Shiva Trilogy

I have been hearing about this Trilogy by Amish Tripathi. When I recently read “Thundergod” a fiction about Lord Indra, my readers recommended I read Shiva Trilogy by Amish. So I did that for last two weeks.

I started with the first book “The immortals of Meluha” which turned out to be a great piece of fiction painted against well known Indian Mythological characters and an imaginary map of India. Three kingdom – Sun Dynasty, Moon Dynasty and Nagas are in constant tension. Against this backdrop comes their saviour, a tribal man with a blue throat from Tibet who was known in their legend as Neelakanth. The journey that takes him through the three kingdoms, where he ultimately identifies the evil is the plot of trilogy.

The characters in the first book are vivid, the author manages to bring to life in front of our eyes the people and the kingdoms. I just couldn’t keep the first book down once I started reading. In the second book “The secret of Nagas” the plot starts to get convoluted and the pivot of the story getting lost. And in the last book “The Oath of Vayuputras” the story lost all its beauty, reading the 3rd book became an ordeal. I couldn’t understand why the story has to leave India, go to Persia, then back into India and then into Nuclear warfare. The third book felt like the author had decided to say all that he has predetermined and kind of force-fitted into an otherwise free flowing script.

The author’s belief on fate, intelligence, democracy, aristocracy,  modern science seems to be all mixed up. He talks of science in the same breath as myths and legends. The trilogy proposes a simplistic view of good and evil. The first book paints a big picture of evil present in the other two kingdoms, then suddenly everyone turns out to be good, which is where the book starts losing its momentum.

All said, a fantastic work by a first time author which is sure to bring interest on Indian Mythology to the present generation.