After some romance and medical fiction I was
longing for some high adrenalin action read. Just then Tantra by Adi landed in
my hands. An Indian fantasy thriller is quite rare. So I was quite eager to
read it.
Fiction, thrillers are my favorite genres so kept reading it while
travelling on bus, at lunch breaks, and I don’t remember where all.
The Story
Anu
Aggarwal the New York girl has quite an interesting job – she is a vampire
hunter! Decked in her black leather outfit and carrying her ensemble of weapons
she lurks around at nights to hunt down the blood sucking vampires. Anu moves
to Delhi and joins Amit – a fellow guardian of Delhi (that’s what the world
wide vampire hunting organization ‘the center calls their lead vampire hunters).
Her
Delhi sojourn has an underlying motive – to find and kill the vampire who
killed Brian – her boyfriend in New York. However, after landing up in Delhi he
realizes the situation in Delhi is grave and people are at threat from forces
much more complicated than the vampires.
She
confronts Chandra, the leader of the ‘Vampire Panchayat’ (this is not how it is
mentioned in the book – that’s what I am calling it) who comes across as a powerful
& sensible vampire. With children going missing across Delhi Anu & Amit
seek to go deeper in their investigation when they stumble across Baba Senaka –
the evil tantric who desires infinite power. He sacrifices young children to
accomplish his tantric feat.
Will
Anu be able to stop the evil tantric? How will she fight Senaka? Who will be
the winner - the sattvic power or the tantric evil? You have to read Tantra to
get these answers.
Analysis
As I
mentioned earlier – fantasy thriller fiction is rare by Indian authors and
Tantra is a good attempt at that. To the contrary Tantra is not the first
vampire novel in India. Only other novel I have read on vampires set in India
by an Indian author is The Company Red by Shantanu Dhar. I have reviewed that
as well and you can read it here. I am not sure if there are others.
Adi
has quite nicely held onto the essence of Delhi – its street foods, market
places, and autowallah’s antics (well that’s not limited to Delhi only –
everywhere it’s the same story – Bangalore is just at the height of it I
guess).
The
first few chapters are tad little slow with of descriptions and the age old
story of seeking revenge. However, as you start reading further you get to read
the faced paced drama, evil Senaka and as the protagonists say ‘Voodoo mubo
jumbo’.
The writing
style is simple yet enthralling. However, I have to mention I didn’t understand
what this ‘shift’ was. It felt as if the vampire hunters become vampire like.
Only after several chapters will you get to know what this supernatural
power/technique is. So it was confusing at the beginning.
I
would be dishonest if I said I never felt it was going the Underworld track. And
when I say Underworld it’s not about the fight between Vampires and Lycans. The
character of Anu resembles Kate Beckinsale’s character Selene in many ways – at
least I felt that way.
The
description of Baba Senaka and his rituals, though good, brought an immediate
visual in my mind – don’t know if anyone remembers Ashutosh Rana as Lajja Shankar
in Sangharsh. He was very promising as this evil religious fanatic in the
movie. And this is what I visualized with the detailed description of Baba
Senaka. Well it could have been inspired from them as well and it’s good.
I
tried getting to know more about the author but could find only his FB page
even with the domain name www.tantrabyadi.com – is that spooky or did he not create a website at all!! I
don’t even know whether this is his pseudonym or real name.
My Thoughts
Though
it promises to be a good thriller it gets slow at portions and picks up pace at
other parts. I would have liked it even faster.
My Rating – 3.5/5
Book – Tantra
Author – Adi
Genre – Fantasy Fiction Thriller
Publisher – Apeejay Stya Publishing
Published in – 2013
ISBN 13 – 9788190863629
ISBN
10 - 8190863622
Pages – 335
Format – Paperback
Price – INR 195
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