Tarikshir: The Awakening by Khayaal Patel

Name: Tarikshir The Awakening
Author; Khayaal Patel
Publisher: Westland Books  2018.

I received a copy of this book through the BOOK GENIE REVIEW PROGRAM

Tarikshir: The Awakening by Khayaal Patel is a rare genre novel which is a mix of historical fiction, mythology, thriller, fantasy, and horror. First thing first. I have to praise the cover design first. Whoever picks this book at first, will surely be curious about the mysterious cover design. This makes every reader turn the pages to find it out.

The story was written as a mythological fiction at the beginning, but the tone quickly drifts into historical fiction after sometimes. After that, it changes between various interesting genres such as mystery, fantasy, and horror. This will make it a sure pick for all age groups.

In this novel, the author has connected two entirely different time periods which are Ramayana Period and another which is of the beginning of British rule in India. The hardness of writing historical fiction is you have to research a large amount to fill all the loopholes in history before connecting various historical events to frame a story. Throughout this novel, this wonderful effort of the author to craft an accurate historical fiction is evident.

The story begins in the Ramayana period, at the castle of Ravana where a Vanar Valikesh, of Hanuman’s vanarsena, finds a beautiful but dangerous gem in Ravana’s palace. It is the key to Tarikshir’s awakening. Tarikshir is the name of a dark entity which resides in the castle of Ravana. The dark shadow of this mysterious creature has created high-end suspense throughout the story and this is the main factor which causes readers would be hooked to the end of the story. Tarikshir has been hidden for years and his one true desire is to come alive and wreak havoc in the world.

The story then switches to the year 1826 where the Kingdom of Devangarh is under threat from the British India Army and their king Raja Ravindra decides to fight for their honor instead of bowing down. Suddenly the king is assassinated and Rudra- the young prince sets on a path to unravel the mystery behind his father’s death and other mysterious deaths happening all over the kingdom in the dilemma of ever-increasing threat of invasion from Britishers. The rest of the story answers the fate of Rudra and how all these events are connected. The end part of the story is well written to make sense of all the incidents from the beginning and it is unpredictable.

The language used is simple. The flow of the story is straight. Almost every scene is described to each inch which will be enough to form a clear visualization of the plot. If you are a reader who enjoys historical fiction, this will be sure-shot read.
Overall, the way of storytelling and plotting characters made this novel a good read.

 

Rating 4/5