War of Lanka (Ram Chandra Series Book 4)-Amish Tripathi

Book: War of Lanka (Ram Chandra Series Book 4)
Author: Amish Tripathi
Publisher: HarperCollins India

Do you like reading mythological fiction?

Greed. Rage. Grief. Love. Smoldering tinder, waiting to trigger a war. But this war is different. This one is for Dharma. This war is for the greatest Goddess of them all. Sita has been kidnapped. Defiantly, she dares Raavan to kill her - she'd rather die than allow Ram to surrender. Ram is beside himself with grief and rage. He prepares for war. Fury is his fuel. Calm focus, his guide. Raavan thought he was invincible. He thought he'd negotiate and force a surrender. The first three books of the Ram Chandra Series explore the individual journeys of Ram, Sita and Raavan. In this, the epic fourth book of the series, their narrative strands crash into each other, and explode in a slaughterous war. Will Ram defeat the ruthless and fiendish Raavan, constrained as he is by the laws of Dharma? Will Lanka burn to a cinder or fight back like a cornered tiger? Will the terrible costs of war be worth the victory? Most importantly, will the Vishnu rise? And will the real enemies of the land fear the Vishnu? For fear is the mother of love.

After reading the first three books in the Ram Chandra series and setting up the 3 primary characters upto the point where Sita is abducted, War of Lanka takes the story forward and the storylines merge to culminate into the war between Ram and Raavan. The primary plot of the book takes up where the earlier books ended and tells us the story till the immediate aftermath of the war. The story moves at a brisk pace, and while I felt that some parts could have been dealt with in lesser detail, the overall reading experience is good considering the larger picture. What I liked about the book was that Amish has written the story in his own element, taking creative liberties and presenting a human image of the characters. The tension in the plot is palpable, specially after experiencing it thrice in the previous books, and as with his other works, one is usually not able to predict the path the characters would take in the story, and the same happens for the most part, specially in the one where Lakshman needs to be revived. All said and done, the book has its share of issues that reduce the reading experience quite a bit, specially coming from a storyteller such as Amish. There is a major editing goof-up in the list of characters that needs to be taken care of on an immediate basis. Another issue that I felt the book suffers from is over explanation of points, at multiple times in the book. It felt as if there are engineers, doctors and philosophers writing the book, and not a storyteller, which was a major let down for me. Another issue is the over use of the phrase “net-net”, and being brutally honest, when I first encountered the term, it felt as if it was a genuine error, but its repetition makes the use deliberate, and while there is nothing wrong with the term or the characters using it, it felt out of place in this book and the setting it was used in. The war part in War of Lanka ended pretty fast, and I wanted a bit more of the Ram-Raavan conflict to persist in the battlefield.

Being written in a multilinear manner, the major character building happened in the first 3 books and there are no major characters introduced in this particular book. I liked the way Amish created Vibhishan and how he developed the arc his character took. Raavan’s character also impressed me in the manner in which he deals with the entire scene unfolding in front of him, and specially the way he kept the larger picture in mind in taking all his decisions.  Vishwamitra’s and Vashishtha’s characters are interesting and I sincerely hope to see an interesting arc for the two in the last book of the series.

Overall, the reading experience is good and if you have read the first three books, and the Shiva Trilogy, then this book will confirm some theories that the readers have had for a long time, but considering the trilogy, and the earlier books in the series, specially book 1 and 2, this didn’t meet my expectations from Amish, but I would still recommend you go pick up a copy as it has some very interesting ideas. The book scores a 3.63/5 for me.

Get your copy of the book on Amazon India or your nearest bookstore.

Check out my review of Raavan: Evemy of Aryavarta (Ram Chandra Series Book 3) here.