Book : The Krishna Key
Author : Ashwin Sanghi
Publisher : Westland
Price : Rs. 250

The day I received this huge book, and thought about the review that I needed to do in the next 7 days, I looked and felt doubtful. This is an almost 500 page thick book, and a mythological book at that, a genre that I have been known to not enjoy so much! But so much for normalcy!

I sat down to read the book and couldn’t stop myself from wondering out aloud on almost every page about the kind of research that that author must have done to write the kind of material that he has! And even though he does state that this book is a mix of fiction and mythological reality, the facts in the book made me go Ohh and What and Really and I never knew this all the time.

The plot is pretty simple. Historian Ravi Mohan Saini is out to put together the clues that have been gathered from different archaeological excavations around Dwarka that will reveal and answer a lot of unanswered questions about the existence of Krishna, Vishnu and their other incarnations. But there is some one else too who is out to get this information and leaves no stone unturned and even turns into a serial killer believing he is the tenth and final incarnation of Vishnu i.e. Kalki. The simplicity of the plot has been covered up by the applause worthy blend of mythological history and fiction that’s impossible to tell apart.

The book is very fast paced and it is almost impossible to put it down. I really liked the way every chapter begins with an excerpt from the Mahabharata that loosely relates to the story. I kept assigning the characters from the book with the Mahabharata characters, but turns out that was never the author’s intent! The material in the book made me aware about a lot of mythological myths, facts and the knowledge that they were so much more technologically advanced than us! While reading the book, I almost felt like leaving all these cob webs of life and heading for Mount Kailash! But then, the book was over in 5 days flat! Yeah, its that gripping! And i headed backwards to writing the review 🙂

The content of the book is a winner, even though the long conversations between the protagonists about the history is very linear, almost like a sermon – delivered like a lecture. But it’s all so good that one doesn’t mind reading it. I will definitely recommend this book to everyone who loves a hardcore thriller, or mythology, or religion, or knowledge, or history, or any and all of the above!

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