Author: Amish Tripathi
Pages: 414
List Price: Rs. 295
Publishing Year: 2011
This book is second in the three book series titled ‘The
Shiva Trilogy’.The books in this trilogy are:
I remember reading the first book in the series - The
Immortals of Meluha (read my review here: http://laghusikarwar.blogspot.com/2010/10/immortals-of-meluha-review.html)
after I read a small excerpt about it on a small HT feature page. Ever since I
finished the first book, I was keenly waiting for the next part in the three
book series to release and to answer the question in some of your minds – yes I
did pre-order the book online and received it well before most others got it.
It isn't often that one comes across a book by written by an
Indian author with a sequel. It is even rarer to see the sequel doing just as
good or even better than its predecessor.
The rarest thing in Indian fiction today is to find one good work of
fiction based on Indian mythology. Amish Tripathi brings all of these together
in one successful package.
This book begins right from where ‘The Immortals of Meluha’
ended and moves on at a brisk pace. The narration is as crisp and clear as its
predecessor. This book, like its predecessor, moves on at a breathless pace;
keeping the reader glued and almost goading him to keep turning the pages.
However, when compared to the first book, this book is not the most compelling
read, but even then I could not stop myself from reading as fast as I can to
find what ‘Shiva’, Sati’ and the ever mysterious ‘Naga’ will be doing next.
The first book had better narration of scenes and scenarios
which would allow people like me to imagine a screenplay in front of my eyes as
I read on. This book does give the opinion that it is being written by a new
author. It is of course unpleasing to read lines/narration with words such as ‘India’
mentioned, but then one can always choose to ignore them and move on with the
overall story building at great speed to keep you engrossed.
As we move on we see the transformation of a man confused of
his destiny in the first book, to a confident self believing individual. True
to the title, the focus of the book gradually shifts towards the purported
‘evil’ ‘Nagas’ and ‘Shivas’ journey to find the elusive truth.
This book has everything from pain to suffering to joy to motherhood to loss to survival to
fatherhood to death to revenge to betrayal to mystery to science to bravery to
astonishment to belief.
Amish has a wonderful yet very simple way of telling the
story. The language is pretty simple and the book is definitely worth reading.
You can read more about the book on the official
website.
You can read one chapter of the book from the official
website here:
To sum up, ‘The Secret of the Nagas’ continues on the
footsteps of its predecessor and makes for a good read. It certainly could have
been better, but this doesnot in anyway undermine this book. It should be
enjoyable to most people irrespective of caste, creed or religion. As always,
you read and decide! My final verdict: 4 on 5.
