Book Review - Tantra By Adi

The first impression of the book gives you a feel of a cheap story book - probably a translation of a Hindi horror thriller "Sahitya". The cover design backs up your thought even more - the ghostly imprint in the cloud, a mysterious female killer overlooking a mediocre town in the night....and the title of the book in Tomato Red colour.....overall this does not look like a book that one would pick up for an interesting literary read....

The "About Author" disappoints me further....the reading of hiding under the cover hardly throws a light about him. The "By Line" of the book is oldest cliché which is unnecessary and dismounting. I was dismayed when the book arrived. Finally I gathered courage to open up the pages.

The storyline of the book didn't impress me much either ... bits and pieces put together it appears a combination of the protagonist “Lisbeth Salander” in  Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson  and vampire hunting concept in  twilight series By Stephenie Meyer !!! It seems the author has a woven a story combining all his undercover fiction reads about which he has so proudly confessed.

The protagonist is an earnest vampire killing female looking for her lover's murderer. Anu is a New Yorker who moves to Delhi in search of the killer but is met by far more devastating and horrifying Indian folklore creatures than vampires to deal with. She discovers new ways to adapt to the ancient scenarios.

 The characters are believable and the story build around them gives credibility to them. The concept of vampirism is well encashed with its new age popularity among fiction lovers and television soap watching (refer Ekta kapoor serials and vampire style movies). The element of humour has also been pinched here and there with American and Indian culture references which lightens the mood of the reader now and then. The tantric concept has also been well explored and merged beautifully.

Though the book is an interesting read for mystery fiction loving readers, the book fails to inspire or elevate in terms of the content or story line or characterization ...everything in the book has been written and said in some or the other part of many regional books maybe even in other languages. The newness of the content is missing even though it has been tightly scripted with very few glitches and slacks here and there but entertaining nevertheless.

If you are looking for a time pass book with a taut storyline and want to engross yourself in masala type thriller....you can pick up this one without much thought. However, much more could be expected from our young emerging Indian authors who somehow are stuck with clichéd love stories (sometimes their own) or slapstick thrillers type. Time has arrived for us to over past these topics and come up with something more suave and likeable and less glossy.

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