26th Book of 2022
There comes a phase when suddenly I start reading books from a specific genre back-to-back co-incidentally. And mostly, this happens with the mythology/religious genre. I read Desai’s Mayabharata, Amish’s War of Lanka and now I completed Kapil Dabur’s “Krishna Series – The Beginning”. Even the next few books I am about to pick up are related to either Ramayan or Mahabharat. Anyway, let’s talk about Kapil’s version of Krishna story – the 278 pages book published by White Falcon publications. To start with, the cover page of the book is very serene and almost poetic displaying the image of Lord Krishna in his blue body playing flute with his closed eyes – The reason I picked it for reading.
This book, in particular, speaks about the life story of Kansa and how he turned from being a normal boy to a villainous character briefly. Yes, it’s less about Krishna and more about the evolution of Kansa as a big villain. Author has majorly tried to build a whole set-up to make us understand what kind of great figures Krishna fought in his childhood in unawareness and what kind of devilish-natured people like Kansa he would be fighting in the further parts of this series. There’s involvement of many other characters in the book from different regions of India who are all either ally or enemy with each other. How the message travels between all of them regarding mysterious things happening is nicely conveyed through the story.
The book starts slowly in quite a confused manner where it seems author found it difficult in order to how to begin telling this great epic story. He eventually finds the rhythm just before the 1st half of the book where he is able to develop few characters properly such as of Kansa, Vishwamitra, Sulochana, Putna etc. The book takes a good leap in terms of quality when the story of Kansa-Rati begins. I don’t know if it’s as per the epic or author’s creativity but I wasn’t aware of any such tale. Hence, it came out as a surprise and author’s portrayal of both of them meeting for the 1st time, then converting into acquaintance and finally finding romance between them is innocent and beautifully imaginable as a reader. All the other characters developed around them are treated well in this whole section.
The story goes into a flashback mode in between where Putna’s tale is been narrated as to how she turned into an ugly-looking person whereas once, she used to be one of the beautiful girls around the kingdom. Reading that story and also how, it impacted the life of Rati was chilling. Vashisht and Vishwamitra’s enmity and competition is also been highlighted every now and then – in the same manner as you can find in Amish’s Ram Chandra series. It’s nice to read the camaraderie and strong personalities that they were for their respective people. The Law of Karmic cycle is given a great prominence in the story and you’ll like its references and examples whenever provided. Similarly, the pre-climax and climax of the book are something where you’ll be excited as a reader because you know something big is about to happen and I liked how author ended the 1st part at the right place which gives you the feeling of fulfillment as well as excitement to read what would happen next.
Talking about author’s writing, I must say it’s written in very basic language hence the book can be gifted even to the children of 10 years and above. They’ll be able to understand the story easily. Rewriting an epic consisting of multiple characters and storyline is not an easy task at all. At some places, Kapil does a great job but otherwise, keeps on failing here and there. Like, the book is about Krishna, but he’s one of the least mentioned characters in the book. Even in the scenes where he is doing powerful stuffs, the scenes are not being narrated properly but completed within a page or two. Even his growing-up part has many stories which author has excluded and showed him grow from an infant to a boy so quickly that you feel disappointed as you want to read about him when you pick a book based upon him.
Talking about the drawbacks, I would say that the typos and grammatical mistakes in the book pisses off as they are repeated in almost every 5 pages. As I said above, Krishna’s development is not being portrayed descriptively which had a lot of scope to take this to a next level altogether. Similarly, the characterizations of few characters are left for the readers to comprehend. The start of the book is quite slow and scattered – not in an appropriate flow to hold your attention. The story of Krishna and the whole development pre-birth and post-birth is written on a very surface level without digging into the intricacies which could have made avid mythological readers like me find something new in the story.
Overall, I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 – and this is recommended strictly for beginners in this genre.
Thanks.
WRITING BUDDHA
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