Review: Hexagon by Ishaan Lalit

Hexagon is the second book by Ishaan Lalit, after TheBracelet. I will give you a gist of the story with minimal spoilers before the review.

Hexagon is primarily led by Rahul Oberoi who is an art thief along with this his girl friend Ria. Things go for a toss when they are caught in one of their chases and are lead to a secret underground facility (and yes it is an Indian government facility; Thank you, Ishaan), where to their wonder his grandfather worked before his death. The reason for this facility being so secret is the existence of an ancient hexagonal device which acts as nexus or gateway of sorts to access the six different parallel earths. From one of these earths comes the race known as Moths. They are on a path of world domination and know how to use the Hexagon to access other earths to conquer them.  Now it depends on how they brace themselves with such information and what they do about it. Do they use the Hexagon to access the other earths as well, and if they do will they find friendly races or more enemies?

The book is fast paced and surprisingly you do not get the feeling of jumping from one act to another but instead it seems like a natural progression only at a fast pace. It is like running up a flight of stairs and noticing the different doors and apartments on each floor. I like to see the book in two different aspects. The first being the story of the characters and how they act and change as you read on. The second is the sci-fi setting of the novel with the Hexagonal device, parallel earths, and the different races on said earths. Ishaan deserves credit for a job well done here. He doesn’t get carried away in either of the aspects. You won’t find him describing the universe his work is set in and not delve on the characters. He manages to strike a balance with his visual descriptions.

As mentioned, this is his second book and it is an added pleasure to read it after the first. I personally believe that the core structure of the two books is similar. A character gets involved in a situation; the existence of which is a secret, and how he in spite of being the newbie to it has to take initiative to see it through. This book has the weaves of story lines more intricate and how the writer is maturing his skills with more writing. The book however has its shortfalls. I found that the editing needs more work as there is one chapter that is repeated after its original apart from a few very minor slips.

The second issue I have is more of a personal opinion and should not be considered demerit at all. The book is too short for my liking. It is not short in general, as it has about more than 50K words, and has 232 pages. I personally enjoyed the style of writing in this book with its descriptions, characterizations and sci-fi elements. At the end of the book I was left with a feeling of wanting more. Make no mistake that writing such a piece of work must have been a very consuming task for him, and the book does end with a possibility of a sequel. I do hope that we get to read it. 

Review: The Krishna Key

‘The Krishna Key’ is the third book written by Ashwin Sanghi, after having written The Rozabal Line and Chanakya’s Chant. Without giving out any detailed spoilers, I will give you a gist of the story as part of the review.

The driving character of the books is Ravi Saini. He is a mythology & history teacher who is on the run to clear his name in the murder of his childhood friend Anil Varshney. Before his death, Varshney found an object that with his theory can change how we know history. However before he can do much about he murdered by a man who calls himself Taarak Vakil, whose name when you play with spells out ‘Kalki Avatar’. However he is not the bad guy like You-Know-Who but a man who believes himself to be tenth avatar of Vishnu (Kalki Avatar) and must vanquish the wrong and bring forth the light.  Now Saini must prove himself innocent while not getting in the hands of Taarak who is trying to kill him as well and save himself from the cunning and competent inspector in charge of hunting him.

The book is in three layers. Layer one is the main story of Saini and Vakil and how their individual quests progress and sometimes merge like the branches of a river. Layer two is the back stories/ flashbacks of the characters which serve to add flavour and show their individual motivation. Layer three is Krishna telling his own story to the reader. Of the three layers I personally liked the second layer the most as it provides the background of the canvas against which the main story is being drawn on while Krishna’s words serve as the frame for the painting.

The book has been told by some be India’s answer to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Now I don’t know how to react to this statement, but yes the book is indeed of the same genre. A mixing of the past and the present, murder and mystery, facts and wishful thinking and some conspiracy theories. The plot has its fair share of surprises and predictable moments. I believe each reader will react differently to the book depending on the number of plot twists they are able to predict or be fascinated by.

I have not read his first book, but have read Chanakya’s Chant with much delight multiple times. Chanakya’s Chant also had two layers, one of the fictional retelling of Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya’s lives and the second of the lives Chandini and Gangasagar in the present. The two layers were in perfect balance with one leading into the other stream lessly. Just like a well made lasagna or Danish pastry. The Krishna Key however lacks such finesse and at times the plot seems to be pushed ahead instead of progressing. I once wondered that this book had been written before and Chanakya’s Chant after assuming that as the author matured his way of balancing the layers did as well. It seems however Sanghi is a victim of the success of his previous work that I and others have compared this book to those before.

The book is however still a good read and I must appreciate the amount of effort and time put in by the author in the research required to write such a book.

This review is part of the Book Review Program by BlogAdda. Wherein members of the program can receive free books as long as they commit to post a review of it. Due to my own lack of energy owing to some projects I hadn’t blogged for quite some time. I knew that a review would be required when I got in to the program and my lack of energy is no excuse for the review to come so late that BlogAdda had to follow up on me. My sincerest apologies for that. 

Reading

There are advantages of having friends who share your passion for reading and among other things you never run out of good great things to read. Today one such friend Ritu shared an article on facebook (which she was kind enough to tag me in).  It is “Which kind of book reader are you?” by the Atlantic Wire. The article goes on to describe different types of readers and their reading habits. Are you the one who will purchase books and then end up with a backlog or are the one who has them only to display them? And so on...  What about me, do you ask? (Well you are reading this, and should you continue to read this entry I gather you are interested in it.)

I have picked up books for various reasons. Quite a few of these books are in my cupboard because Landmark (the book store) is exceedingly close to my apartment. So every few days I find myself strolling in to the store because I ran out of stationery supplies, or need something for work, or am drawn to the large number of books there.  If there is a sale I pick up some of the books I have been wanting to read and since there’s a neat deal I stock them in my cupboard. Sometimes it is because I visit the store out of boredom or habit, and flipping through the books I find something that amuses or touches me. Then of course there are the recommendations from friends.

This has lead to a huge backlog of reading for me. Books that have been read for only a few pages before they were put on the table and then inside the dark forbidding chambers of my cupboard because I got busy with something, or found something else to read. Evil, I know. This is not just fiction but books on engineering and science that I picked up because I enjoyed reading about the subject, some management books that I refer when work gets boring and philosophy for my desire to study more upon it.

Right now I am reading ‘Krishna Key’ because I got it for review (yeay) from Blogadda.com. Since I am to post a review on it for receiving said book, ‘Fifty shades darker’ has been put on hold along (because I enjoyed reading ‘Fifty shades of Grey’, and wanted to continue the story). There is also ‘The Toyota Way’ which I am reading to learn different approaches that I can use at work. There is ‘God is not Great’ lying on the table as well which I had picked for light reading (and mom got scandalized).

Then there are a select few unique books that have not been completed for particular reasons. I received ‘The girl who kicked the hornet’s nest’ as a gift from Ishaan Lalit, and I read the first three chapters before I felt that there was too much a back story being referred to. Wikipedia enlightened me with the fact that since it is book 3 of a trilogy I got the feeling of missing the story. Although I thought the story would be revealed in detailed flashbacks, I have kept it aside for after I finish its chronological predecessors. There is ‘Love, Loss and Acceptance’ by Shail Di which I am keeping aside for reading when I can do its verses justice.  And finally there is Thermodynamics because I can’t wrap my head around the change in heat of the room when an air conditioner is turned on while a draft exists on the other side of the room. The AC is on, it is cooler, I am thankful, please get lost. Maybe It has also to do with the idea that I flunked the subject the first time I took it in college.

And before signing off for this, I would like to tell you about this little thing I have. I just love caressing and smelling books. Sometimes I pick up books and ruffle through the pages and smell the air as the pages flip by. The rustling noise and the sight of the pages go by is just so wonderful. I don’t do it all my books, but one day the mood strikes to do so and it always manages to make me sigh.