Books in 2022: Vikramaditya Veergatha, Book 3: Vengeance of Indra

 Book #8

Not every book is everyone's cup of tea. Unfortunately, I have learned this the hard way and definitely a little late. I should have stopped reading the series after the first book but, for some odd reason, I just kept going. May be it's some form of OCD where I can't abandon something that I started. Right now, I just want to run past the last book for the sake of closure.

Before going to criticize, I want to applaud the author to finally show some conflicts between characters and introduce complexities in the plots, specially the way I like it. In addition to that, there are too many threads that author is efficiently handling at the same time. 

Overall, the third book brought the entire pace of the story down. Specially plots like Shoorsena's marriage proposal or plan to approach Danavas in Dandaka were not developed a lot in this book. In fact I am almost sure that Ghatakpara's kidnapping, a new twist introduced in this book, is yet another side plot to show his gift to the readers. The plot will die its own death just like attack by Hunas and Ahi in previous one. I think with a little faster pace the series could have been culminated in this very book.

Second, I have a serious issue with the titles that Shatrujeet chooses for his books. This one is called "Vengeance of Indra". Again, this was a major incident that happened but not something around which the entire story was revolving. I feel like title of a book should represent the plot in its entirety. For example - "Rift among Navratnas" or may be something related to that but more flowery. In addition to that, vengeance is a strong word and to me it means a fierce and befitting reply to an extreme degree. However in this case, whatever information Indra tried spreading was all on Shukracharya's advice and on top of that it was not extreme at all. Everything depended on whether Shukracharya was right about Varurichi and whether Varurichi will reply in an expected way.

As already said, I just want to get past the last book :( 

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