Book:
A Year Without Summer
Author:
Shreyan Laha
Publisher:
Bigfoot Publications
What if what you are witnessing is not
real? What if every time you dream, you are transported to another realm?
A Year Without Summer by Shreyan Laha is based on this concept. The book is based in the
year 1816 when the Earth experienced a sudden downfall of temperatures. Kolkata
had frozen to its lowest of -15 degree Celsius, and widespread diseases were
common. Sharat was no exception and he had to quit his high-profile lifestyle
after his parents catch the disease. At the other end, in the year 2018,
Niharika lives in the best of times, in a modern society and has everything one
could wish for. Neither knew that fate had something else in store for them 6
billion years into the future, on a planet Nocturne which was ravaged by compounds
of an element called Barrenium. It is a tale of how stories and lives connect without
respecting the boundaries of space, time and dimensions.
The storyline of A Year Without Summer
by Shreyan Laha is very confusing. It feels as if the writer read up on a lot
of scientific advancements and then rammed everything to create a story. The parallel
storylines are incoherent and the connection between various stories is almost
nil. The story flits between the conscious and the sub-conscious of Sharat and
Niharika. Connecting various events of the book was quite difficult as well. Talking
about the science in the Science fiction of the book, it was more than the
story needed and it created a lot of confusion. The author did a good amount of
research to create the plot but that actually led to a lot of plot holes and
time confusions as to what was happening when and where. I felt that the climax
of the story was not up to the mark and could have been done a bit better.
The story has a lot of characters and that
actually went a bit on the negative side as developing so many of them was not
possible in this intertwining storyline. The author has tried to divide the
book into sections as to provide clarity on this but that is not very sufficient.
He has created a fantasy world, but connecting or imagining the characters is
quite difficult, hence the connect to the story gets missed out.
Another
point that I would like to specifically mention is that the quality of the book
is not what you would expect from a book placed in this price bracket. The cover
art is very blurry and does not fit into the story. The printing quality is
also of a lower quality which actually reduces the reading experience.
Overall, I’ll recommend it only for people
who are hard-core science fiction fans and can devote a very long time to read.
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