Book Review – Tarakshir – Khayal Patel

Name – Tarakshir

Author – Khayaal Patel

ISBN – 978-9387578500

Links – Buy Tarakshir

Blurb

A small princely state in Rajasthan is the last bastion of resistance against the might of the British Empire. While unrest surrounding the sudden death of the king of Devangarh grows, young prince Rudra Pratap Chauhan prepares to ascend the throne.

But the kingdom is in turmoil. The Devangarh army is outnumbered and the British forces are closing in. To make matters worse, Rudra discovers the king’s death may not have been accidental after all. The strange appearance and disappearance of a mysterious hooded stranger and a series of ritualistic murders in which the bodies have been drained of blood, spread panic across the realm.

As Rudra struggles to manage his new responsibilities and investigate his father’s death, dark secrets will be uncovered that will disrupt life as he knows it.

Review

This book started out good. But as we kept progressing, it just kept ettin worse.

The beginning of the book was pretty good, very good, if I may say. Fast-paced, good story, good writing, everything was going great. good enough to ignore the extreme lack of research that was so very evident. But then, it kept deteriorating slowly, as the book started towards a wannabe ASOIAF path.

Before I list the bad parts of this book, I just have to focus on the point that the story of this novel was pretty awesome. Really really awesome.  While plagiarism seems evident in the novel, I don’t think that is the case. It does start killing off a lot characters very foolishly as a wanna ASOIAF but even then, the writer managed to integrate everything in very skillfully. So in the end, the storyline was pretty great.

The writing of the book was not bad. Not that special, true but not bad. It managed to subtly explain the speed of how things work in different stratas of life and the descriptions of the monsters were pretty detailed although a bit horrifying, but I guess that’s an added bonus when you’re talking about monsters!

Now for the grievances.

One of the biggest distresses of this book for me was the naming. Names like Duryodhana ( which as you know is a very inappropriate name for a good guy), stereotypes like Shamsher, and just sheer stupid names like gainda Sinh and Sher ( for a lion ) just proved that this author did no research and has minimal knowledge of the Hindi language. His lack of research was also evident in many mistakes in the mythology that was supposed to be the main element. There were some plot holes ( disappearing in between as another plot hole )and a few annoying grammar mistakes.

Rating

Writing – 8.5/10

Story – 9/10

Cover – 8/10

Title – 6/10

Research and Namin – 3/10

Total – 7/10