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Book Review: Ashvamedha

'Ashvamedha' by Aparna Sinha is another meaningful addition to the fine tradition of contemporary Indian writing. It represents a worthy effort to give a spin off to an age-old tale of power-seeking. This is the story of Ashwin Jamwal, an honest IAS officer. His honesty and his dream to bring a change leads to him transferring to other cities. He then realizes that he would have to think of innovative measures to do good. He succeeds in his technique until he gets screwed to an extent that he has to resign. He then joins Politics and becomes quite successful. Instances of dirty politics and corruption are spilled over in the book. The story kicks off at an alarmingly fast pace and is laced with twists in regular intervals to keep the reader engaged. Somewhere midway amidst all the subplots which made sense eventually the pace of the story slackened only to pick up pace again towards the end. The biggest USP of this book is gotta be the topsy-turvy turns it provides in multitudes as a thriller.

On technical fronts, it goes without saying that the books coming from Shristi's stable are excellent and dirt-free. It's blurb is revealing of almost entire plot but sometimes the journey of a writer through the plot-weaving is more cherishing than the end result. Moreover, the readers have become very astute in their guesses of a plot-ending and very few writers manage to pull-off a surprising escape with their climax. Keeping in view with this development of a reader's psyche, this book manages to score impressively on points that define 'thriller' genre.

Ashvamedha has left me wanting for more of this writer in future. Best wishes to Ms. Aparna!!!

I shall assign it a rating of 3.5 out of 5.


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