BOOK REVIEW | THE IMMORTALS OF MELUHA BY AMISH TRIPATHI

It’s been a while I have been stocking books on my bookshelf to be read, and it was high time I should start reading those.

Being an ardent lover of mythological texts, I wanted to fresh-start my reading journey from a much-hyped book about the God I love the most – Shiva, and what better book could it be other than the Shiva Trilogy penned by Amish Tripathi.

This post is about the first book i.e. “The Immortals of Meluha“. Whoa! What a read it was! In short, just wonderful. I almost fell in love with the third-person narration of the story which gives a bird’s eye view about the events going on without hurting the religious sentiments of people associated with the characters (Lord Shiva, Ram, Sati Nandi, etc). It is a perfect amalgamation of philosophy, history, folklore, science, and mythology.

The perfectness of Meluha, the romantic love story of Shiva and Sati, the unexceptionable devotion of Nandi to his Master, brilliantly written scenes and battle tactics, and overall the Greatness of Shiva who treats every human with love, respect, and dignity. On one hand, it does not diminish the Divine image that Hinduism holds about Shiva, but on the other hand, successfully depicts Him in a human form with insecurities and inner conflicts when a huge number of people rest their faith in Him. It truly adds to the story and thus becomes a real page-turner for me. I enjoyed this one and recommend it to whoever is interested in mythological fiction from a different perspective. It is refreshing indeed!

The plot starts in 1900 BC where Shiva, as we know him as a God, but here depicted as a normal Tibetan tribesman, later declared as Neelkanth (the one with the blue throat) visits a strange near-perfect land of Meluha. Here he meets the love of his life – Sati ( the beautiful and independent Suryavanshi princess). He comes to know that he is supposed to fulfill a prophesy, to destroy the evil. The story engages the readers on multiple layers. Multiple scenes explained adds up to the fascination of the reader like the battle scene where Shiva declared Har Har Mahadev(everyone, who fights the evil, is Mahadev!, how cool is that) or the Scene where Sati was poisoned with Agniban and professed her love for Shiva or the Leaf scene where the Brahmin described Shiva as someone who emits positivity. What I found the most interesting among all these enthralling narrations is the philosophy of evil. I related to this at a different level. It says that evil is a subjective concept. One might perceive something as evil while the same can be considered sacred as others. Isn’t that so deep!

However, I felt that some more build-up of the character could have been done to the characters to enhance the details. Over glorification of Meluha and Suryavanshi’s way of life somehow slows down the pace of the book to some extent, but the latter half adds up to the story much more. The character of Shiva is portrayed in a way that one can relate him to movie actors who fall in love at the first sight of the lead actress, Sati in this case, and gets the love his while fighting all odds. Probably the cheesy romance adds up more to the story.

I would give this book a 4/5. You can call me little biased based on the fact that I am an fervent devotee of Mahadev, but the beauty of this story can only be felt when read!! Happy Reading.

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With Love,

Lax.

P.S: If you planning to buy the book, you can check them out from my Amazon Affiliate Links below:

1. Immortals of Meluha
2. Immortals of Meluha (Bengali)
3. The Immortals of Meluha (Gujarati) – Meluha Na Amartyo (The Shiva Trilogy)
4. IMMORTALS OF MELUHA
5. The Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas (Combo) (Gujarati)
6. Combo in Three Books : The Shiva Tirology – By Amish Tripathi. The Immortals of Meluha The Secrets of Nagas The oath of the Vayuputra
7. The Oath Of The Vayuputras (Shiva Trilogy) + The Immortals Of Meluha (Shiva Trilogy) (Set of 2 Books)
8. Meluha Mrutyunjayulu
9. The Secret Of The Nagas (Shiva Trilogy-2) + The Immortals Of Meluha (Shiva Trilogy) (Set of 2 Books)
10. The Secrete Of Nagas & The Immortals Of Meluha (Paperback, Amish Tripathi)

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