Heirs of Catriona - Anusha Subramanian

HEIRS OF CATRIONA

ISBN - 978-81-291-2040-4
FIRST PUBLISHED - 2012
PAGES - 190
GENRE - Young Adult
BINDING - Paperback

AUTHOR - Anusha Subramanian

SYNOPSIS - [From the back cover]

In a land like no other on Earth, deadly creatures from forgotten myths are coming alive...

Sara and Crystal are ordinary teenagers. Or so they think, until one day, their world is turned upside down when they learn that they are princesses of the magical land of Catriona. Their mothers, the rightful rulers of Catriona, are being held prisoner by Merissa, the wicked queen. Sara and Crystal must help rescue their mothers, and to do this, they have to journey to a land that does not appear on any known map.

Thrown headlong into the world of vengeful, manioulative gods and deadly sorcerers, the two girls learn the art of magical warfare. But will that be enough to counter the evil unleashed by Merissa and her protector, Loki?

FL Speak - Firstly, this is out and out meant for younger audiences. So people expecting a YA novel like those by Amanda Hocking or Lauren Kate, back off!

Secondly, this wonderful first of a series novel is written by a 7th-grader. So to fully enjoy it, go back to your childhood. Now let the review begin.

Anusha has written a hilarious, outrageous book. I loved it. It has its flaws but hey, its written by a 12-year old. Heirs of Catriona has influences of Narnia. A magical world that you can visit through paintings [remembers The Voyage of the Dawn Treader], evil in power and two reluctant heroes (or in this case, heroines)

A quick grub of the story will be like this : Sara and Crystal, two bff's [also soul sisters??] lose their mothers at the same time. They didn't die, simply vanished. Ten years later, a mysterious man appears and tells them their mothers are not only alive but also held prisoners and Sara and Crystal are infact princesses of a mysterious magical land. Long story short, the magical land needs their help. Thus begins the beginning of a great adventure where they meet legends and myths come back to life. [Also Norse Gods]. One thing I have to say about the author. Being a 7th grader, she knows more about Norse Gods than I do. Anusha has done her research well.

During their quest, they come across some ridiculous situations and terrifying enemies. They also realize they've magic in them. The encounter with Loki, the chase from the ice-demon (Jotuns???), the rescuing of Idunn, meeting little people (straight out of Gulliver's Travels, I swear) all added to fun and excitement this book is all about.

Some of the scenes are hilarious. Eg. When Sara and Crystal come face to face with Loki and learns his name. Crystal blurts out, "but isn't Loki a vegetable?" bwahahahaha.

These things apart, lets talk about some technical stuff that I probably shouldn't but I will. World and character building is absolutely lacking. And yes, this is no big issue when you realize the age of the author. Being 12, has led Anusha do what other authors in the YA and fantasy genre sometimes forget. Imagination. You need imagination and this young author has cauldrons and cauldrons full of it.

I couldn't help laughing at the number of times Sara knocks herself out. Bwahahaha. There is a 20 page action scene and Sara manages to fall unconscious twice during that. Hahahaha. I got this major Famous Five feeling after that. Want to know why?? Because of the foooooood! Remember how Enid Blyton used to write about the food they ate? Well, Anusha has managed to make our characters have food thrice in a span of five pages. That includes one breakfast and lunch in one single page. I swear I never laughed so much. But how much can they possibly eat? :D

One thing Anusha needs to avoid is repetition. During the quest at the country of the little people, Sara, Crystal and Welna had to prove themselves to the people. That bit got repetitive  Not the scene, which was simply explosive, but the dialogues and the chit-chat. Also do you know, what do they do when they've proven themselves?? THEY EAT :D :D AGAIN :D

I swear, this book is fun! Read it! 

Some parts in this book make you smile, some make you sad and some make you cheer for the two girls. The time when they learn about their mothers or the plight of their fathers or when they realize they're magical, those moments give you an undefinable joy of being a reader. Thankfully, and this is a very big thank you, there is no soppy romance. There are no guys in the novel. Thank the mighty LORD and hence, no sign of romance whatsoever. No undying love crap that all YA authors come up with these days [Yes, I'm talking about you Lauren Kate], no Bella-style sobbing and mooning about one soul mate.

However, I am getting worried. Anusha is 12. She steps into teenage next year and *gulp* I think romance might make an entry in Book 2.

Nevertheless, this has been an outstanding work by someone who is India's youngest author. And its more than understood that she'll only get better and better with every book. Will I read her second book? POSITIVELY. Should you read this book? ABSOLUTELY.

Heirs of Catriona is about love for family, trials, adventure, friendship and bravery. It is also about never losing hope and acting on your fears. It is about standing upto evil and fighting for what's right. If you've an imagination, the kid in you is still alive. Go pick this up and save the damsels.

My Rating  - 4/5 stars

PRICE - INR 195/-

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Ink Dries - by Anand Vishwanadha

Impressions off the back-cover:

A book of poems which are vivid in the pictures that they paint in words, and explore the many facets of emotion, of life, and presented with honesty and directness. The meaning of the title itself is quite profound, as indicated in the back cover.

My thoughts on the book:

To be a good poet, one must read good poetry too. I read some wonderful poets on Blogsville, but only have few poetry books in my collection. One of my recent acquisitions was the poetry collection of one Anand Vishwanadha, entitled “Ink Dries”. Seeing it on Flipkart, the first thing that allured me to it was the cover page. A simple sunset… I couldn’t imagine anything better for a book of poems.

A good poem is what makes one think, a better one is what tells it true and still makes us think for the beauty the words portray. Some of the poems in this collection are nothing short of brilliant. If you, like me, are intrigued by the title itself, you’ll find yourself looking through the contents page for the poem titled by that name, and once you’ve read that, and then read it again, you’ll whisper a soft wow, as the meaning of the poem sinks in. It’s small, but something I could relate to. Another one that caught my attention is entitled “Dry Days” and it speaks of the days deprived of love, and how yet, even after that, love survives. A third that is memorable is the one titled “Meaning(s)”, which speaks of life that holds meaning only when we give it, like any other word. “Moment That Rhyme”, “What does the heart say?” and “Gilded Moon” are some others that spring to mind.

Overall impressions:

For poetry lovers; and I mean one who is interested in reading them as well, this book holds many poems that will touch your heart. All are written with a certain crispness, and meaning that is deeply etched.

Rating:
3.75 / 5

Book details:
Title: Ink Dries
Author: Anand Vishwanadha
Genre: Poetry
Price: INR 200
ISBN: 9788190947411
Publishers: Coucal Books

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Lustrum - Robert Harris

LUSTRUM

Sequel to Imperium

ISBN - 978-0-0918-0130-4

FIRST PUBLISHED - 2009

PAGES - 454

GENRE - Historical Fiction

BINDING - Paperback

AUTHOR - Robert Harris

BEST-SELLERS - Fatherland, Imperium, Pompeii

SYNOPSIS - [From the back cover]

ROME, 63 BC. In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power. Cicero is consul, Caesar his ruthless young rival, Pompey the republic's greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy.

The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes - are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, a slave who serves as confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master's secrets - a dangerous position to be in.

From the discovery of a child's mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, Lustrum is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.

QUOTES - 

“Surely the greatest mercy granted us by Providence is our ignorance of the future. Imagine if we knew the outcome of our hopes and plans, or could see the manner in which we are doomed to die - how ruined our lives would be! Instead we live on dumbly from day to day as happily as animals. But all things must come to dust eventually. No human being, no system, no age is impervious to this law; everything beneath the stars will perish; the hardest rock will be worn away. Nothing endures but words.” 

FL Speak - Lustrum is beautiful. Its stunning. Its full of power, vice, corruption and greed. Its ROME!

Lustrum is the sequel to Imperium which I had no idea about and which I didn't read. However the good thing is you can read the 2nd book even if you didn't read the first. But, do read the 1st one, before you die or the world ends (whichever is earlier).

Lustrum : (noun), a period of five years.  Lustrum depicts the next five years of the life of Cicero and his servant Tiro after he is elected consul.

Rome is full of power and wealth. While the wealthy are cunning, the poor has no champion. And the only just man there is, is Cicero. The long standing enmity between Cicero and Julius Caesar was worth reading. Oh Caesar is famous now. He was also the most manipulative, power-crazy megalomaniac ever that brought the Rome on the brink of destruction. 

The author firmly states that Lustrum is a tale of fiction. However, you do wonder where the thin line between fact and fiction dissolve. 

Coming back to the story, as soon as Cicero is consul, Caesar and his friends start brewing trouble. Cicero knows that Caesar is the most dangerous of them all, but without definite proof he's powerless to act and Caesar is simply to wily to get caught. When a child's mutilated body is discovered and it is realized that a human sacrifice was done and an oath made to murder Cicero, Cicero knows that he needs to move fast.

With only the gift of being a wonderful orator, Cicero foils plans of Caesar and Catilina time and again. With the passing of time, the adversaries grow stronger and plans bolder. And only with a sharp mind can Cicero save the republic from descending into tyranny. And if Caesar has his way, the entire world would crumble.

Page after page of excitement, Lustrum never fails to amaze. And when Cicero has finally defeated Caesar in the courts, he breathes a sigh of relief as Caesar apparently has given up on his quest. Instead Caesar moves away to the border to lead Rome's army against his enemies. But the time for stability has only started when after a year Caesar returns being ever-victorious in the field and with much more power. With Caesar being consul, the laws that Cicero managed to implement started shifting.

And then Cicero's friend and Rome's greatest general, Pompey returns. But is he still the same friend or is he back because of Caesar, that my friends, you need to read to find out. As Cicero's fame wanes and Caesar's grows, the enmity between the two increases.

By the end of the book, you'll realize just how far can a person go for absolute power. Lustrum marks the rise and fall of Cicero. Lustrum marks the beginning of a new Rome. Lustrum shows the sin is never truly forgotten.

My Rating - 4.5/5 stars

PRICE - INR 309/- [Flipkart Price]

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A Week in December - Sebastian Faulks

A WEEK IN DECEMBER

ISBN - 9780091794453
FIRST PUBLISHED - 2009 
PAGES - 352
GENRE - Literary Fiction
BINDING - Paperback 

AUTHOR - Sebastian Faulks

BEST-SELLERS - A Fool's Alphabet, Birdsong, Engleby

SYNOPSIS - [From the back cover]

A powerful contemporary novel set in London from a master of literary fiction.

London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it — and party on as though tomorrow is a dream.

QUOTES - 

People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all. 

I suppose I was lucky enough to be educated at a time when teachers still thought children could handle knowledge. They trusted us. Then there came a time when they decided that because not every kid in the class could understand or remember those things they wouldn't teach them anymore because it wasn't fair on the less good ones. So they withheld knowledge. Then I suppose the next lot of teachers didn't have the knowledge to withhold.

FL Speak - A Week in December. Sounds appropriate since its December right now. But this had to be the longest week I endured. I simply couldn't finish this book in one sitting. or two sittings or three.

I've heard such great praise for Mr. Faulks to not pick him up again, but if his other books are anything like this one, I might have to skip. I'm not saying this is not a good book. It is.  It is a complicated plot of seven different people. Its kind of intriguing and boring at the same time. For me, it inclined a bit towards the latter one.

Its the modern world and these seven people are on with their lives. The story of the the Tube train driver, Jenny was simply beautiful. Addicted to online gaming, she meets Gabriel Northwood while travelling. Gabriel is another character in this book and as the pages fly by, you can almost expect to see those two together.

Veals, the hedge fund manager has probably the most boring scene. He's selfish and he'd do about anything to earn a profit. One thing that Sebastian Faulks does here is expose the blatant fraud scene in today's world. The story of the book reviewer Mr. Tranter was also uninspiring. He failed to be a hotshot novelist so now he writes scathing reviews about others (feels like me right now)

Hassan, a young Muslim lad, slowly started going over to the dark side. His story was infact a lot interesting. Despite his inclination towards being a terrorist, you can't help feel sympathetic for the lad.

There's another character, Veal's son, Finn who's more into drugs and stuff but I will skip mentioning him here. As a whole, the book fails to inspire you to finish it. I skipped boring parts (yeah, judge me!) In the end, its a satire on modern life, according to the Telegraph. The satire though, falls flat on a few occasions.

My rating  - 3/5 stars

PRICE - INR 590/- [Flipkart Price]

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Keeping Faith - Jodi Picoult

KEEPING FAITH

ISBN -  9780060878061
FIRST PUBLISHED - 2006
PAGES - 502
GENRE - Fiction
BINDING - Paperback

AUTHOR - Jodi Picoult

BEST-SELLERS - My Sister's Keeper, Salem Falls, Sing You Home

SYNOPSIS - [From the back cover]

When the marriage of Mariah White and her cheating husband, Colin, turns ugly and disintegrates, their seven-year-old daughter, Faith, is there to witness it all. In the aftermath of a rapid divorce, Mariah falls into a deep depression - and suddenly Faith, a child with no religious background whatsoever, hears divine voices, starts reciting biblical passages, and develops stigmata. And when the miraculous healings begin, mother and daughter are thrust into the volatile center of controversy and into the heat of a custody battle - trapped in a mad media circus that threatens what little stability the family has left.

QUOTES - 

“The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatly wrapped lies”  

“Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.”  

“This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder”  

“What's worse ...?The devil you don't know ... or the devil you do?”  

“If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?” 

FL Speak - Remember what I said about Jodi Picoult? Well I do. Do not pick her up unless you know you're going to be shaken to your roots and probably stay up all night wondering what the heck did you just read.

Well, I threw caution to my own advice and picked her book up. Again. 3 books in as many months and now am numb. A 4th book is calling me from the shelf above my head. So far, I'm resisting. So far.

What to expect in a Picoult novel? A broken family, legal stuff and a whole lot of unbelievable awesomeness that you cannot put down. The more tragic and complex a plot is, the more Picoult writes it better. In this, we have an ass cheating on his wife. Wife finds out and the guys moves out. Its here that the story truly begins. Faith, their seven-year-old daughter watches her dad come out of the shower with another woman. She's seven, she doesn't understand. But she knows that her mom is terribly upset. Few days later, she makes an invisible friend. Mariah, her mom is worried. [I would be too, unless the friend was a tiger like Hobbes]. Nevertheless, doctors assure her that a child may seek solace in an imaginary friend and it is completely natural. What's unnatural is when she starts reading from the Bible. Something, that she never read before.

Meanwhile, Ian is on a country wide tour disproving anything that has to do with God. And then he hears about little Faith who talks with God. A God who is a female.

Bam! People start flocking to Mariah's house. Mariah still tries to act normal until the day when her daughter brings back her grandmother back from the dead. One miracle after another and Faith starts showing signs of stigmata.

With Ian trying to prove it a hoax and her ex-husband, Colin trying to take Faith away on grounds of Mariah being mentally unstable, the mother-daughter duo must face a trial by fire and more to survive the coming storm. And maybe God won't be enough this time for a miracle.

Hell! I should stop now! Lest I give away any major spoilers. Let me tell you one thing though. Faith is utterly adorable. The last paragraph literally blew me away. I had to read it thrice! THRICE!! And I was still left shaking with goosebumps all over me. Read it! READ THIS BOOK!

My Rating - 4.5/5 stars

PRICE - INR 350/-

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Let's Pretend This Never Happened - Jenny Lawson

 

Book Specifications:

ISBN: 0399159010 (ISBN13: 9780399159015)

Published April 17th 2012 by Amy Einhorn: Putnam

Hardcover, 318 pages

Original Title: Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir)

Author: Jenny Lawson. This is her first book.

Here’s my fancy reviewer line to put on the book-cover along with my name: All the foibles and fallacies of a funny, f***-saying, freaked-out female in a package.

And don’t blame me if you go punch drunk and giggle when you hear ball-pop or anything like that after reading the book.*giggle*

‘Hilariously inappropriate’ (according to Marie Claire) is I think the best comment to describe this book in a nutshell.

The assortment of characters is pretty interesting and mostly unbelievable (just like real people).

You have a taxidermist/armadillo-racer/dead-squirrel-puppeteer father, a children- learn-and-live-through-risks mother, a patiently all-bearing occasionally crazy husband (make no mistake, this guy is fun...or must be, to bear all the antics) and a sister who’s dressed up as a chicken and best of all, an author.

And some taxidermied animals dressed up in cute costumes...the one on the cover is Hamlet von Schnitzel and I so want him...people who know where to get him, email me.

Don’t let the words memoir or autobiography on the cover put you off, not at all, rather this is the book you should be picking up even before that coveted copy of Bridget Jones(yes even if it is a sale).

After all, what can you expect from a person who is neurotic, polyarthritic, panic-attack-prone and has all the craziest things in the world happen to her?! I’m not kidding; the high point of her high school is sticking her arm up a cow’s vagina.

Yes. I know.

And that’s how I felt throughout the book.

This book is stuffed with oh-my-freaking-pants incidents like that. And it would be advisable to find a place where people don’t mind raucous laughing and choking and snorting because that’s what you’re going to do while reading. Really. I’m seriously worried about that look my brother gave me.

Jenny is only as screwed up as you or me plus a little extra maybe...she did manage to talk about a cow’s vagina during a funeral.

I don’t know what else to say for fear of ruining that first rush of gawky, chokey surprise when you read the book and not because I want to be the irritating reviewer who is all ‘lovely, beautiful, awesome’ and less story. All in all, a perfectly, hilariously, crazily, convoluted general knowledge autobiography (oh don’t be put down, Jenny explains why. In the end. And she’s a blogger. How cool is that??!link)

P.S. Don’t leave it open anywhere for your parents to find. Or your little sister. Or brother. Unless you know how to explain away cusses. If you can then it’s perfectly fine.

Rating: I don’t know how the scale works here but being one of those nothing-is-a-perfect-ten-ever people, I give it a 4/5 plus a big smile? hug? bookmark?...whatever you give a book for making you happy.

Go get it and pre-book the next.

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Lost Libido and other gulp fiction by Salil Desai

I have no idea what gulp fiction means. Is is the kind of fiction which is so awesome that it makes you gulp? Or makes you choke with excitement? Or makes your heart stop momentarily under the thrill it creates? Whatever it is, it is a potentially amazing, rather, fatally amazing genre of fiction to experiment with. And Salil Desai, in his third book, has done a marvellous job of introducing and promoting this new and curious genre of writing in the market.

I am still gasping from the effect the second last story of this compendium - called Lost Libido and other Gulp Fiction - had on me. I could talk about that one story at length, and of course, Cul-De-Sac, the name of the story I am caught under the spell of, happens to be my favorite of the lot. It is funny, innovative, creative, weird, weirder  and just so exhaustively awesome, that despite being one of the longest of this 17 story collection, I still wished it wouldn't end. I wanted it to give me more moments of hilarity. I wanted to see to what level the author's imagination could stretch. And stretch it sure can. Not so much imagination as wit and observation. Salil Desai, in this collection of short stories drawn from mundane lives of urban individuals has proven himself to be a master of both - wit, observation - and perhaps a lot more. 

Lost Libido and other gulp fiction is a book which single mindedly sets out to dwell on the darker side of humans. When Angel Lucifer was expelled from Heaven and given the unholy title of Satan, he vowed to keep extracting revenge from the most dear creation of God - Man. And he did not stop at the exit gate of Garden of Eden. He followed Man to Earth, and is almost as important an influence in Man's daily activities as God, or Goodness is. Only we seek to refute this obvious fact time and again. Salil Desai's book will not paint any heavenly pictures of human existence. It will not tell you how beautiful life is, how goodness always triumphs, how truth is consistent, or how love is the basis of existence. It will show you a mirror of your lives, our lives. It will tell you how an average individual, caught in the rigmarole of routine jobs copes up with stress which his confused existence heaps on him. People today, specifically talking of India (since this book uses urban India as a backdrop), are dealing with a life which is always in flux, where competition lurks in ugly manifestations and where desires and expectations often get the better of man. If anything, Salil Desai's book will break the image of a perfect world which you conjure, very specifically in a story interestingly titled - Our Friendly Neighbourhood Murder.

Each story, which finds a place for itself in this anthology, is worth talking about individually. Very few, if any, disappoint the reader. The only reason I had of being disappointed with a few stories was that with the first two stories, Salil establishes a high standard from himself - one that as a reader you fervently hope doesn't dip at any cost. I have said this before, and I maintain - In the mad pace of life all of us have adopted for running towards nothingness with, short stories are ideal breaks one can afford to apply when distractions are sought. Only, be careful of reading a book with as promiscuous a title as "Lost Libido" in public transport. Like I did on my daily journeys in metro. People stare. But that is also fun in a way.

So, anyway, this is a 3.5 on 5 stars book for me. My favorite of the lot were - 

1. Cul-De-Sac - Enough reasons explained above.

2. The Maths Conundrum - As a child, I had a horrendous time trying to cope up with the devil that mathematics was. I understood what little Nakul went through while being unable to cope up with the same, though I had no idea his predicament would acquire such tragic proportions. 

3. Our Friendly Neighbourhood Murder - Dark. Awesome. Brilliant. Leaves you asking for more. 

4. One Monday Morning - A whole family, spending its last happy day together. Why last? Well, read to find out. I only wish the ending gave me more. 

5. A Susceptible Conscience - This story is one in which all of us, invariably, will find an echo of ourselves in. How easily we convince ourselves, how easily we think we deceive the omnipresent powers - read this one to know. 

Book Details - 

Source - Review copy

Publisher - Fingerprint

Published - 2012

Price - ₹ 195

Pages - 288

Genre - Short fiction

Rating - 3.5/5

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