23 February, 2015

#BookReview :: Warrior by Olivier Lafont



In Mumbai, driven to its knees by a merciless blizzard, Saam the watchmender is cornered into an intolerable position. As Shiva's only earthly demigod child, it falls upon him to stop his indomitable father. Bred to war, son of destruction, Saam rides with six extraordinary companions into the horror of a crumbling world to face Shiva. He is forced to join hands with Ara, his half-brother he can never fully trust and take with him his own mortal beloved, Maya, on this desperate attempt to stop the End of Days. But his path is littered with death, danger and betrayal. Interweaving mythology, epic adventure and vintage heroism, this enthralling novel will change the way you see gods, heroes and demons.

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I will feely admit that the first thought that came to my mind when I read the blurb of this book is ‘Indian version of Percy Jackson’! Yeah, and given the fact that I do not love Percy Jackson (don’t judge me – but I find it sort of average) I wasn’t sure about picking this one up. But then a friend gave it a glowing 5 stars review (and we have quite a bit common in our reading tastes…) and it got me curious and I decided to give it a try.

‘Warior’ tells us the story of Saam, Shiva’s demigod child on earth, and his race against time to save the world from ‘ending’. We are first introduced to Saam as a watch mender from the streets of Mumbai. He is living a pretty ordinary life when the prophesied ‘end of days’ dawn upon him. He soon realizes that he is the only one who can actually stop it from happening. So with a group of six trusted friends and a not so trustworthy half-brother, Saam takes charge. What follows is an adventure of a lifetime that takes them all over India and come up against a formidable opponent as well. Will Saam succeed is the question.

With a somewhat slow start, Warrior fails to create the insta-attraction. But what is does is slowly creep up on you and take you in its grip. Once the story starts flowing, what we have on our hands is a fast paced, action packed on the edge type of novel that is truly entertaining to read. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised by this book and I am glad that I decided to pick this one up. The author’s language is refined but the novel has instances of Hindi slangs infused which are very occasional and easy to overlook. The narration style supports the fast pace of the book and has that smooth flow which ensures that the pages turn almost automatically. The characters are well developed and the plot is well laid out. While I still feel the influence of the Percy Jackson world in it, Olivier Lafont has done a great job overall.

A promising debut that ensures that I will watch out for more from this author.


Review Copy received from the Author

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