NINE: CURSE OF THE KALINGAN

INTRODUCTION: This is the second book I am reviewing for bookreviewwalla.com and this is the first book I received by the publisher. I would sincerely thank Sundeep who has given me an opportunity to review this book.
           A couple of days ago , Sundeep has ringed me up at 12 in the night, he was in a hurry and asked me whether I would be interested in reviewing a book which is a fact-fiction, I was actually drowsy and just accepted the offer.
           And now After reading the book , I feel really privileged to actually review  a book of such finesse and  intellect.

JOT( from the back cover) :

THE PAST HAS COME TO DESTROY THE PRESENT AND CHANGE THE FUTURE.


261 BC.
After his bloody battle with kalinga,the Mauryan emperor Ashoka ,overcome with remorse,swore never to wage another war .And to make sure no one else did .His Navarathnas- the NINE-
     Zealously guarded their powers and knowledge, handing them down through millennia and generations to ensure lasting peace.

                                        EXCEPT THAT IT WAS NOT TO BE!
from the corpses of kalingan warriors rose an angry spirit bent upon avenging the kalinga empire ,destroying the NINE and using their hidden knowledge to rule the world and change its destiny.
     
                                                    PRESENT TIME
The bloodthirsty warrior has possessed the body of a young man,making him hunt down and kill the NINE one by one. IT is now up to the chosen Trinity -nurse Tara ,DJ Akash and forensic expert Zubin -to stop him.

MY REVIEW ON THE BOOK:

            The cover page is festooned with a green emerald in the middle, a picture of tomb and a building to the corners.I initially didn't fathom their presence on the cover page, but as I leafed through the book ,they started making sense.
            Firstly I don't have words to describe the author's narrative style. The plot is absolutely terrific.It's a fine tapestry of history,philosophy,science,technology,spirituality, religion. Even though this is a work of fiction few parts of the book are actually objective like:
                                           
             'Everything we experience has a purpose.It might not be what you thought it would be but you know you can handle it.If you were not who you are, if there was the slightest doubt that you were incapable, then you wouldn't have been here.You have a reason to be here..'

These few sentences have a great effect on the reader.I felt , they were written as if to address the reader.

            It's amazing how the author has interwoven the whole plot around spirituality and Buddhism.

'The mind works in two ways :Linear thinking and associated thinking.IQ is associated with the linear thinking and emotions with associative thinking .And a repetition of a chant breaks both these circuits and allows the mind to be in a state of rest and awareness'
         
          Through these lines the author has given a scientific approach towards chanting mantras (religious) which is very informative to youngsters,who are usually sceptic towards  rituals and praying.

          All together the book has kept me curious,enthusiastic and surprising through out the read. Once reading the book, I learned that there are many thing to explore in the world.

Note: I specially thank the author Mrs. Shobha Nihalini who has written this beautiful Novel which has inspired me and educated me about many things and I am anticipating to read the next book of the triology  

                 

                         
                           
     
         

Last Man IN THE TOWER by Aravind Adiga

INTRODUCTION: Even  since I read 'The white tiger' , I fell in love with the narrative style, humor, punches of Aravind adiga. And thus I garbed this book ,expecting it to deliver the same  amount of euphoria I had received from 'The white tiger'


JOT(from good reads); A tale of one man refusing to leave his home in the face of property development. Tower A is a relic from a co-operative housing society established in the 1950s. When a property developer offers to buy out the residents for eye-watering sums, the principled yet arrogant teacher is the only one to refuse the offer, determined not to surrender his sentimental attachment to his home and his right to live in it, in the name of greed. His neighbours gradually relinquish any similar qualms they might have and, in a typically blunt satirical premise take matters into their own hands, determined to seize their slice of the new Mumbai as it transforms from stinky slum to silvery skyscrapers at dizzying, almost gravity-defying speed.

AUTHOR: Aravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Madras (now called Chennai), and grew up in Mangalore in the south of India. He was educated at Columbia University in New York and Magdalen College, Oxford. His articles have appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Times of India. His first novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2008.

MY VIEW ON THE BOOK:  'last man in tower' as he named it  is just a concoction of words without a subtle string to them. There was no humor, mockery, satire ,punches in this book( his book the white tiger is full of them which lured me to read this book). While I was going through this book , I literally cussed him for his irritating narration. I did never expect him to deliver such a dumb, spirit less novel. I am totally disappointed in spite of being his fan since I read his novel 'The white tiger'

All together a laborious,lamenting,lethargic read.

This is the first book in my life, for which I was rueful to read it.

Emperor of all maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Introduction: Cancer ,the very word makes me feel queasy,petrified,deadpan and appalled. few years rewinding from now, cancer turned to be brutally lethal,unlike any other disease patients with cancer literally struggled for life. 
      From my very childhood this word 'cancer' used to haunt me. I remember people being shocked the moment they learn  that someone's having cancer and this made me feel it's some kind of monster. yes. It surely is a monster which  engulfs one from within .
         As a science student  I am very intrigued to  know what this  deadly monster( cancer) is all about. obviously in this google-in-your-mouth era I quickly reach out google and type the word cancer, while I was going through many sites, blogs and pages I read about this book ,"emperor of all maladies" ,with a tagline 'A biography of cancer'.Tagline sounded witty ,cool and alluring. Till date I didn't know that one could actually  write a biography of a  lethal disease.I googled about the author 'Siddhartha Mukherjee', found a video titled 'Siddhartha mukherjee-the cancer puzzle'. 
            Somewhere in his speech he says this. "when press asks Edmund hillary about why he has climbed mount everest, he says that I climbed it because it was there. And now if you people ask me why I wrote this book,I would say that I wrote it because there is no such book". Listening to that witty statement ,I was awestruck with  my mouth wide open and this was enough to just grab this book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and the  CU/NYU presbyterian Hospital. A Rhodes scholar,He graduated from Stanford University ,University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School.
             reading through the book , I noticed one thing which is totally  unique about the author. It surely is a Non-Fiction but reading through the book I actually didn't  feel like reading a  NF, infact the book is a concoction of stories ,anecdotes, analogies all entwined around Cancer. And the narrative is out of box.I  still don't fathom how a cancer physician could write such artistically.And as this book is a biography of Cancer it need not be restricted to medical students. It has history , science and creative writing and can be read by any one .

A biography of cancer: As the book is  all about Cancer ,everyone must be thinking that Cancer is the protagonist ,Ironically it is  not. Sydney farder, the person who has worked hard and carried out a lot of research in treating child leukemia is the  one of the main  protagonists. Next comes Mary lasker , who has created a  stir in collecting the funds required to carry out the research into curing cancer and many others like Yella Pregada Subbarao, Ehrlich,Min Chi Li,Thomas Hodgkin,Rontgen,Marie and pierre curie and many other have contributed in finding a cure for cancer.     

This is the the cancer institute named after Farber at massachusetts ,Boston.

As every story has an end ,Even 'Cancer' should have an End and we hope that 'Cancer' soon dies a brutal death in the coming future.