Great novel, but certain troubling aspects

It’s a fantastic novel. The depth and vastness of the subjects the author has covered is simply mind blowing. He has handled many complex threads aptly, not generally faltering, in most places. The suspense, the building of the story, the fast-paced narrative, everything worked for me wonderfully. I found the sections in which Kubha is trying to escape from the hasht bihisht very well written and convincing – perhaps that was the best part of the no...

Fantastic suspense and deft handling of complex topics

Overall, the characterization is generally good, there are many strong characters that we identify with in the novel, including Kubha, Parush, Afsar, Kratu. The author does an excellent job of building continuity from the earlier novels in terms of family, ancestry, relationships.
Perhaps a little more effort can be made to make the characters even more distinct. Shamsur seems caricatured and one dimensional at times. The characters do...

Remarkable hold over a big canvas, in terms of time, place, characters
It was a great experience reading this novel, which is quite an impressive feat. I can see how Sudipto’s writing, and his mastery of this particular genre, have evolved immensely since his first novel. It’s doubtless he has worked very hard. This is an ambitious project and his knowledge is quite phenomenal.
The strongest aspect of the novel is the way in which, drawing on his interest and broad canvas of knowledge, he b...

Authentic retelling of history

The author makes a humble but sincere attempt at retelling history as authentically as possible, without being driven by any agenda, either the leftist or rightist. The author has very boldly and nakedly told many things that many other, especially the so called liberal western media, intelligentsia and academia, would never have the guts to even accept – the one being the spread of the Islamic terrorism. There’s a tendency at many fronts to deny the role of t...

Ambitious piece of fiction

The novel, like its prequel The Ekkos Clan, is designed a lot like Da Vinci Code. Codes, characters, and mysteries are set in a labyrinthine pattern, sometimes aided by pictures.
Spanning across the civilizational backdrops of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, this is an ambitious piece of fiction, especially because it deals with rapidly spreading terrorism among educated youth in the subcontinent. In the light of recent terror attacks in Bangladesh whe...

All about the futility of radicalism based on religion

The essence of the book is perhaps to show the futility of radicalism based on religion or any other identity. When intolerance and religion based fanaticism has become a global problem, impacting everyone, the author tries to show the contrasting aspect of "Good" and "Bad" religion and how people could be manipulated to serve the interests of only a few devil minds.

The trigger for this book was perhaps the incidents in Iraq & Syria wh...

Amazing story of the unusual “carriers” of history

History has unique ways of preserving itself, even if it’s not chronicled. The carpet motifs have preserved history for many millennia, unknown to anyone. Indians have been traditionally bad chroniclers of history – the reason why not much can be vouched for about India’s ancient history. But humanity finds their own unique ways to keep their mark on the soil they had trod many many years ago. A real seeker would leave no stone unturned to ...

A very aggressive novel

It’s a fantastic read. The suspense builds up from the very beginning. With the number of threads running parallelly all along the narrative, and the deft handling of the complex disciplines like linguistics, archaeology, palaeography, epigraphy, mathematics, music etc, it’s no doubt one of the most aggressive novels I’ve read in the recent past. The amount of effort that has been put in presenting facts and figures authentically is indeed a commendable task. I would ...

3 star for plastic packing since it was torn nd there was dust on book.

It's just superb..After long time I got a book which was able to bound and mesmerise me..ordered another one from author immediately...