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A review by namakurhea
The Oath of the Vayuputras by Amish Tripathi
3.0
Overall I enjoyed reading this trilogy. These were the best-selling books and I'm glad I gave it a chance.
What Amish lacks in creating the characters, he makes up for it in the whole narrative itself. His characters are one dimensional, too good to be true, and almost Mary Sue-ish even! But by the third book, you can see that his genius is not in capturing human complexities, but moral complexities.
He offers his readers a mental framework of understanding good and evil. At first, good and evil are presented as 2 separate entities. Good is here. Evil is there. Then the question evolves: "what is evil?". And it changes yet again by proposing that both are 2 sides of the same coin... and the right question to ask is "At what point does good shifts into evil?". Towards the end of the novel, he proposes that perhaps, it is not about evil being vanquished forever. That it will always be there as long as there is goodness. One can only try to balance both sides.
So yeah, if you're looking for complex characters, this book is not for you. What this trilogy offers is a structure; a proposed way to make sense of good and evil. And for this I give it a 10/10.
What Amish lacks in creating the characters, he makes up for it in the whole narrative itself. His characters are one dimensional, too good to be true, and almost Mary Sue-ish even! But by the third book, you can see that his genius is not in capturing human complexities, but moral complexities.
He offers his readers a mental framework of understanding good and evil. At first, good and evil are presented as 2 separate entities. Good is here. Evil is there. Then the question evolves: "what is evil?". And it changes yet again by proposing that both are 2 sides of the same coin... and the right question to ask is "At what point does good shifts into evil?". Towards the end of the novel, he proposes that perhaps, it is not about evil being vanquished forever. That it will always be there as long as there is goodness. One can only try to balance both sides.
So yeah, if you're looking for complex characters, this book is not for you. What this trilogy offers is a structure; a proposed way to make sense of good and evil. And for this I give it a 10/10.