She by Henry Rider Haggard - Book Review

Publisher's write-up:

'Haggard's spellbinding She is narrated by Ludwig Horace Holly where Leo Vincey, an adventurer, is determined to investigate the death of his ancestor Kallikrates believed to be an ancient Egyptian priest. A 2000 year-old Queen of the lost world of Kor, had slain Kallikrates. After a rigorous journey to the catacombs of Kor, Vincey confronts the She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the white ruler of Amahagger natives.'

She is a Victorian era novel written by Sir Henry Rider Haggard following the success of King Solomon's Mines (click to read the review) focusing on the same them - lost world. A Cambridge man, Horace Holly is approached by his dying friend who tells him his family history; that his ancestor is a descendant of Kallikrates, an ancient Egyptian priest slain by the white Queen of Kor in Africa, who is in fact, still alive. A set of documents are handed over to Holly where he is appointed as the guardian of his friend's son, Leo Vincey and on his 25th birthday, these were to be shown to him and it is upto Leo whether they wish to go in search of the queen or not.

I felt the author created a very solid base for a great story to emerge, an ancient race supposedly ruled by a queen who has lived for more than two thousand years and of course, a great adventure that followed, in search for the queen. The author also gave a lot of focus to details, on the lifestyle of the indigenous Amahagger people and their customs and also the landscapes that they travelled along, in order to meet the queen. Amahagger were an interesting people, especially considering the author contemplated a matriarchal tribe during the 19th century, where children were seen as descendants of the woman and of course, they unconditionally obey their queen. I also loved the way the author described the sculptures and the architecture inside the caves of Kor and my favourite, was perhaps, the conversation between Ayesha (the queen) and Horace Holly, wherein the latter takes her through the last 2000 years in brief and how she is hardly persuaded by Holly's idea of morality and talks about the changes throughout the 2000 years of her life.  There was nothing noteworthy about the characterisation, except that of Ayesha, more so because she has got a lot to tell and yes, though she claims to be strong in her principles, ultimately, she seeks only the love of Kallikrates / Leo Vincey (his descendant) and is willing to do anything for it.

However, I have to say that this book was no amazing adventure for they manage to find the queen with relative ease (except certain minor setbacks) unlike his previous book King Solomon's Mines where they struggled for the diamonds. This was more of a love story, focusing excessively on the romantic sub-plot between an Amahagger woman, Ustane and Leo and also the mad lust of Ayesha (the queen). Moreover, one could always say that this book has to be judged by the fact that it was written in 1887 but then, I can't help but observe that the three Englishmen, Horace, Leo and their servant Job, were extremely racist and had an excessive pride of being part of the most civilised race (despite their record in the colonies) and of course, the conversation between Ayesha and Holly, the latter made a lot of remarks which could easily be construed as anti-semitic by the modern author. Of course, Holly also very proudly claimed that he was a misogynist and thus wasn't very comfortable with the customs of the Amahagger. One could argue that these weren't the author's personal views for the three Englishmen in his previous book, King Solomon's Mines, were a lot less racist and cooperated with the indigenous population. Considering Holly was the narrator, maybe they were his views but then, there was no need for him to be so much of a white supremacist for the plot didn't require him to be so. I also found the use of outdated language (thou, thee, etc.) for conversations carried out in pure Arabic (but not for pidgin Arabic) a little annoying, considering, the conversation is anyway supposedly translated, there was no point in annoying the reader with such usage. 

As aforementioned, this book is more of a love story than an interesting adventure but it could certainly be read once but might be a bit of a disappointment for those who have read King Solomon's Mines. To conclude, I would award the book a rating of six on ten.

Rating - 6/10

Have a nice day,

Andy

Storm Warning by Jack Higgins - Book Review

Publisher's write-up:

'It's 1944 and Germany is facing defeat. Across the wild Atlantic, dominated by Allied navies, twenty-seven passengers aboard the barquentine Deutschland are battling home.

Waiting for them are a U-boat ace captured in a desperate raid on Falmouth, a female American doctor caught in the nightmare of flying bombs, a gunboat commander who's fought from the Solomon's to the Channel and a rear admiral determined to get back into action. Allies and enemies, men and women, the hunters and the haunted all drawn inescapably into the eye of the storm.'

The Storm Warning is an adventure story with the Second World War as the background. A German merchant ship leaves from Brazil for Kiel, with a crew of desperate German sailors and five nuns who intent to return home at all costs. On the other end, Paul Gericke, a commander in the German navy is sent on a near suicide mission in Falmouth and ends up being captured by the British. Both these are disconnected stories till they meet at a particular point heading for an interesting climax.

Before getting too deep, I wish to clarify that this is not a thriller novel or a standard Second World War novel, it so happens that the main characters are military personnel and that the story takes place during the war; but for that, this is a standard adventure story than a thriller novel. Jack Higgins tries to reiterate in this book as well, that soldiers on both sides are compassionate humans first, which is more powerful than their hatred for the enemy (similar to The Eagle has Landed) and eventually, they come together for a common cause, beyond the lines of the war. In a way, I find that Jack Higgins is one of the very few authors who writes war novels without taking a 'black or white' approach to the enemy and identifies them as normal people with various dimensions to their character. The book was also reasonably paced and wasn't too long, making it easier to read.

However, I felt that the two plots were totally disconnected, and the book was in fact two separate stories till the last hundred pages where these two merge for an interesting climax. Owing to the fact that the book had two different stories, the author could not focus much on building the individual characters, including the principal protagonist Paul Gericke (who incidentally gets introduced only after 100 pages) and I even found his over-confident attitude a little annoying. The other side, the ship story had nothing particularly interesting either, considering they reached till Hebrides without any major hindrances and for the sake of it, there was a pointless romantic sub-plot between a sailor and a young nun (who is yet to take the pledge).

This is neither a great adventure story nor an amazing story based on the Second World War barring the climax and I don't think it is worth reading the whole book for the sake of a reasonably built climax which otherwise simply goes back and forth with too many characters that I was unable to keep track of more than five (on both the plots) beyond a point.

To conclude, I would rate this book a four on ten, which could have been lower had it not been for the last hundred pages.

Rating - 4/10

Have a nice day,

Andy

The Incredible Banker by Ravi Subramanian - Book Review

The Incredible Banker is a book in Ravi Subramanian's banking chronicles series. Incidentally, I have read its sequel, The Bankster (may access the review by clicking the link) in the past and was certainly one of the books from modern Indian writers which I have enjoyed.

The plot of this novel jumps across timelines, starts with the CEO of Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2) receiving a show cause notice from the RBI which the CEO perceives to be a witch-hunt against foreign banks following the 2008 financial crisis. The story immediately shifts back by two years to the mundane work environment at GB2, with Karan Panjabi, despearately trying to meet his monthly targets and Deepak Sarup, head of internal audit division and his rival, trying to sabotage the performance of Karan's department. In the mean time, there is also a romantic sub-plot between Deepak, a married man and Savitha, a widowed woman and a staff of GB2 in Karan's team. In the mean time, the plot also moves to rural Odisha and West Bengal focusing on Naxals (communist insurgents) mobilising their resources and weapons. The best of all is the fact that all these events are connected in some way and the author manages to keep the reader in suspense till the last page.

Usually the characters are the assets of an author in any story but here, the author didn't have them as there were too many characters across four sub-plots and even though Deepak would have probably been the most prominent, would certainly not fit being the lead. Thus, the only asset the author had remaining, to exploit was a strong plot and to be fair, he used it very well. The plot did move across different timelines but the author managed to maintain the suspense element essential for a thriller novel by doing that. Moreover, the crab mentality in the corporate world was portrayed fairly well by the author, as to how, more often than not, in a large decentralised organisation, individual interests often supersede that off the organisation.

Added to all these, I also managed to finish the book much quicker than I expected myself to, considering it took me less than 24 hours to cover a 300 pages book. As a corollary, I would thus say that this book is pretty much a page turner which is also essential for a thriller novel.

However, I cannot ignore the fact that I could not connect with any of the characters in the book and efforts could have been put into the same, even if it meant that the book would have been longer by around 50 pages. Since the author had put in no such effort into building the character, I found it really strange that towards the end of the novel, a 'girlfriend' of Karan is introduced who also happens to work at GB2 and provides him with vital information. Moreover, although this is something that I should be saying in the review of the sequel but since I posted its review way before, I'd have to say the same here - the structure that the author seems to follow seems too similar in both the books, various unrelated sub-plots and during the course of the plot, the author connects the dots.

To conclude, I would say that The Incredible Banker is a good thriller novel, and it was quite commendable that the author managed to maintain the element of suspense till the very end. I also enjoyed this a little more than The Bankster despite the fact that the sequel had a stronger plot; because of the fact that I read the sequel before I entered the corporate world and reading The Incredible Banker now, I could appreciate the corporate politics much better in this book and I am sure this book could be enjoyed by those working in corporates who have a love for thrillers. I would award the book a rating of seven.

Rating - 7/10

Have a nice day,

Andy

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - Book Review

Publisher's write-up:

''MANY YEARS LATER, AS HE FACED THE FIRING SQUAD, COLONEL AURELIANO BUENDÍA WAS TO REMEMBER THAT DISTANT AFTERNOON WHEN HIS FATHER TOOK HIM TO DISCOVER ICE'

Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where José Arcadio Buendía and his strong-willed wife, Úrsula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquíades excites Aureliano Buendía and his father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.

Through plagues of insomia, civil war, hauntings and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendía household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds... '

One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez is a story about a small village called Macondo and its founding family, the Buendías. Years ago, when José Arcadio Buendía marries his cousin Úrsula, she is scared that her children would be born with pig tails owing to the couple committing a 'sin'. However, their non-consummation of the marriage became a subject matter of ridicule that in a fit of rage, José Arcadio Buendía kills the man and moves out of the town, to start a new life in the new village of Macondo founded by the family, with their children.

This story goes through the ups and downs of Macondo, and the first half of the book has its focus on the second generation of Buendías. Macondo had very little contact with outsiders except the gypsies who occasionally visit them but eventually, they get in contact with the outsiders and subsequently, a Conservative Mayor is installed in the village by the government. Aureliano Buendía in opposition, leads the Liberal Revolution and the village is eventually ravaged by a civil war. However, the Buendía family has in its possession a set of parchments from the gypsy Melquíades and each generation of the family tries to decode the parchments.

To say the least, the author has created an impeccable story about the village, and how its founding family evolved along with it. I liked the way how the author took it forward, first the isolation, then the contact with outsiders leading to prosperity, subsequently leading to a strange plague and eventually, leading to a bloody civil war and then it was back to peaceful times and the eventual decline of the village. I also felt the author used this as an excellent platform to make a case for his socialist, anti-war ideas, brilliantly bringing out how Aureliano, though, initially fought for an ideology, eventually, the purpose was lost and he was merely fighting for pride. It also had elements of corporate exploitation in the village and how, if the corporates collude with the government, they could easily manipulate the events in their favour and erase their misdeeds from history. Additionally, the author, used the element of magic realism really well, to depict the adverse effects of each of these changes, and I found it very different from the way Rushdie uses the same, considering that in this book, magic realism was a lot more subtle whereas it is a quintessential element in Rushdie's book (incidentally, Rushdie claims this book is The greatest novel in any language of the last fifty years.)

While I felt the reader could connect more with the village than an individual character considering that the plot kept moving across timelines and generations, one character who is noteworthy is Aureliano Buendía, who has a strong sense of right and wrong initially, while joining the liberals but eventually becomes a commander who would do anything to serve his interests and finally, once the war is over, retires into obscurity, denying any sort of recognition from the government upon signing the peace deal.

I am unsure whether any of the events in this book actually allude to events in Latin America's history or more contemporary events but if they do, I believe the book could certainly be enjoyed more by someone who is familiar with the history of Latin America.

However, despite all these, this certainly is not a book for every reader, it requires a lot of patience. For starters, just taking the Buendía family, the patriarch is named José Arcadio Buendía who has two sons and a daughter, Colonel Aureliano Buendía married to Remedios, José Arcadio and Amaranta. José Arcadio (second) has a son named Arcadio who eventually has a daughter named Remedios and two sons named José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo. José Arcadio goes on to have a daughter named Renata Remedios who goes on to have a son named Aureliano.

The least that the author could have done is to have given slightly different names for each generation (but then, to be fair to him, he does use this element subsequently) for this led to a lot of confusion especially when repeated references were made to the previous generations during the course of the story.

Moreover, the book dragged on a little, especially after the civil war and the establishment of the Banana Company (the last 100 pages) which is probably a reason why most readers have this complaint that they're unable to finish this book. Since I don't understand Spanish and had to rely on Jonathan Cape's translation, I really can't comment on the ingenious usage of language by the author (incidentally, that is the aspect I enjoy the most in Rushdie's novels).

To conclude, I really enjoyed reading this book, one of those heavy reads over which I was satisfied once I was done with the book. My only regret is perhaps the fact that the I bought this book when the author was alive and in my book it states, 'He lives in Mexico City.' Alas, I couldn't complete it when he was alive but then, reading is definitely a great manner in which you could remember the Nobel winning author, the first ever from Colombia.

I would award the book a rating of seven on ten.

Rating - 7/10

  

Have a nice day,

Andy