Victim of its own Success - The Oath of the Vayuputras falls at the final hurdle

Staying true to some of the best selling fiction / fantasy series across the globe, the Shiva Trilogy concludes with a "just about there" final book "The Oath of the Vayuputras" that fails to match the level of its predecessors.

In part, I feel it was because of a complicated construct of the series that needed a closure on too many open story tracks and partly on the quality of work and success exhibited by the earlier books.

On this note, let me say here, in all fairness, that "The Oath of the Vayuputras" is not at all a bad read...but...somehow it takes the readers from a high of the previous books and suddenly brings them crashing down to the plains of banality and trite. Under a completely unnecessary urge to give a rational garb to all aspects of the story, I think Amish actually ended up trivializing and over-simplifying actions and concepts that were the key to this "high".

What I failed to appreciate was that why some of the key issues could not be left alone to the better imagination of the readers? After all,the readers does like and expect to get drowned in the shreds of intrigue and mysticism in a work of fiction/fantasy. The book kind of looses the plot here. Instead of leaving the reader in awe and admiration of "Shiva - The Mahadev", it merely leaves him as another warrior lord who's lost a lot in the battle.

A zillions words have been wasted on detailing out the war strategy discussions of each group of characters sidelining "Shiva" for chapters together. In fact, if you are observant enough, you will realize that most of the key battle happens without Shiva at the forefront. After waiting for the much hyped "battle of the centuries", suddenly you'd find Shiva missing from all the action in every key plot or battle and pursuing some other agendas that at times, don't even add much to the main plot anyways. And  before you know it, the war ends without much action and the story leapfrogs few years in future with Shiva leading an inconsequential life again.

I think, as a reader, I expected more from this epic "battle" and more so from "Shiva" which was not to be!! This was the most disappointing thing for me about this concluding book - that it did not give a befitting end to this great legend called Shiva masterfully created in the previous books.

None the less an excellent 1st attempt. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier reviews, Amish has produced a mini "miracle" in how Indian and Global readers look at Indian fiction / fantasy writing. That, to me, is the greatest accomplishment of this series and an incentive for all those who have not yet read it to go and indulge themselves.

I sure hope that more such awesome stuff will come out of Amish's pen and am looking forward to his next series in great anticipation.