Fractured... well everything

Warning: This is continuation of my earlier rant about having a dry spell with Indian Authors.

Why do you read books? For me, I read them coz I believe they are the perfect stress busters. They take you from the mundane everyday life and show you worlds and worlds of wonder. Places, people, situations and countries that you personally could not meet, books take you to them. Your world expands to encompass everything and everyone when you read.


What do you read? A lot of people read fiction, some prefer autobiographies, some prefer financial while others rely on self-help books. What do I read? I read EVERYTHING...though my fav genre will always be fantasy, I don't confine myself to it. So, when I saw blogadda offering a fantasy fiction sort of novel, I jumped at the opportunity. I read through the introduction for the novel and loved what I read there. It was intriguing. I mean won't you be intrigued if you read "His fictional style integrates magical realism with Gothic elements."? What's not to like in that combination?

Well, let me tell you what's not to like...false promise.

The back cover creates a picture in your mind about this new world of magic and mysticism that would haunt you with its preciousness and sharpness. Into the world where sadness,and mystic is at war for peace and hope...where you will be offered a gripping tale that would take your breath away, and heart pounding... Sadly, it is not so. The only thing that novel delivers is overload of arcane words and lengthy, unending confusion that some might mistake as a story.

It is not my intention to stir trouble with those who might have liked the novel...neither am I looking to start a war like the one here. I'm simply sharing my views. And I did not like this novel.

Why? You ask...well, here you go.
1. The back cover: It creates a false expectation in your head. It leads you to believe that you are getting into something that the novel is clearly NOT. Now, whether this was done intentionally by the publisher and Author (I believe he does get a say in whats printed on back cover)... I will never know.

2. Vocab: I couldn't really get past the overload of vocabulary in the book. For some time, I actually felt like I'm reading those Word Power books people read for appearing for exams like GRE and TOEFL. The words that author uses are too cumbersome, for no apparent reason. It reminded me of the episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. where Joey writes a recommendation letter for Monica and Chandler to help them with adoption. And to sound smart, he uses a thesaurus for EVERY word in the letter. Of course while on F.R.I.E.N.D.S. it was funny... while reading the novel, it simply put me to sleep. I should possibly thank the Author for the amount of sleep I manged catch though.

3. Story: Was there one? I mean, nothing happens in the book...and even if it had happened, I didn't really understood. Possibly coz my head started swimming if I continued reading more than 5 pages in one sitting.

4. Language: Descriptive is such a tiny word to express the writing style of author. I have to give it to him that he is very observant and was very engrossed in his own novel that he thought the reader should know absolutely every minute detail of the scene he was writing. At times, I moved from top of the page to the bottom without anything happening, but knowing all the surrounding the characters.

5. Characters: There are a lot of them in the novel, But none of them clear, none defined properly... in short the characterization is non-existent. Which is a sore, coz why would you wanna read 200 pages if you don't know, don't identify with those who you are reading about?

I could go on and on about what I did not like and how utterly bored I was while reading this novel. But I think that would simply be too much time to spend on a novel that I did not like. So, I'm gonna cut this review short....for ratings... I don't wanna write down a number, coz the number might feel bad about being rated. ... Moral of the story: Don't read unless you want an alternative to Word Power books while studying for your GRE and TOEFL.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com.

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