he was the reason for all her troubles latest of which is being taken out on parole (I assume) for seeing her dying husband. They unravel that Nishi’s father was a scientist on a top secret a mission before he disappeared and the key to it laid somewhere amidst Nishi, her trident tattoo and her very few memories related to her dad.
Throw in to the pile are attempts to save Delhi, a scientist admitted in an mental asylum, depletion of ozone layer and of course corrupt bureaucrats at many levels and you get a blockbuster novel in your hand.
My thoughts
The pace of the story and writing is racy enough to hold the attention of the reader, despite the length of the novel and complex twists in the story. The plot never sags at any point and keeps the grip on the reader until the very last moment. The beginning of the novel intrigued, especially the Kolkatta stadium débâcle and Shantanu trying to kill himself too soon into the story.
The novel as such is event based and all the characters are as equally treated as the main protagonists. In fact I ended up falling in love with a non protagonist, John. For example, John’s support to different players at different times was much more likeable because his plight and decisions were understandable even though there were not too many explicit dialogues about them. That is what is missing with the protagonists.
The story alternates between several time-lines and causes confusion at many places, especially at the beginning. A mention of the time period at the beginning of the chapters might have helped. There are too many characters and too many story lines that ran parallel but without a time-line it is difficult to be sure if they were indeed running parallel.
There are places where the novel might seem to be single dimensional in terms of character building. There are a few emotions and traits of the characters being repeated too often (she was strong, she was the rock of Gibraltar, Shantanu is staring at Nishi’s eyes) but their other attributes are ignored (relevant ones).
It is quite hard to believe that the guy who kills for a profession could or would kill himself for a girl whose existence he is not sure about. His reason to die is not very strong, for lack of show of his remorse towards his profession or despair on losing his girl or mixture of both. He is portrayed to be a veteran at his job but he behaves like a headless chicken when William is killed.
Despite there being so many characters, and a twist at every chapter end (sometimes, too many for my taste) to lead on the reader, the fact that the whole story stayed put together in one piece speaks loud about the clarity of the theme in the author’s mind.
He knows to keep the suspense till the end, despite a very filmy finish and epilogue, which might work for the target audience. There are very few loopholes in the story, and those maybe only due to the aforementioned time line confusion.
Bottom line
It is not an easy read but surely will reach the targeted YA and movie lovers alike. You must catch it if you are into racy action packed thrillers.
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review, Thriller |
“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
If my last book had taken me to Afghanistan, the war-torn country with rich culture and diversity, Optimal Exposure
took me to Israel and then back to India with a classic detective/whodunnit story. Most of us heard about Kumbh Mela and the related news about its participants who run into millions. What happens when an elderly photographer is found dead amidst the crowd? What and who would help him out, if at all? Sounds intriguing? Then Optimal Exposure by Dan Rogel is the book for you.
Book Name: Optimal Exposure
Author: Dan Rogel
Characters: Boaz and Ephraim Lavie, Superintendent Shemesh, Inspector Hagit Butler
Setting: Israel, India
Disclaimer: Thanks to the B00k R3vi3ws for the free copy of the book.
The story begins with Boaz Lavie completing his seven day mourning period following the death of his father Ephraim, a photographer who was brought dead from India where he had been on a photography trip. The case attracts the attention of Superintendent Shemesh and Inspector Hagit Butler, as they realize this was the second time a fellow photographer was carried home dead by the same group following such an expedition and they start to dig into the cases, inspired by Boaz’s interest. In both cases the local authorities, namely Indians and Brazilians, had given a clean chit to the deaths and cause were as heart attack declared by their doctors.
Boaz was quite close to his father and he cannot fathom the circumstances leading to his death, until he starts digging into his computer and his universe of photography. He understands the financial benefit that people could gain out of these photography contests and that his father had dealt with a few minor rifts with the the contest results, just before he left to the expedition to Kumbmela, India. Who, why and how they murdered the photographers forms the part the rest of the story.
It had been so long that I read about Jews and their customs and this story set in Israel was a welcome change. And added to that the party visits India, my place of birth making it doubly pleasurable to read and understand how things work with authorities here. Kudos to the author for keeping the photographic jargon pretty simple to layman, yet the descriptive language and the writing style was a little hard to get used to. The murders and their modi operandi were interesting, and I could not guess the murderers until the very end. I found the narration part of Hagit very annoying and her desire to please her partner Shemesh seemed too filmy for my taste. The last chapter which was supposed to be the one that solves the ‘whodunnit’ was too long and one could even get away reading it instead of the entire novel.
Looking for a book that takes you across countries on a murder chase? Go grab Optimal Exposure by Dan Rogel.
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Drama, review |
If you have been in the webs of the internet for a while, then you should be struck by the writer bug like many of us have. There you go I said what I desperately try not to get attached to ‘writer’ tag. I write (type) a wee bit, and surely not what I could tag on as a writer. But then there a few among us, who know to do it and continue doing it. Give it up to Namrata or Privy Trifles, who has been doing this for a long time now and has a collection or two of short stories published to her name, newest being Metro Diaries – 2.
You know what is better than a short story? A collection of short stories. Now I have never had an anthology reviewed earlier, though I like reading short stories. So when I received the book for review, I was hesitant to write my review even after a long while after I finished it. And now that DDS is holding her knives above my head here goes my review. Apologies DDS!
The anthology has 20 tales taken from our daily life, of commoners that we come across in our routine days woven with such intricate emotions that you would complete reading the whole book in a night’s time. There is no set theme for the stories and it has stories from all walks of life. For instance, Magpie of Memories narrates the woeful tale of a trans-gender while it leaves you smiling at the consequences of small misunderstandings with the Stain of Love.
The characters are from the extremes and would leave you wondering if they were aimed to be so. While Charlattan talking about a wife’s stand on her husband’s lecherous way, you have The Cursed Existence to talk about the disparity against females and honour killing.
I loved the way the way the stories are arranged that takes you through mixed emotions back and forth. I liked the tone in which all the stories were set, though there were places better editing could have helped. Grab the book if you want to have a quick read.
Author: Madhav Mahidhar
