Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi

1 review

storyorc's review

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adventurous mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book has life and earnest moral exploration, but is not without its stumbles. It faces the dual challenges of being a debut and adapting a nuanced religious story with a mixture of triumphs and issues.

The triumphs:
  • Characters are lively and full of camraderie in a way that makes it clear the author was having fun with them. Shiva especially is so good-natured and earnest he is impossible to hate even when acting ignorant or short-sighted. Tripathi allows all his characters, even villains, redeeming features to humanise them.
  • An indisputable care for detail and research, as becomes obvious in the glossary at the end. From bricks to dress to blessing verbiage, a thousand small details add colour to the world.
  • The ambitious pairing of modern science and ancient beliefs imbibes the fantastical Meluhan society with its magical, unpredictable feel.
  • Sometimes it feels like only debut authors are willing to get messy with their morals. Shiva has done, and does things, that you could easily make an argument for condemning him by. There are also humbling moments where we, with Shiva, are led to consider why a culture might mark its unlucky members as outcasts, and how there might be circumstances in which begging is preferable to welfare. The book doesn't even necessarily condone these things, but it encourages good faith interrogation of another culture's practices.
  • Shiva's revelation in what respect for Sati's choices truly looks like is both shrewdly-earned and shockingly whole-hearted. I struggle to think of another man who commits so fully to that trust.
The issues:
  • The plot feels trapped by the source material at times. Modern storytelling structure is vastly different and difficult to mesh with the tutorly, meandering epic. Relationships go from 0 to 100, victory is never in doubt, and Shiva is always reacting, mostly lacking a clear, overarching goal.
  • The mesh of modern morals, science, and humour with the ancient is often jarring. Characters suffer from this worst; many scenes have a point where it feels like a director calls CUT! and the characters go from performing theatrical roles to the 21st century actors playing them. By frequently taking a third-person omniscient POV, the writing cannot quite unhook from its grandiose origins to manage a grounded, modern take and the marriage of both styles falls short of convincing.
  • A cliffhanger worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon. I hope the sequel has more faith in its ability to keep readers interested without resorting to that because this IS an unusual and interesting project.
  • Constant fat jokes for poor Nandi, who has proven himself to be a great physical warrior time and again. So close to being great fat representation yet instead feels weirdly mean and immature coming from the otherwise-thoughtful Shiva.

I'm not certain I'll continue my journey into Shiva's section of Hindu mythology via this series but I'm grateful for the colourful peek at it.
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