AKASH MAHESHWARI

I am a huge fan of Ashwin Sanghi and the mythological fiction genre but I must say with a heavy heart that this is the weakest book of The Bharat Series. This book is more or less is like a physics class. After every 2-3 pages there is some theory regarding quantum physics, gravitational force, time dilation, and what not. Other than that there are so many characters with weird names and roaming all over the world in just a flip of a page. So it was so confusing and hectic to read. Maybe I am wrong but I think most of the readers will agree with my thought. One more thing I would like to mention that I've read the Hindi translation of this book and I am sorry for sounding harsh but Naved Akbar is the worst translator, I have ever seen. His translation is so poor and bad, not only in this book but in all the other books of Ashwin Sanghi. Avoid this one, and if you still are a fan of Ashwin Sanghi just like me; read the English version.

This book was on my wish list for the last 1.5 years and I was kept denying to buy it for no specific reason. Now after reading it, I understand that I have a sixth sense and that's too very powerful. So basically what attracted me to "The Secret of Palamu Fort" is its blurb and the cover. Believe me, I never bought any book just because it has an amazing cover but this time I got carried away. "The Secret of Palamu Fort" is a murder mystery. Where an extra intelligent omnipotent kind of detective solves the case. But according to the cover and blurb, these murders have some connections to a mythological ghost. If we talk about the characters of the book, they are as usual as any typical, cliche detective novel. An extra intelligent omnipotent detective, who knows everything, one or two sidekick(s) of detective, a policeman who is fan and friend of the detective, and a criminal, who try to fool all of them but fails. So this book is no different from all the other detective novels available. No character background for the main protagonist detective Robin Horo leaves the other side characters. Now come to the mythology part. This can be a spoiler if you are planning to read this book. This book has nothing to do with mythology except the Palamu fort of Jharkand, around which the entire story is woven. The writer could have used any fictional location instead of Palamu fort and that won't impact the story. The story of the Palamu fort of the Chero dynasty is just 10% of the entire story. The twists and turns, the revelations are not extraordinary. If you are a regular reader of detective novels or you watch detective TV serial you can guess each and every twist correctly, way before the actual revelation. So as for me, this book is a good read for new readers but not for a regular reader. You can go for this but don't has high expectations. This has nothing new to offer from regular detective novels. I am a little disappointed that with those Rs.260/-, I could have read something better. The readers from Jharkhand may enjoy this book a lot. I think they are the one who gives it 5 stars. P.S.: This is the first book of the author.

I thought a lot about how do I start writing my views about this book but I am not able to think any artistic or proper way to write my thoughts. That is the same thing happened with the writer. I mean if you read a lot of mythological fictions like Ashwin Sanghi, Ameesh, Anand Neelkanthan, Vineet Bajpayee, Ashok K Banker than just don't read it. This book is based on Kalki Avtar of Vishnu and we have hundreds of book on this topic with a lot more research and depth. But this book lacks both of them. The main protagonist of the book is having dreams half of the times.He knows that he is kalki because he had a dream about this. He knows all the secrets of Krishna's vault because he had a dream about it. His parents allowed him to go with a stranger because they also had a dream about that. The stranger meets the protagonist because he too had a dream about it. The protagonist producing fire, air, water with his hands in a combat. There are so many silly and unwanted things that does not make any sense. The author is new and this genre of mythological fiction is in trend. So he tried to cash this chance but seriously don't waste your time on this. It looks like this book is written for children. This is the first part of 2 books and I am not thinking about ordering it's second part.