Books in 2022: Vikramaditya Veergatha, Book 1: Guardians of Halahala

Book #6

After reading Mistborn, I was itching to read some Indian mythological fantasy series. I stumbled upon Vikramaditya Veergatha while searching for a series similar to Shiva trilogy which I read a few years back. Since the series had good reviews and the author chose an interesting plot I have begun reading it.

The first book is not a complete story in itself. It ends while Vikramaditya wins another battle against Devas but there are many more plots underway to be completed - like Indra's plan to reach Kuber for a third attack or Shukracharya's next step as the healer etc. I hope the author successfully brings everything together by the end.

Shatrujeet Nath's writing is really flowery. There is one GRE word thrown at you after every two sentences. But still, I think he has done a great job explaining the events and the setting. I could literally picture a movie in my head while I was reading it.

Particularly for me the book wasn't a major page turner. First of all, I was expecting some surprises or U-turns or some conflicts while the story evolved which kept me engaged. For example, while Vikramaditya was handing over the dagger to Betal he convinced him immediately. May be a conflict of interest, or a u-turn where Betal refused to accept the dagger may have raised my interest. Similar thing happened while Vikramaditya tried to convince Mother Oracle to live in the palace. There was some disagreement there but ultimately she agreed. I was expecting some things to not work, some failures or plot twists while these events happened. May be it's too early for me to judge and each of these events have some surprise element up its sleeves which will be revealed in coming books. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Second, the way story developed where Indra sent assassins one after another with different powers and plotted to do that again in the end, just seemed a bit comic-ish to read. Just like the Super Commondo Dhruv stories that I read when I was little kid. Ha !

And last, it has lot of characters to keep track of and they are thrown at you immediately as the story begins and at every other juncture. There is very less time to understand or may be deep dive into the prime characters, their behavior or gauge what's grey-ish about them.

Anyways, lot of critic but I admit that the book was a fast read. Looking forward to others in the series.

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