The success of Immortals of Meluha, by a first time writer Amish Tripathi, took the world by storm! His unorthodox and never-heard-of description of Shiva as a middle age, barbarian junkie was quite intriguing..! Owing to this outrageous success, riding on the back of great expectations, released the sequel.. "The Secret of the Nagas"
So, the story continues... but, the excitement of reading a sequel is short lived.. The book was very predictable and formulaic.. I am not saying, it is not a good read, but, i was expecting the second book to be better than the first one in some way at least, but quite frankly, it isn't..
How Amish managed to construct a whole sequel, with a such a flimsy basic premise, is beyond me.. And the liberties he took with the plot and the myth is not easy to forgive..The entire book, essentially boils down to one mythological point, the Shiva-Ganesha showdown..! The entire story is an elaborate construct to lead to that which was quite a drag actually and eventually, it was quite disappointing, because, that too never happens, after all the build up throughout the book..! And the biggest eye wash was the name of the book.."The Secret of the Nagas" I was actually waiting for the secret throughout the book and the author finally, reveals the secret in the last line of the last page of the book!
I think the name of the book was absolutely out of context to the main plot that the author maintains.. The Secret is, "there is no secret" like he says in Kung Fu Panda..! And the author gives an impression that the gods of India who are sybolically given different forms are actually mutants/deformed nagas who were defied later.. This was too much for me to digest, even if, we play along and accept his version of the Shiva myth..!
Amish wrote using simple sentences. His characters were interesting and spoke in modern, everyday English, which actually gave them an air of easy credibility rather than sounding jarring. The Immortals of Meluha sought to tell a story that made you interested in finding out what happens next. In The Secret of the Nagas, there’s little suspense and by the end, one feels little curios about the finale.
It seems that while writing The Secret of the Nagas, much of Amish’s attention was upon language. There are obvious and woefully inept attempts at literary flair that make the novel a tiresome read. The book suffers from a rash of exclamation marks and unnecessary italics. Sentences have been sliced to create weak, dangling fragments (“Parashuram charged. Followed by his vicious horde.”). Instead of simply talking, people bellow, scream, whisper and fall silent. They are flabbergasted, they pirouette in the middle of a fight, and use words like “exponentially”, “garagantuan” and “plethora” in their speech. The net result is text that is laboured, trite and awkward.
Amish’s attempts at philosophy are as half-baked as the characters and plot. For example, he suggests thoughts are radio waves that could be communicated by temples, which were actually powerful transmitters (see pages 111 & 112). Unlike Bappiraj, who is clearly an attempt at humour, the temple-transmitter theory is elaborated upon in all seriousness. Now, thanks to Amish, we’re seeing the temples of India as the Facebook for ancient priests.
Glibly written, without much attention to the nuances of mythology or known historical facts, the book still manages to be good light read.. And, please don't go by the cover of the book, for there is no serpentine element in the book..!
So, the story continues... but, the excitement of reading a sequel is short lived.. The book was very predictable and formulaic.. I am not saying, it is not a good read, but, i was expecting the second book to be better than the first one in some way at least, but quite frankly, it isn't..
How Amish managed to construct a whole sequel, with a such a flimsy basic premise, is beyond me.. And the liberties he took with the plot and the myth is not easy to forgive..The entire book, essentially boils down to one mythological point, the Shiva-Ganesha showdown..! The entire story is an elaborate construct to lead to that which was quite a drag actually and eventually, it was quite disappointing, because, that too never happens, after all the build up throughout the book..! And the biggest eye wash was the name of the book.."The Secret of the Nagas" I was actually waiting for the secret throughout the book and the author finally, reveals the secret in the last line of the last page of the book!
I think the name of the book was absolutely out of context to the main plot that the author maintains.. The Secret is, "there is no secret" like he says in Kung Fu Panda..! And the author gives an impression that the gods of India who are sybolically given different forms are actually mutants/deformed nagas who were defied later.. This was too much for me to digest, even if, we play along and accept his version of the Shiva myth..!
It seems that while writing The Secret of the Nagas, much of Amish’s attention was upon language. There are obvious and woefully inept attempts at literary flair that make the novel a tiresome read. The book suffers from a rash of exclamation marks and unnecessary italics. Sentences have been sliced to create weak, dangling fragments (“Parashuram charged. Followed by his vicious horde.”). Instead of simply talking, people bellow, scream, whisper and fall silent. They are flabbergasted, they pirouette in the middle of a fight, and use words like “exponentially”, “garagantuan” and “plethora” in their speech. The net result is text that is laboured, trite and awkward.
Amish’s attempts at philosophy are as half-baked as the characters and plot. For example, he suggests thoughts are radio waves that could be communicated by temples, which were actually powerful transmitters (see pages 111 & 112). Unlike Bappiraj, who is clearly an attempt at humour, the temple-transmitter theory is elaborated upon in all seriousness. Now, thanks to Amish, we’re seeing the temples of India as the Facebook for ancient priests.
Glibly written, without much attention to the nuances of mythology or known historical facts, the book still manages to be good light read.. And, please don't go by the cover of the book, for there is no serpentine element in the book..!
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