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sidgunti's review
4.0
If you like fantasy fiction - do give this a read. It gives you a rush of everything you like (Harry potter, Indian mythology, LOTR...) with a good story and loveable characters.
xoopa's review
3.0
After Reading the first Part of the trilogy, I was expecting too much from it but I understand that second part of any trilogy are a bit tricky. I was a tad bit disappointed with this book. I think it failed a little bit with handling the number of characters introduced which was done quite artfully in the first book. So the failure of this book is that it doesn't stands upto the stature of the first book. I am quite excited to see how all the loose ends (and there are many ) will be tied up at the end of the trilogy.
grimread's review
3.0
Sooo many characters. And yet almost all of them are lovable, which is a good thing when you have a book with many different settings at once. Because the feeling of just wanting to skip the chapters where your character of interest is absent, also isn't present. But all this can lead into much confusion if you don't pay enough attention, which can happen when listening an audio-book. No flipping back for the lost information, as you have no idea at what time it was.
I like how Basu manages to give the characters insight to situations so that they don't appear like some retarded puppets that are lead by their noses when you, the reader, know that they are being mislead in some unfair way. It is so nice to know that Kirin knows that Maya isn't the real Maya but knows exactly what he is doing. You are also free of the future misunderstood situations and other annoyingly obvious complications that usually come with this kind of comical or tragic plots.
I like how Basu manages to give the characters insight to situations so that they don't appear like some retarded puppets that are lead by their noses when you, the reader, know that they are being mislead in some unfair way.
kjcharles's review
Middle parts of trilogies are always tricky, with the need to expand on a created world and set off a new adventure while also creating enough unresolved plotlines to keep the reader hooked for book 3. This one plunges the reader into a whole lot of new characters and concepts that shed an entirely new light on the events of book 1, and not particularly easy ones at that, so it takes a bit of a while to relax into. Once it gets going the plot charges away, giving us an epic fantasy that is simultaneously its own story, a meta commentary on epic fantasy, and an affectionate mickey-take of many beloved genre tropes. The pseudo-scientific names for creatures are perhaps the worst puns I have seen in years, full marks. Also full marks for turning a throwaway gag into a crucial part of the climax about 400 pages later. That's *class*.
It isn't easy to write a spoof which is also a serious story in which we are fully invested in the characters. Nor is it easy to manage a cast this size, particularly not when a bunch of them take on other people's identities/have secret IDs. I whizzed through this gleefully, need a lot more of Kirin the reluctant(?) Dark Lord, and have book 3 cued up. A pleasure.
It isn't easy to write a spoof which is also a serious story in which we are fully invested in the characters. Nor is it easy to manage a cast this size, particularly not when a bunch of them take on other people's identities/have secret IDs. I whizzed through this gleefully, need a lot more of Kirin the reluctant(?) Dark Lord, and have book 3 cued up. A pleasure.
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