Monday, December 23, 2013

Bombed in a Good Way


Book : Baramulla Bomber
Author: Clark Prasad
ISBN : 9381523975
Pages: 313
Price: 395
Rating : 4/5

Something from the Book

The old coffee reader Kasha from Srinagar - 'Fight your destiny, build hope and Make it happen,' because you don't know which forces of the universe are conspiring against you. But which force is controlling us?

The confluence of Bible and Vedas and their tryst Quantum Physics is in Kashmir thanks to Cricket!
Sounded weird....
Read ahead to go crazy...


Espionage thrillers and Indian authors are a weird combination, and this thought has been embedded in my mind for years now. Being a voracious reader and a big time fan of spy and suspense thrillers, I can confidently say Espionage thrillers by Indian authors have strongly disappointed me over the years and thus my mind set. But what if I tell you, I am ready to let go of this belief finally? Readers like me would find this to be a joke, but brace yourself because Baramulla Bomber is here to change our beliefs.
The book Baramulla Bomber by Clark Prasad was sent to me by Readers Cosmos and I can’t thank them enough for sending this amazing book to me(not to forget, all gift wrapped)!  Anyways the book impressed me in the first look itself. I have to say its cover design is awesome, but like it is said never judge the book by its cover, I dived straight into the story. The story begins with the ill fated meeting of an royal decendants’ group called Chos Skyong. There is a blast while the meeting is on and most of the group members are killed. But in the survivers is a man named Abhimanyu Kashyap who cheats death with his determination to preserve the secret. But what secret?
Soon this inciedent gets tied up with Mansur Haider who is nothing but an aspiring cricketer from Kashmir. But as the story moves we know Mansur is being tracked by intelligence agencies around the world. Adolf Silfverskiold, a swedish intelligent officer turn out to be tracking Mansur and a mysterious earthquake that happened in the Shaksgam Valley. Also Shaksgam valley inciedent is being investigated by Mansur’s girlfriend Aahana who lost her mountaineering team there. The readers realize the small hole drilled by the bombing is nothing but a stepwell with steps going from anywhere to everywhere, storylines joined to form a huge web of danger.

Pros:
1.    The book is fast paced and keeps on the edge of your seat till the very end.
2.    Character sketches are perfect to the ‘T’ and every character is well used.
3.   The story explores intelligence agencies other than the much explored CIA, and yet does complete justice to it.
4.   The integration of quantum physics, history and modern world spies is the whole and sole of the book, and personally I loved it.
5.   The looming secret of Shaksgam valley and the much talked about weapon,  as I am not allowed to give spoilers(though I am dying to) is too engrossing.

Cons:
1.    Too much to digest and too much used – movies, cricket ,physics, Kashmir, Sweden, India, politics and so much more. It just felt a bit cramped.
2.   Editing could have been crisp. Dialogues didn’t seem powerful or memorable.

The author explores a lot in a very short time, or so it seems as the book is super racey. He also does full justice to all the characters of the story as they are given ample time to evolve and the story is thoruoghly entertaining and engrossing. I would give the book a 4 on 5 rating and am desperately waiting for the next books. I hope the editing of the other two books is better but at the same time don’t want them to turn out to be a disappointment like the 3rd book of Shiva Trilogy. Best of luck to the Author, may you succeed in giving us awesome stories always..:D

P.S. "This book review is a part of The Readers Cosmos Book Review Program. To get free books log on to thereaderscosmos.blogspot.com"


Sunday, December 8, 2013

Ballroom Dance



The shimmering light of the chandeliers
And the colourful flowers here and there
Made the ballroom a maiden’s dream
But the men pouring in, were from some medieval stream.

 All men wearing sleek Raymond suits
And posing with sophistication in woodland boots
But all re-colouring the whole room sepia
Unshaved and shabby; they pile up my dilemma.

Not one handsome knight
To break my cold feet plight
Not one striking gentleman
Suitable for this prince charming fan!

But there he enters like a gallant king
Clean shaved, McDreamy and super dashing
One glance and him and all ladies swoon
But he comes up to me with a cheesy woo

We dance all night in the artificial moonlight
While the ancient men play with thier stubble in spite
But not one of them scores a damsel for the eve
If only they had known, the secret was to shave.

I stared at the bright loving eyes of my crush
Who smiled like a rose, every time I blushed
His clean shaven look bowled me over
Wish I could sway in his strong arms forever.

The other ladies looked on, with envy in their eyes
Waiting for just a dance beneath the candled sky
While giving the retro crowd a cold weird pass
But this night was like a dream for me, at last!


-Vaisakhi Mishra

Something funny after ages!!!


Also I was tagged by Ankit Jain for the contest. I tag Amrit, Sarah, Namrota and Bushra for the contest.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Insight to Pittho's World

Book : Pittho's World
Author: Murtaza Razvi
ISBN : 9788172239343
Pages: 204
Price: 299
Rating : 1/5



What the book said:

No, I am no Scheherazade of the Arabian Nights, I tell Rani, when she agrees to listen to my stories.And I am no depraved king, she says ...

Pittho's World is the magical domain of storytelling, of Sheikhu and his lover Rani, of parents, Big Brother, uncles, aunts and grandparents. And of course, Aunt Pittho, she of the big hips, wielding magic and a stick. The stories originate in Iran, move through Afghanistan to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, before returning to rest in Pakistan. Spanning two centuries and several generations, these are tales of love and happiness, tragedy and malice, black magic and manslaughter, linked together by two peoples love for storytelling, and for each other.
Published posthumously, this delightful work of fiction by one of Pakistans best-known journalists transports us to places and times long lost to humanity. They are stories of life, but also of death which waits at the end, leaving in its wake a loneliness that lingers.

Review:

It is said never judge a book by its cover. I never really took this saying seriously until I came across the book “Pittho’s World” by Murtaza Razvi. Everything that contributes in the appearance of this book, from the cover to the blurb is kind of an illusion as the actual content of the book is far from what the blurb promises it to be. When I came across this book and read the blurb, the very mention of Arabian Nights and Magic compelled me to pick it up. I expected a lot of short stories with interesting Arabic background and some magical influence if not really magic, but was disappointed. The book is a collection of stories from the personal life of Sheikhu, the protagonist of the book. He narrates a series of tales from his family’s origin in Iran to their present life in Pakistan, to his girlfriend and reluctant listener Rani. The narration is dry and bland. Moreover Pittho’s character just turns out to be a fragment of Sheikhu’s life and doesn’t fit in as the centralized theme of the book making the very title an illusion as well.

Pittho’s world suffers right from the start with the character sketching of uninteresting orthodox elders who tend to see the wrong in everything. As the story moves ahead it gets even drier as the narration of every character follows the same tone and lacks in imagination or innovation. Sheikhu makes an attempt to make Rani aware of how she is related to him through a number of stories with strong themes of life and death, but the dots really fail to paint a perfectly clear picture. Every story runs in an intermittent manner and thus the book loses its points in the department of ‘flow’. The lead characters Sheikhu and Rani also remain bound to their roles of narrator and listener, respectively, till the very end with occasional riposte from Rani; but unfortunately that is the maximum of character traits Razvi managed to exploit.

Pros
  1. Characters from Sheikhu’s family – Even though I didn’t really like a lot of people of his dysfunctional family I found the character names kind of funny and interesting. The best part was none of the names were ever mentioned in the book. Their name was really their relation to Sheikhu or one of their prominent character traits. Also, the characters sketches were perfect to the T; you could understand each of them from the description given. So a gold star there to the author.


Cons
  1. Lack of imagination or good plot.
  2. Dry narration and weak protagonists.
  3. Slow and episodic stories strained the flow of the novel.
  4. Sheikhu and Rani are supposed to be lovers of storytelling, but the storytelling is flawed big time.
  5. Too many orthodox, kind of negative and non acceptable views in the very start of the book.
  6. The novel tries way too hard to find something magical in “Life” and fails.



Overall it was just a onetime read for me and demanded a lot of patience to finish it. Maybe the blurb built a lot of expectations for me and the book failed to click any of them. I would rate it a 1 out of 5 star book. Apart from people who enjoyed Razvi’s storytelling in Musharraf earlier or curious to explore new writers this book will not have many takers.

P.S. - This book was given to me for review by Indiblogger and Harper Collins and this is my personal unbiased review.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

The Witness



Cuddling in the early winter chill
They sat there, arm in arm
Chatting away to their heart’s fill;
Stirring love in the breezy calm.

I stare at them for countless hours,
Listening to her whispers shy;
The twinkling eyes of that blushing flower,
Oblivious to my silent cry.

The moon prances in the starry show,
To observe an innocent damsel’s demise
As he pours an exquisite wine, so slow
And quaffs all love, for he is a devil in disguise.

Her demeanor mellow, her heart glowing red,
For love is her elixir and faith her friend.
But little does she know she will soon be dead,
As her ears get no word from my shouts till the end.

She choose a witty devil with the mask
Who seeks not love, but money for pride.
And had I the voice to tell her of his hidden flask,
He would’ve paid and she wouldn’t have died.

Her cold body now sleeps in my frozen lap,
All colours still warm but lifeless in sleep;
I am a witness remember treacherous chap,
With words of your crime in me, reverberating deep.

“He killed her! I know!” I screech and yell.
They don’t know I witnessed this heinous crime.
But what could a dead log possibly tell;

So they leave me like always - a Park bench for all time.

-Vaisakhi Mishra

PS- Image courtesy Google.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Reunion

People say love makes everything seem wonderful; if it had been a thought twelve hours earlier I would just have laughed it off. But now so much has changed. Sitting on my front porch now, at dawn, listening to chirping of the early birds waiting for the sun to spread its sparkling wings on the world, nothing was unusual but it was all surreal for me today. I couldn’t stop beaming while reminiscing about the events of the last day, all the while twirling a precious ring in my fingers. In the freckles of the light that shimmered on the shiny surface on the metal I saw the glimpses of my platinum day of love.


“Nidhi let us go for the reunion, someone definitely wants to meet you today, can’t you see?” Vrinda chided me. Someone had just sent me flowers with a weird note on it and asked me to come to the Reunion of our school. I had a fairly clear idea who this someone might be because the note had a poem with no head or tail; a poem just like the ones that made every day beautiful for me eight years back; a poem just like the ones Rishi wrote for me.

Crimson petals with freshness undefined
But nothing beats your shy yet radiant smile
A heart beats fast in some corner of the town
Waiting to see you again now, after eight summers and falls.

The poem still made me smile but now, after eight years of drifting apart form each other, it made tears brim in my eyes and I was scared Vrinda would notice it soon. So I simply agreed and rushed into my room with an uninterested “whatever.” I read the lines on the note again and again and found it really amussing how his sense of poetry and rhyming was still as bad as ever. Back then his poems were always compared to Roshesh Sarabhai’s poems by all our friends. Roshesh was a character of a very famous comedy show that aired on TV back then and so Rishi took pride in the sarcasm also, but now even after so many years guess he is still in awe of that show.
Rishi had a peculiar habit of dropping clues to me in his poems and I was sure there was nothing different in this one. I read the lines a couple times more just to realize the ‘crimson petals’ was actually a reference to the dress he wants me to wear. But why should I? We had not talked in two years and had not seen each other since four years after we decided to break up. Our break up was not messy but instead was sad for both of us. He was going to UK for MBA and both of us being scared of long distance relationship just decided to call it quits. But I never really got over him and today gave me some hope that he too was sailing on the same boat. And just for the hope I decided to wear a red saree with black lace border, little did I know that would be the topic Vrinda would latch on to for the next two hours.
In the party I kept looking all around for Rishi with a perennial background story of the flowers and the poem that Vrinda recited to every friend we met. People began admiring the tinsel and blue decoration, the amazing food and discussed their life after school while my eyes were lost in the search of Rishi, who was still nowhere to be seen. I lost track of how many times I had to ask “What” to people to repeat what they were saying as I kept phasing out and loosing hope slowly. Maybe someone had just played a prank on me and I had fallen for it; fallen bad. And so when Vrinda and my other friends asked me to pay a visit to our 12th std. classroom I decided to tag along. Our class had changed so much. The boring black board was replaced with a less boring green one, the windows had cream curtains the walls were hidden behind bulletin boards screaming the importance of 12th grade. Benches had changed too, but all had scribbles and sketches on them. I totally forgot about the people who were with me and went for the last bench of the row near the windows. That is where Rishi and I sat in our final year and Rishi always scribbled some weird poem on the bench. Our bench must have looked like Wordsworth’s rough note book back then for sure. But now the bench had a lot of sketches and just one poem!

Ravishing red, and the peachy blush
My wait could not be satiated with anything more
The twinkle in your eyes searching what is already yours
But let the library first earn, its freedom from boredom.

He is waiting for me in the library! I hear Vrinda scream my name as I run towards the library without informing them anything. But he was there, and I had so much to tell him ever more so much to be angry about and scream at him for. But right now I just wanted to see him once. I went to the library but there was no one there. I stood there in the dull yellow lighting, searching every corner of the room I could see, but he was nowhere. But then my eyes fell on the thoughts board and there were four more lines on it.

The freaky jitters of the first kiss
And the hunt for a place for solitary bliss
For you and I search every turn and dome
Till we were found that quiet and windy home.

I knew the place! How could I ever forget that place where we shared our first kiss? The small green room on the terrace that we usually used for annual day practices. I reached there to find the whole room decorated with lanterns and a small table with a white ring box on it. I was sure by now it was Rishi but I still couldn’t see him anywhere. I went ahead and opened the box only to find a folded paper in it. I unfolded the paper in a hurry and read what he had penned.

What you see is far from an illusion
But your wait for some hours is like my waits compensation
A glittery future awaits you right now
If your anger is quenched, meet me down

After all this he wanted to meet me in the party hall, how irritating! Was my anger gone, I really didn’t know but what I knew for sure was I could wait no longer to meet him now. I rushed downstairs and saw the whole crowd facing the entrance. “Just the way you are” was being played in the background and there near the DJ station he was standing, smiling nervously as if afraid of me but still his eyes clearly conveyed that he had been waiting for me. I literally ran towards him as if Dil wale dulaniyan lejaenge’s spirit had entered me, and didn’t really know why. But all I could see was him and him waiting for me. But I stopped right in front of him and he chuckled.
“And I knew this would happen”, he said. He didn’t even get me a chance to respond but kneeled and pulled out a ring.

“Naïve in your love I surrender myself
And ask you to accept it if you agree yourself
The ring aint a bribe for you to yes
But eight years of unconditional love is the reason, I guess
I tried over and over to forget and move on
But my heart stayed with you even when I was gone
And something kept saying you waited for me too
So here is my weird poem with which I woo you

Tears welled up in my eyes and I stared at him with a blank face. I was rendered speechless by his words, not to mention his best poem so far. But what mattered was he had waited for me and loved me all this while. He was still mine and I was his when we were not together. But my thoughts were interrupted by his sudden words.
“Now would be the time to say yes or no. Plus if you want to say no just look at the ring, it is platinum”, Rishi said.
I couldn’t help but smile, “So you are bribing me with the precious white metal chunk.”
“The precious white metal cannot be a chunk or anything. It is a ring of platinum cause it is very precious and nothing better could suit you as you are the most precious person to me right now. It glitters just like your eyes and would not wither away so will remind you of this day forever, well only if you say yes. Also…”
As amused as I was at the fact that it was still so easy to distract him from a topic I decide to shut him with a kiss, because I had waited too long for this moment. I didn’t care a bit about the people who were staring at us. I just wanted to hold on to this moment forever.
“So it is Yes?” He asked nervously.
“If you put the ring on my finger right away, it is a YES!” I giggled.
And without wasting a second he slipped the ring on my finger and my reunion just turned out to be my engagement day.
“What if I was still angry and had said no?” I asked him.
“Even if you were angry you would not say no I knew, cause somewhere I was sure you still loved me and wouldn’t want me to be embarrassed infront of so many people” he joked with a straight face and I could see the sincerity in his eyes.
“A bit over the top but, right?” I asked Rishi.
“I told him about your liking for movies like 27 dresses and When in Rome!” Vrinda screamed from behind. And Rishi was sporting his cute dreamy “Guilty as charged" smile. I realized Vrinda was a part of this whole plan and she was the one who had told Rishi about me still waiting for him. Love! It is an amazing thing for sure, just a bit impish sometimes. The ring would always remind me of this day, of my Platinum day of Love.



This post has been written for the Platinum Day Of Love contest organized by IndiBlogger.in.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Swan Song



Ripples of hopes, dreams and life
Form and fade; my thoughts at strife.
But tranquilly I float on the blue tides,
To collect some moments to boost my vanishing light.

The long winter looms to take over the water
And freeze it – emotionless; Will it morn my departure?
The night chills, memoir of this haughty swan
That was once an ugly duckling - forlorn.

My world was this lake serene
The other side of this bridge still lays unseen
Wish I had some more days to stall
And just see the auburn aura, sweep again, next fall

Some last notes of my song remain,
But my heart pleads to rewind the whole tune again.
I fade to nothingness with the dead harp of death,

Yet rendition of my last song reverberates the lost notes of faith.

-Vaisakhi Mishra

Sunday, September 29, 2013

The English Nightmare


Book : English Bites!
Author: Manish Gupta
ISBN : 9780143419006
Pages: 334
Price: 250
Rating : 4/5

Something from the book:
However, one column in Reader's Digest continued to depress me for quite some time. Even with liberal self marking, I could never get more than five correct answers out of the fifteen posers in 'Word Power.' I persisted and my scores improved, slowly and steadily, as did my determination to get a perfect 15/15 sooner rather than later.


Learning a language is always difficult. I always found Hindi to be the toughest language, during my school days. My notebooks were decorated with red marks more than the blue ink scribbles but for vernacular students English is a similar kind of nightmare. But when we proudly declare ourselves well versed with English, do we really know everything in English? If so why we whack our brains and drill holes in our grey cells during entrance exams to store a few more words and their meanings in it? MBA, GMAT, GRE flash cards are like demons for us during entrances. Oh! Foolish us to think we are great in English. These were my thoughts after I read the Blurb of “English Bites” by Manish Gupta.

English Bites – My Fullproof English Learning Formula is indeed a foolproof formula as it makes learning words total fun. I still remember when I was small my dad used to ask me to learn 10 words from dictionary or newspapers and report to him in the evening. In school we used to hate the English lecture when we had a vocabulary lesson because it used to be the driest 45 minutes of the day. If only we had a book like this back then. The book is the story of the author who also was from vernacular medium and fought a long exhaustive war with English to finally conquer it. The journey is scribed in the book with pinch of humor, satire, a bit of emotions, all on a strong base of reality and is adorned with apt comic sketches and a lot of amusing trivia.

The book successfully erases the trite methods of learning languages and sets a new and a trend through this book, reason? The book not only a compendium of lot of words, it gives you the meaning of all the words then and there, at times with their origin as well. So you could let your dictionary rest and just enjoy the book without any distraction. And if the reader is like me nothing could be better as I am super lazy while reading a book. I would rather re read the line two three times and figure out some meaning than check the correct meaning by travelling some meters, picking up a dirtied by age old dust Dictionary and hunting for the word in the yellowed pages. The book sounds amazing now right?
Pro:
  1. Humorous and prompt narration makes the book a very enjoyable read.
  2. The way the words are interspersed throughout the book helps in keeping the interest of the reader in the story and the words equally.
  3. The trivia provided is an added advantage of the book and makes the book very informative at the same time.
  4. The story is straight out of the author’s life pages and hence is easy to relate to.
  5. The illustrations are apt and fun.

Cons:
  1. Just one the start was a bit slow and not as gripping as the rest of the book. Till page 50 I guess.

I thoroughly loved the book and I am not lying when I say this I am going to remember a lot of words by relating them to instances from this book. People who have read this book would know why the word bedraggled would always make me smile and why arachibutyrophobia is also going to make me check if my bread has peanut butter sandwich on it. 

On the whole I loved the book and if I clear my GMAT or CAT next year Manish Gupta you are going to get a big chunk in my credit speech. It is an easy 4 on 5 book and a must read! And higher education aspirants you know which book is a must in your closet now! This is a book you don’t want to finish in one go but a chapter a day and English will be your best friend. Every Bit worth its cost - a total worth it book.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Black Rose



In the chills of the early spring
Amidst all flowers – red, blue and pink,
There blooms a rose that is oh, so black
With a fate so doomed and a future dark.

Little kids playfully, pluck the flowers in mirth
And curse the black rose, for their thorns hurt.
But don’t they know all the roses have thorns!
Alas, they see all this – fault of this cursed one.

Lovers and friends adore roses of all kinds
But forbidden is the one that is pitch black,
As no one cares to feel its divine fragrance, but
All they know of it is – “That symbol of bad luck.”

The nightingale – a friend in need indeed
Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s petty fleet
Set its heart bare to erase the colours of Fate
And to re paint the black rose all red.

The black rose cried, the nightingale bled
Till the last drop was soaked in the black rose stem
But now there is a dead heart, completely dry

And the condemned black rose still stands without friends for life.

-Vaisakhi Mishra

Sunday, September 8, 2013

From the Last Page



From the beloved page of every student...
Some play, some write songs,
Some test their pens or sketch wierd faces
And some just write messages to the person sitting next to them
These are some verses from my one of my "last pages"


Etched somewhere are memories weak
Silently eroding the surface deep;
All maim some able being,
Ah! Memories are stronger than they seem.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azure heavens preen in a mantle grey
Just when it all melts away
And all that is there is just rains.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One black Bird crashes into the face,
And the legion of black follows the feat.
One, two and three and more!
Mangled and tarnished lies a form –
Marking the fall of the Scarecrow!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I see her sitting on a rock,
Pensive and focused;
When she is suddenly hit by a stone
And she fades away
In the rendition of the ripples.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I spill, I flow, I etch surfaces and all,
Immortalizing words on paper and walls;
But little help am I to people with a life
As dark as my existence

For I am Ink and they are Blind.

-Vaisakhi Mishra

Monday, September 2, 2013

Elixir of Fantasy


Book: The Birr Elixir
Author: Jo Sparks
ISBN0985331836
Pages : 164
Rating : 4/5



Something from the Book : 

“Ignorance, my son. A blessing in a woman, a fault in a man. And a fatal flaw in a King.”All of Tryst’s carefully marshaled arguments faded. Like it or not, he was going on the epourney.


I will read it today!
Hell, I have so much work; I will surely read it tomorrow!
It has been a week!!! I am starting sure today.

And that today didn’t come for four more weeks. But when it finally came I skipped my lunch hour cause I didn’t want to leave the story unfinished. Not that I had to finish it, but I was scared that if I leave the book now and for some reason I can’t resume reading it soon it would drive me crazy. That was the power of “The Birr Elixir” by Jo Sparkes. A fellow blogger had posted information about this book and after I read it I just needed the book. Thank you so much Jo for letting me review the book.

The Book begins with the Skullan Prince Tryst and his meeting with his father. He sets off on a journey to explore his lands and connect and understand his people. Around the same time a young girl named Marra is made to work in a small herb shop by the evil brother of her now deceased Mistress. She was the only apprentice her Mistress ever accepted and before she died she gave Marra her book of portions – A book she specifically asked Marra to keep away from her brother Stark.

Marra’s world transforms totally when Drail the Leader of the Hand of Victory asks her to brew a powerful portion to help them win a game called COMET and Marra brews the Birr’s Elixir. When Drail and his team achieve the unfathomable feat of defeating Skullans he decides to take Marra as his Brista. But when he comes to take Marra with him to the faraway lands they find an unconscious man in the shop and Drail decides to take the man along with them. The sleeping man is under an unnatural sleep spell that Marra manages to break with her skills during the journey. But who is this man? What is Marra going to do as she was just an apprentice and not a portions Mistress but now is Drail’s Brista? What will the journey change in Marra’s life, a girl who had never left her desert town. And who is this unconscious man?

The book is a total roller coaster ride of the world Jo has created. Also the mystery of Tryst and the fox boot person looms over the entire story. The narrative pulls you totally into the world of Marra and the description of the Comet game is very vivid. The fast pace of the book keeps you hooked till the very end and as this book is the first book of the series it leaves you yearning for more and leaves a lot of questions unanswered for the readers to torment their grey cells. The book covers everything from magic to adventure to drama. And the story of the characters is strong and not just happy or sad.

Pros:
  1. The book is very fast paced and involving and Jo’s strong narrative keeps you totally engrossed in the book.
  2. The description of the game Comet is just amazing and our imaginary horses can actually sketch the whole scenario while reading.
  3. The Characters are strong and very well used. I particularly loved the character of Drail and Stark.
  4. The way the plot thickens is very intriguing. Literally, loved every bit of it.

Cons:
  1. The description of the areas they were travelling to could have been more. That would have made the land more authentic and readers could connect well.
  2. The resemblances – Comet with Quidditch, Continents and lands with Game of thrones – Westeros. Though not the fault of the Author, avid fantasy readers would directly make the connection and may find that to be a negative point about the book.


Overall it is an amazing book, a four out of five. Light, fast paced, easy to follow fantasy. An enjoyable read for both the young and the old fantasy readers. And as far as I am concerned, the only thought I have right now is “When is the next book coming?”