Scan barcode
A review by caprico4
Scion of Ikshvaku by Amish Tripathi
3.0
Amish Tripathi’s long awaited second mythological Saga’s first book, “Scion of Iksvaku”, my two cents: While I did enjoy reading it, the narrative was too similar to the Shiva trilogy, an unlikely hero on a quest to realize his destiny via explicit knowledge of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the knowledge of the prophecy making it true. The themes are almost the same, relativity of good and evil, decedent societies, flaws of ideal societies, moral ambiguity, strong female characters, characters who we thought were evil turn out to be good, etc.
The fantasy world-building, though not as extensive and comprehensive as that of Tolkein, George RR Marting or even JK Rowling, is enjoyable and believable. Now that Amish has a hit series under his belt with a strong following, he could have taken more liberties with length of the book with spending equal amount of words on weaving the world and building the characters as he spent on philosophical expositions, which at times sound a wee bit patronizing and outright boring at some places mostly because all of them make the same point. Also it was hard for me to imagine Laksman saying “take a hike” without picturing a 50s New York Italian in a silk suite and olive oil hair, there are a lot of places where the dialogue is just too contemporary for my liking. Some food descriptions would have also been nice.
Despite these nitpicks, it’s a compelling read if you can fast-read through the philosophical lectures, it keeps you turning pages and curious about the fate of the protagonist and his entourage and the end is a nice cliff-hanger, similar to The Immortals of Meluha (which was much more exciting read as it was the first time we were reading about this world). I loved the introduction of Sita, some very well written descriptive narration there. If you have loved the Shiva trilogy (as I have) then getting a copy of this title is a no-brainer.
The fantasy world-building, though not as extensive and comprehensive as that of Tolkein, George RR Marting or even JK Rowling, is enjoyable and believable. Now that Amish has a hit series under his belt with a strong following, he could have taken more liberties with length of the book with spending equal amount of words on weaving the world and building the characters as he spent on philosophical expositions, which at times sound a wee bit patronizing and outright boring at some places mostly because all of them make the same point. Also it was hard for me to imagine Laksman saying “take a hike” without picturing a 50s New York Italian in a silk suite and olive oil hair, there are a lot of places where the dialogue is just too contemporary for my liking. Some food descriptions would have also been nice.
Despite these nitpicks, it’s a compelling read if you can fast-read through the philosophical lectures, it keeps you turning pages and curious about the fate of the protagonist and his entourage and the end is a nice cliff-hanger, similar to The Immortals of Meluha (which was much more exciting read as it was the first time we were reading about this world). I loved the introduction of Sita, some very well written descriptive narration there. If you have loved the Shiva trilogy (as I have) then getting a copy of this title is a no-brainer.