This is the first time I had read Ashwin Sanghi. To anyone who begins to read the book, it will be evident that there are lectures in every chapter on physics, spirituality and history. Some chapters are just entirely lectures in detail. Keeping it apart, the characterization was done by describing appearances, habits, reactive thoughts and past experiences of the respective characters. There wasn't much put into the formation of the character, to make the readers connect to them.
The events were explained as if they were thrown out for the readers to know the story with no way to feel. The endless information was excruciating. It feels like this is a non fiction book with some fictional characters appearing in every two pages. This might be good as a non fiction educational book rather than thriller or suspense- whatever the description claims. The information was unbiased but it lacked in authenticity. I was baffled reading about Brahmananda talk about some western scientists in the final chapters. His aim was to preserve ancient knowledge and he must have come across many books over his lifetime. Can't he quote some sages from the past instead of modern scientists. Vijay, who isn't an elevated soul has got photographic memory but the great Brahmananda can't rewrite the books when they are destroyed? It was lame for that character to join the hands of Minerva in exchange to protection of books. The reason which he had given-death is for bodies not soul-is utter hypocrisy. The knowledge must pass on. So does Dharma. There wasn't a single page that evaluated Brahmananda's choice on grounds of Dharma and Adharma. And the things about Ramayana...questioning authentic Valmiki Ramayana and pushing the story of 13-15th century book's translated version seemed selfish. It was done solely to justify that there are some divine powers associated with the object that is in the possession of a character.
Anyways, it was good to know a lot of things through this book. I have personally learned a lot and understood various perspectives to the given situations. There wasn't any discussion on Dharma.