The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien – Book Review

Book Blurb : Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure.

==========================

As an avid enthusiast of the sprawling world of Middle-earth, encompassing not only the beloved Lord of the Rings saga but also its companion works like The Hobbit films and The Rings of Power series, I recently embarked on a journey that had long eluded me: delving into the original literary masterpieces by J.R.R. Tolkien. And let me tell you, the experience was nothing short of transformative.

While I’ve lost count of the times I’ve immersed myself in Peter Jackson’s cinematic renditions, it wasn’t until I cracked open the first volume of Tolkien’s epic that I truly grasped the depth and richness of his creation. From the vivid descriptions of characters and landscapes to the intricate weaving of history and myth, Tolkien’s prose captivated me from the very first page.

It’s no wonder Tolkien is hailed as the ultimate storyteller; his ability to craft entire worlds with nothing but words is a testament to his genius. And while the films provided a visual framework, nothing compares to the immersive experience of exploring Middle-earth through Tolkien’s own words.

If, like me, you’ve been enchanted by the cinematic magic of Middle-earth and have yet to experience the source material, I implore you to dive into Tolkien’s works without delay. Trust me, it’s a journey worth taking, and one that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page.

Rhinoceros – Colin Forbes – Book Review

Book Blurb : Colin Forbes’ perennially popular and energetic team of characters, Tweed, Paula Grey and Bob Newman, are on the trail of five heads of state who are conspiring to cause massive civil unrest throughout the Western world. Dictatorship and martial law will be the only acceptable form of government. Tweed knows the identity of four of the ringleaders – but who is the fifth? The riots are being carefully and strategically orchestrated on the Internet. One man is singlehandedly creating a weapon to destroy the conspiracy, but whose side is he on? Tweed and his team are racing against time, through London, Germany and Denmark…

=======================

Colin Forbes’s “Rhinoceros” is quite an old book and frankly hasn’t aged all that well. To be fair to the author, it is set in the early 2000s and therefore the internet back then was not quite as ubiquitous as it is today, and given that the concept of global communications does form the crux of the story, the whole novel seems quite unbelievable today.

The attention the author has paid to staging the ‘action sequences’ and set pieces would have paid rich dividends if he had spent at least a proportionate amount of time in character building and plot building. Almost all the characters are undercooked, and to add fuel to the fire, there are too many of them. As a reader, at the end of the book, none of the characters stood out for me and neither did the overall plot itself.

To conclude, I repeat my earlier words, this book has aged well and can easily be avoided.

Fall of Giants – Ken Follett – Book Review

Book Blurb : It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, “Fall Of Giants” moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty.

This is an epic of love, hatred, war and revolution. This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.

=======================

This Ken Follett trilogy, The Century Trilogy, has been on my reading list for quite a few years now and it is only now that I managed to get around to reading the first book of the same, Fall of Giants. Suffice to say that the book has been worth the wait and its weight (quite literally given that is 381 pages long). I have always been a fan of historical fiction where the author manages to weave in his/her narrative with real historical events and in this trilogy, Ken Follett has dared to take on multiple events happening all over the world ranging all the way from Russia in the east to America in the west touching upon most of Europe and the UK and Wales thrown in for good measure.

While World War I, as it subsequently came to be called, forms the backdrop for most part of the book, the fact that the author creates multiple characters in different parts of the world, interweaves their lives with each other while remaining true to the historical events of the time, and also managing to create a riveting narrative which prevents readers from putting aside the book for more than a few hours at most, is testimony to the master storyteller that Ken Follett is.

What struck me the most about the book is the fact that the author goes into great details about all the political motivations behind each of the European powers that result in all of them being at loggerheads with each other leading to the war itself. Our history books (at least the ones that I read back in school) just mentioned that the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo caused the first World War. Little did I know that there was so much machinations behind the scenes behind this world event.

I cannot wait to get to the next two books in this trilogy. After all, there are more than a few characters and world events that I can’t wait to get the latest updates about. And if this book is anything to go by it will surely be another lesson in world history while being a page-turner at the same time.

Sea of poppies – Amitav Ghosh – Book Review

Book Blurb: At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of Canton.

---

As the blurb reads, this is a book of naval adventure like no other. A diverse set of individuals, each with their own back stories and unique set of circumstances find themselves on a voyage from Kolkata to Port Louis, Mauritius on the Ibis, and while the voyage itself is only around 1/3rd of the book, the first 2/3rds of the book is used in setting up individual stories of each of these individuals and their journeys and stories of how they end up on the Ibis.

This book and in fact, the entire Ibis trilogy has been on my to-read list ever since I had read “The Glass Palace” by the same author and it took me the better part of a decade to get around to reading this book. And to be honest, the wait was well worth it. While the author is known for his use of impeccable English in penning down the wonderful stories he tells, his usage of the local naval pidgin language in this book whenever relevant characters have to use it is wonderful and adds a lot to readers being able to visualize life on board the Ibis. And the author takes it a step further with his usage of how the British combined the local Indian words and English terms to describe more than quite a few things in colonial India. Some examples … More-Roger (maharaja), Padshaw (Badshah) and so on. These terms add to the fun of the reader trying to interpret what is actually being talked about in the book.

Another thing that I realized when I finished the book is that it seems to deal with pairs of characters rather than individuals themselves. While each of the individual characters are fleshed out quite well, it is the equations between pairs of characters that drive the story forward. Deeti and Kalua, Zachary and Serang Ali, Zachary and Paulette, Putli and Jodu, Neel and Ah Fatt …. the list of pairs go on. The pain that the author has taken with regard to the world building while ensuring that each character has a life of his/her own is what makes this book compelling reading.

I personally cannot wait to get my hands on the second book of this trilogy given that the first one ends with the proverbial cliffhanger.

The Magicians of Mazda – Ashwin Sanghi – Book Review

“The Magicians of Mazda” by Ashwin Sanghi is conspiracy fiction (for lack of a better term to describe the genre) at his best. The author takes up Zarathustra, the Zend Avesta, Parsi history through the ages and deftly combines it with the most unlikeliest of portions of known history. Ashwin Sanghi’s strength lies in the fact that he brings together fact and fiction in a fairly deadly concoction which leaves readers unable to discern between the two. What’s more he also believes in incorporating enough ‘action sequences’ in all the chapters that the book ends up being quite the literal ‘page turner’.

Jim Dastoor, a scientist is on the verge of a breakthrough in his research which has the potential to upend the existing status quo as far as treatment of diseases is concerned and this puts him firmly on the radar of the biggest cartel of pharmaceutical companies and as if that wasn’t enough it also puts him in the crosshairs of various intelligence agencies around the world. What starts off with his wife being abducted by unknown assailants ends up being quite the Indiana Jonesesque adventure all over the Middle East starting off in Iran, Persia moving to Afghanistan and finally ending up in Kashmir.

The history of the Parsis, their religion, their gods, their belief systems, the journeys the earliest of them undertook, their origins even form the crux of the narrative and play an important part in understanding what Jim is working towards and why it is of such significance to multiple stakeholders across the world. The need to correct perceived historical wrongs, the fight-back of the oppressed, the struggles faced by Parsis through the ages, the destruction of the Parsi heritage by successive rulers in the Middle East, all of these are neatly woven into the narrative and as such were an eye-opener to me given that I personally didn’t have too much of an idea about the history of this part of the world.

Just like the rest of his books in the Bharat Series, this one too invariably operates at the intersection of religion, history, science and geopolitics. I have read quite a few of this series and after having finished this one, I am more than inclined to pick them up and read them again, as well as read the ones that I have not yet gotten around to reading.

Read my reviews of the below books in the Bharat Series

Chanakya’s Chant – https://mahabore.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/chanakyas-chant-book-review/
The Krishna Key – https://mahabore.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/the-krishna-key-book-review/