A review by tbr_the_unconquered
Age of Shiva by James Lovegrove
2.0
Being a superhero must be a tiring business. Running(or flying or swimming) around in Spandex costumes, combatting physical and mental assaults by super villains and to top it all off living a life as a normal human being in your alter ego would be a test of endurance. Being touted as modern day mythology, the life of a masked (and sometimes unmasked) vigilante is something we all come across in comics and movie interpretations. Personally, I fall into that category of men who have not grown out of the affection with comics even after being termed ‘grown-up’. However, the panels of a comic book are not the first things that told us about super heroes for as long as there has been story tellers there have been superheroes. Let’s look at some examples : Gilgamesh, Heracles, Perseus were all examples of these kind of men. Then again there are the gods of the Hindu mythology who put most of the comic book super heroes to shame. This novel is about such a crossover of Gods into the realms of being the stuff of comic book legend.
Mythology tells us of the story of Vishnu who takes incarnations in the realm of mortals to vanquish evil. The interesting thing about his incarnations is that in a strange way they tend to follow our naturally established order of evolution. In the order of appearance, these are the incarnations :
1.Matsya : The fish. The one that saved the progenitor of the modern man and saved the scriptures of hinduism.
2.Kurma : The turtle and the first amphibian. Believed to have held up the world on its back.
3.Varaha : The boar. Battled a ferocious demon in the depths of the cosmic ocean and lifted the Earth on his tusks to bring it out of the gloom.
4.Narasimha : The man-lion. Leapt out of a pillar to destroy a seemingly invincible demon and is portrayed as the symbol of divine violence.
5.Vamana : The dwarf. Took form to vanquish a demon king in a rather unconventional way.
6.Parashurama : The renowned warrior sage. Master of all weapons and battle methods. Believed to have circled the Earth 21 times to slay all the Kshatriyas (warrior class of men) of the world.
7. Rama : Does not need much by the way of introduction. The man who took birth to kill the super badass demon king Ravana and still continues to be worshipped as an icon of manliness.
8.Balarama / Buddha : Things get slightly murky here for one faction believes that the plough wielding, alcoholic, wrestler brother of Krishna was the 7th incarnation of Vishnu while the other camp believes that Buddha was the 7th incarnation. I would personally prefer to believe the Balarama part.
9.Krishna : The next superstar in the list. Cowherd, lover extraordinaire, politician, diplomat, king maker, strategist, philosopher…you name it, he’s got it !
10.Kalki : This form is yet to take birth according to lore. Arriving at the time of utmost darkness in the world, this mounted warrior will be the bringer of light.
Wouldn’t these guys have made a kickass superhero team ? The Indian version of The Avengers or the Justice League. And this is exactly what happens in this tale for a trio of millionaires bring the ten to life through extensive bio engineering feats and bleeding edge technology. When you bring such a group of men to life, there are bound to be ugly villains arising at all corners of the world and that is just what happens. Our heroes Dasavatara (Dasa – Ten and Avatara – Incarnation) battles them all over the various parts of the western world and so the story goes until they step into an ugly military faceoff.
Interesting concept and rather amusing characters but then here the story starts going downhill. When you have larger than life characters, the plot is bound to be outlandish but the tale here builds up to sheer lack of real thought process. The narration is by a comic artist named Zachary Bramwell who takes over the mantle of Hanuman during the story but his forced casual tone of storytelling started getting on my nerves after a while. From a great initial buildup, it was as if the author did not where to take his characters to and so he puts them bang in the middle of the Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir and with the Hindu tones of the Dasavatara, things go totally awry before you can say bang ! To the credit of the author, there is a lot of pulse quickening action and things move as fast as a video game in the story. However, it lacks a cohesiveness and at places logic. I know that I should not be dissecting this tale for all this for it is nothing beyond a pure thriller.
Worth a onetime read. And I still have no idea why this book is named so for Shiva features in no way in this tale.
Mythology tells us of the story of Vishnu who takes incarnations in the realm of mortals to vanquish evil. The interesting thing about his incarnations is that in a strange way they tend to follow our naturally established order of evolution. In the order of appearance, these are the incarnations :
1.Matsya : The fish. The one that saved the progenitor of the modern man and saved the scriptures of hinduism.
2.Kurma : The turtle and the first amphibian. Believed to have held up the world on its back.
3.Varaha : The boar. Battled a ferocious demon in the depths of the cosmic ocean and lifted the Earth on his tusks to bring it out of the gloom.
4.Narasimha : The man-lion. Leapt out of a pillar to destroy a seemingly invincible demon and is portrayed as the symbol of divine violence.
5.Vamana : The dwarf. Took form to vanquish a demon king in a rather unconventional way.
6.Parashurama : The renowned warrior sage. Master of all weapons and battle methods. Believed to have circled the Earth 21 times to slay all the Kshatriyas (warrior class of men) of the world.
7. Rama : Does not need much by the way of introduction. The man who took birth to kill the super badass demon king Ravana and still continues to be worshipped as an icon of manliness.
8.Balarama / Buddha : Things get slightly murky here for one faction believes that the plough wielding, alcoholic, wrestler brother of Krishna was the 7th incarnation of Vishnu while the other camp believes that Buddha was the 7th incarnation. I would personally prefer to believe the Balarama part.
9.Krishna : The next superstar in the list. Cowherd, lover extraordinaire, politician, diplomat, king maker, strategist, philosopher…you name it, he’s got it !
10.Kalki : This form is yet to take birth according to lore. Arriving at the time of utmost darkness in the world, this mounted warrior will be the bringer of light.
Wouldn’t these guys have made a kickass superhero team ? The Indian version of The Avengers or the Justice League. And this is exactly what happens in this tale for a trio of millionaires bring the ten to life through extensive bio engineering feats and bleeding edge technology. When you bring such a group of men to life, there are bound to be ugly villains arising at all corners of the world and that is just what happens. Our heroes Dasavatara (Dasa – Ten and Avatara – Incarnation) battles them all over the various parts of the western world and so the story goes until they step into an ugly military faceoff.
Interesting concept and rather amusing characters but then here the story starts going downhill. When you have larger than life characters, the plot is bound to be outlandish but the tale here builds up to sheer lack of real thought process. The narration is by a comic artist named Zachary Bramwell who takes over the mantle of Hanuman during the story but his forced casual tone of storytelling started getting on my nerves after a while. From a great initial buildup, it was as if the author did not where to take his characters to and so he puts them bang in the middle of the Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir and with the Hindu tones of the Dasavatara, things go totally awry before you can say bang ! To the credit of the author, there is a lot of pulse quickening action and things move as fast as a video game in the story. However, it lacks a cohesiveness and at places logic. I know that I should not be dissecting this tale for all this for it is nothing beyond a pure thriller.
Worth a onetime read. And I still have no idea why this book is named so for Shiva features in no way in this tale.