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rubestar 's review for:
A Rising Man
by Abir Mukherjee
3.5/5 stars! The beginning part I'll admit took me a while to truly become invested, and even to the end I wasn't super intrigued by the whole mystery, though it was interesting, it just didn't grab my attention. Though I did like the end! I did suspect the certain someone as the pages turned, but it was still a nice revelation! Also I liked Wyndham and Banerjee as an investigatory duo, but I hope there is more focus on Banerjee in later books as he seems like a very cool dude.
Also the investigation itself seemed a bit strange to me, as certain important suspects weren't touched upon until a lot later in the book and it would seem to me that they should have been prioritised more, but I guess it worked better for the narrative? And Wyndham seemed to have a lot of breaks while this whole top priority case was going on, but that was perhaps just his character!
What I did really like though was the whole political side to it, and the setting of India in the 1910's. That colonisation affected India is no surprise, but I haven't read many works that focus on that topic so it was very interesting to see that. I also just really like when books tell the facts like how they are regarding British colonisation; that it was super shitty; so I throughly enjoyed those parts of the book where the superior morality that British people pushed was shown to be a complete and utter facade. The discussion of race was really interesting to me, and I thought it was fairly realistic of Wyndham's part, as he wasn't outright racist, which is nice, but he definitely was complacent in racist behaviour (and the book made no attempt to cover that up), which I would consider fairly realistic for the time. Crime fiction hasn't been known for being overtly political, and I think Mukherjee plays with that with Wyndham's statements about not wanting to be political and focus on the case, but it is definitely true that politics play a huge role in investigations, especially in this context, and I really admired the inclusion of that.
Also! I really liked the political aspect in terms of class too and the corrupt nature of the police force, bc it was hella corrupt! Also I didn't know just how awfully Indian people were treated back in the day, of course I knew it was bad, but I didn't know they were not even given a proper trial! Disgusting!
I also really loved the parts where they would talk about how Britain were like 'oh we're here to help you and educate you bc we're really superior and awesome' and then when Indian people were like 'o thanks, we've got it now tho, so maybe we should take on your values and stuff and become our own country run by ourselves!' and then Britain was like 'hmm, no! now u are bad bc u are too clever for ur own good, even tho that's the whole reason we came here in the first place :)'. Thought that was very good.
I just really enjoy colonialism being called out on it's bullshit, bc it was a whole heaping smelly load of bullshit!
So yes, overall, twas pretty good read! I might pick up the next one, but I'm not sure yet... we shall see!
Also the investigation itself seemed a bit strange to me, as certain important suspects weren't touched upon until a lot later in the book and it would seem to me that they should have been prioritised more, but I guess it worked better for the narrative? And Wyndham seemed to have a lot of breaks while this whole top priority case was going on, but that was perhaps just his character!
What I did really like though was the whole political side to it, and the setting of India in the 1910's. That colonisation affected India is no surprise, but I haven't read many works that focus on that topic so it was very interesting to see that. I also just really like when books tell the facts like how they are regarding British colonisation; that it was super shitty; so I throughly enjoyed those parts of the book where the superior morality that British people pushed was shown to be a complete and utter facade. The discussion of race was really interesting to me, and I thought it was fairly realistic of Wyndham's part, as he wasn't outright racist, which is nice, but he definitely was complacent in racist behaviour (and the book made no attempt to cover that up), which I would consider fairly realistic for the time. Crime fiction hasn't been known for being overtly political, and I think Mukherjee plays with that with Wyndham's statements about not wanting to be political and focus on the case, but it is definitely true that politics play a huge role in investigations, especially in this context, and I really admired the inclusion of that.
Also! I really liked the political aspect in terms of class too and the corrupt nature of the police force, bc it was hella corrupt! Also I didn't know just how awfully Indian people were treated back in the day, of course I knew it was bad, but I didn't know they were not even given a proper trial! Disgusting!
I also really loved the parts where they would talk about how Britain were like 'oh we're here to help you and educate you bc we're really superior and awesome' and then when Indian people were like 'o thanks, we've got it now tho, so maybe we should take on your values and stuff and become our own country run by ourselves!' and then Britain was like 'hmm, no! now u are bad bc u are too clever for ur own good, even tho that's the whole reason we came here in the first place :)'. Thought that was very good.
I just really enjoy colonialism being called out on it's bullshit, bc it was a whole heaping smelly load of bullshit!
So yes, overall, twas pretty good read! I might pick up the next one, but I'm not sure yet... we shall see!