Deception Point by Dan Brown: Book Review

My rating: * and 1/2

This book’s a mess. And quite a big one at that. Just like his much-undeservingly-hyped Da Vinci Code, Deception Point takes a astrophysic-geographical premise and botches it up bigtime. Yes, like before, the author’s USP is his reliance on reader’s ignorance and appetite for thrills. He delivers amazingly on the latter account but the moment you question one “fact” and stop ingesting and believing every bit of tosh the author throws with a calculately asssured tone, everything falls apart–the facts about NASA, the facts about American elections, campaigning, country’s issues. Clearly, Brown’s promise at appearing to present us a well-researched book is, for yet another time, a big farce.

Yes, I do have to admit that the book’s extremely well-written for the first 200-250 pages (that is, when we haven’t had a full glimpse of his laughable premise). Sadly, once the cat’s out of the bag the graph follows that of any C-grade hollywood action flick and the kind of saved-by-whisker escapades we readers are made to gulp (not one, not two but hundreds–one after another) makes you first stop caring about the characters and ultimately, despise the book absolutely. In fact, the last 50 pages are so over-written and so unbelievable, that I had to glimpse at the first and the last line of every para to just finish this godawful book.

I just wish Mr.Brown stops being such a pseudo and uses his decidely well-honed thriller writing skills to better use. He has the potential to write truly fantastic thrillers if only he brings a little plausibility and stops being so over-sensationalist in every book of his. With his dimwit theories and imaginative conspiracies–he has done precious little above brainwashing ignorant readers.

Clear by Nicola Barker

My rating: *

This is one mammoth excuse for a book. The writing is downright atrocious– the writer makes a big pretence of being humorous by injecting side-comments in brackets in every damn line, which after a point of time makes reading absolutely impossible and really gives the impression that Ms Barker simply couldn’t be bothered. And in an attempt to be this central nutcase of a character– one gets to swallow lots of layman slang and swear words.

What really kills the whole book is the absolute lack of direction or motivation in the book. I picked it up thinking it would be a joyride peeking into the lives of thousands of spectators enjoying the David Blaine spectacle… but the observations by the author are so downright routine and so below-mediocre in sentiment, that I felt like tearing this book apart after 2 hours of reading. And don’t even get me started on the nitwitted, boring characters (esp a pseudo-philosopher called Solomon) and the pointless interactions between them–pages on pages are wasted on rudderless conversations. The book’s so outrageously and unnecessarily over-written, one simply doesn’t fathom exactly what is the author’s point?

Its really a shame that cr*p like this actually gets published and some critics actually deem this superficial piece of writing as innovative!

My take– don’t fall for the enticing blurb and cover. This is one of the most uninteresting, pretentious, senseless, shoddily-written books I’ve read EVER. An advice for Ms Barker–you desperately need a break!

City of Djinns by William Darlymple

My rating: ***

I was immediately reminded of Khushwant Singh’s Delhi as I finished City of Djinns recently and considering the former was written by an Indian and the latter by a Scotsman, City Of Djinns still holds itself quite strongly against Singh’s book. Being an Indian myself, I found Dalrymple’s descriptions and research behind each of the city’s buildings, forts, ruins, landmarks and milestones thoroughly honest and written in a genuinely enjoyable prose. In fact the author’s awe for the vast metropolis’ history and people touches a chord with the reader very early on.

Its written with a lot of passion, maturity (none of that prudishness or overtly judgemental tone that most travel authors adopt) and is edited brilliantly— which, despite its otherwise offbeat theme, makes it a page-turner. There were innumerable instances where, as the author walked through the ruins and tried to place the resplendent castle which once existed where the present ruin is, one gets nostalgic. Ditto for the times when he compares the now-predominantly Punjabi society with the pre-Partition Muslim society of the city.

Its certainly not the most comprehensive or exhaustive account of Delhi’s history (in fact by this yardstick, it even falls below Khushwant Singh’s book), but with his natural command for language and his ability to lend colours to parts of Delhi long forgotten or abused (esp Delhi’s connection to Mahabharata, Nizamuddin and Old Delhi), the author gives you a genuinely enjoyable, unpretentious, unindulgent memoir.

So for an uninhibited view of Delhi’s history– don’t look beyond Khushwant Singh’s Delhi AND City of Djinns.

In case I forgot to add, the cover of the paperback is a million times better than the shoddy and tacky one that goes with the hardcover (hell, even primary schoolbooks have better artist impressions of Taj Mahal!). Surely a book this good needed a better cover… to impress those millions of readers who still judge books by covers and I am glad the publishers have given the paperback just that.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

~~State of Fear by Michael Crichton~~

My rating: ***

It doesn’t take much effort on anyone’s part to do a bit of browsing and come up with solid proof from top scientific journals, coalitions and organisations that almost everything said about global warming is nothing other than hyped-up-for-monetary benefits speculation. Or, as Crichton puts it, its a politico-media-legal conspiracy to create an unceasing State of Fear in the general public.

Since I was completely sold out to the basic premise, this 700 page long romp turned out to be both entertaining, incisive and informative as the author rolled his concerns and facts in an extremely believable adventure-thriller format. Contrary to a very common criticism that’s slapped on every thriller’s face–to State of Fear even more relentlessly– is the “caricature-like”, “co-incidental”, “cardboard” characters but to me its outright hilarious to even imagine some detailed character study amidst the frenetic, tension-filled, fast paced, plot-driven narrative that SOF boasts of. Yes, they can be larger than life and vanish into thin air towards the end, but clearly if you want pages of dialogues of self-doubt or “inner” feelings, you clearly have picked a book from a wrong genre.

As the story of a philanthrophist who suddenly becomes suspicious whether his good intentioned and generous donations are being actually used for welfare or baselessly elaborate lawsuits, Crichton’s tried to experiment with the structure a lot in the first 200 pages, and the results, I daresay, aren’t always pleasant.

As stated out in the blurb, the first few chapters chronicling detached transactions of colossal machinery, cables and equipment are highly uninvolving and having a barrage of these freestanding sequences right at the start is indeed a big put-off. I am clueless as to why Crichton didn’t think of interspersing these static information-heavy chunks with the main storyline as that really would have gone a long way in making this otherwise fantastic book accessible to thousands of unforgiving readers who slam the book shut if they haven’t warmed up to the characters enough in the first 100 pages.

Even more frustrating is the constant putting-off of the actual conflict in the dialogue (e.g.”You’ll see”, “Just wait and watch”, “I’ll make you understand later… now just do as I say”)in these first 200 pages which make you wince and cringe, and which also means that the book takes longer-than-expected to take off. But once it does, it goes into such a freewheeling, wholesomely enjoyable mode that it leaves you wanting for more.

The graph reaches its crescendo not once or twice, but thrice as the protagonists (in particular, the philanthropist’s lawyer and secretary) and their side-kicks valiantly try to muffle three elaborate attempts by the eco-terrorists–melting icebergs, generating hurricanes and a tsunami. Each of these three missions are so crisply written and the sense of place, time, action, urgency and anxiety are evoked so accurately, I was gasping for breath on all three occasions.

But of course, to convey his concern and seriousness towards the whole issue of this “state of fear” we live in everyday, there are some very serious and plausible arguments between the characters, insightful footnotes, references, graphs appendices (especially Appendix 1–which takes a stab at the eugenics phenomenon in the last century, and a very effective one at that) — all conveying the utmost sobreity and genuine intentions of the author this time around.

The undercurrents of not following conventional wisom blindfolded, not believing everything that the tabloids and news channels throw at us everyday, the desperate need for an honest science and the dire consequences of amalgamating it with politics are all strong ones and if one can look beyond the narrative hiccups of the first few pages, adjust one’s biorhythms just a tad bit more and stick to it, I am sure this book will leave one feeling entertained and to some extent, educated.

So stop reading those unnecessary sensationalist Deception Points and godawful Atlantis Founds and rush to buy this mature and topical adventure thriller NOW.

The Hungry Tide

~~The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh~~

My rating: **

Though “it” isn’t anything quite a mystery for any avid book-reader, but still “it” has to be mentioned here. And by “it” I am referring to a section of books which are praised eloquently by the critics, have review stars or bestseller tags covering their jackets like badges of gallantry and yet when you read them–you keep feeling all through if there’s something wrong with you, if you are really missing a point. And then it finally dawns— the actual culprit is the book. That same godawful thing you have been holding for days wondering when exactly would you start enjoying it.

The Hungry Tide is just that–an overhyped, pretentious, unbelievable and terribly boring book.

My grouse with the book is that there isn’t a single thing that works in its favour. To start off, the book fails in the very genre it tries so valiantly to achieve–that of a mixture of character study and the adventure novel. To achieve anything in the former category, the characters have to be atleast believable enough. And to make them believable, I personally feel there isn’t a better tool than effective dialogue.

Sadly, that’s nowhere to be seen in this book–except for some stilted and decidedly boring pieces of conversations, there are reams and reams of flashbacks which read like some character-theses one writes to pass English Lit exams. And then, to fulfil any yardstick in the adventure category, the narrative needs to both be gripping and believable and though in the latter parts, there are some instances (like a sequence chronicling a rainstorm and tide-inflow) that can be termed as interesting, they are too few and far between to offset the flatness of the rest of the book.

Its grossly over-written too and the first part of the book (titled “The Ebb”) which stretches for a good 170 pages are definitely one of the most unexciting pieces of fiction-writing I have ever read (I mean how exciting is it to read a girl sitting at a boat’s perimeter and observing every movement in the scenery waiting for some bottle-nosed dolphin to surface or a boy reading some childish folk-tales left as notes by his grandfather for that long) .

Of course, I kept reading for I was curious to try out Ghosh (being a fan of Indian writing in English, he was one of the few authors I hadn’t read), but I don’t see any reason why anyone else should. Ghosh’s writing has got this “constructed” tone all through and not for a moment I got sucked into the conflicts or drama in this book (something that isn’t even remotely present in writings of Rohinton Mistry or Vikram Seth). Sure he can pen good English and has a knack for static descriptions but Hungry Tide’s a woefully bad way to put even that sole point across.

Overall, a thoroughly unreadable and uninteresting piece of writing with a pathetically cliched climax. Stay away at all costs!

PS: please don’t even compare this to a gem that Life of Pi was. I would have recommended this book highly if this was even a patch of what Martell’s work was.