Scion of Ikshvaku Amish

Book review: Ram Chandra Series: Scion of Ikshvaku by Amish

The latest book from Amish is a significant improvement over the penultimate book in the Shiva Trilogy.The language is better, the characterisation is more consistent and the slip ups are fewer.   

This is a story almost all Indians are aware of and hence the opportunity to provide a story line surprise is sparse.Given the above, Amish does a good job in providing his readers with a few twists not there in the conventional texts.  However, Amish has missed the opportunity to give more colour to the antagonist character. Ravana and Ram still seem to be trapped in colours of black and white.

Significant effort though has been spent in creating a history and backdrop to the world which has some elements common with the Shiva Trilogy.  At times parallels with the current socio political scenario  in India are easily drawn and conversely there is an influence of the same in the story. Nevertheless the socio economic background created for the story is the true strength of the book and is what manages to draw the reader into what is otherwise a quite familiar story

Now for some nitpicking:While elsewhere in the book the text talks of two Sanskrit languages in use, later in the text the author drops in a whole verse in Hindi. Perhaps the spirit of Ramanand Sagar had its say

Overall this is a book you must pick as it plays it part in creating the backdrop to a whole new world of fantasy. The west has dwarves, elves, fairies, knights and trolls. The east now has divya astras, som ras, nagas and a world of lost science, knowledge, architecture, engineering, battle strategies, philosophy and codes of honour. A plethora of books drawing from mythology are now adding to this universe. Amish is one of the pioneers.