The Chola Tigers by Amish Tripathi Book Review

 The Chola Tigers : Avengers of Somnath 

By Amish Tripathi 

Published Year: 2025

Page Count: 460 pages 

Medium Used: Kindle Scribe 

Genre : Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Mythology, Lord Shiva, Muhmad of Ghazni, Action, Adventure, Gore & Macabre, Good prose, Ancient India, 2025-read. 

Rating : 5/5 

Superb!! Amish has outdone himself with this flawlessly rendered love song to lord Shiva. With every page, he has offered his devotion and love to Lord Shiva. Although this story deals with foreigners desecrating the idol of Lord Shiva at Somnath, Gujarat .. it felt like that was only an act performed in isolation and it has brought together brave people from different cultures, faiths and religious inclinations together.. each praying and showing their deep respect and devotion to Shiva. A must read to every Indian who is proud of their heritage and who would be better off learning their past .. like the sage Shanakaracharya says at the end.

So the main story .. is Muhammad of Ghazni invades India in 1025CE and plunders, destructs the Somnath temple in Gujarat. He does all the gruesome and grisly things a barbaric ruler does to unprepared and unsuspecting victims - the people of Gujarat. He breaks the Shiva idol into pieces, takes it back to his country and puts the stones under the steps of his newly constructing Jama Masjid mosque. People visiting this mosque walk over the stone pieces under the steps and it is a mockery of the brute to hindu religion and their faith in idol worship. Whole of India is shaken by the news. Slowly with time, they build a team of warriors from the south Chola, Pandya and Chera dynasties to avenge the barbaric act of the Turks. Amish attacks this from both sides .. while showing the steps taken by the Indian warriors led by Narasimhan on their journey to Ghazni, he also shows the breach of faith and political intrigues happening in the Turkish Court where there are some in power who want the King dead. Its an amazing read.. both the forces and fate combine to bring the wretch down. It must be read and experienced viscerally..the end to the king is also very fitting .. hail shiva!! It is also a story of how Narasimhan overcomes his inner demons of guilt and remorse by doing the right thing. Not only by defending  his God, killing an evil man but also protecting the weak. 

Amish is on the point with character development. They seemed reasonably within the limits of human ability .. not larger than life .. they are all likeable and non-deviating from their described roles. The ambience evoked a sense of timeless, ancient, antique richness to people's natures, faiths, beliefs. It is not the modern world we are inhabiting now .. it is just older. The author has also cherrypicked several worthy, wise phrases from Mahabharat and quoted them in this book. He liberally uses words like Kafir, anna.. etc which are from other languages like Arabic, hindi, tamil .. and he offers the meaning to those right next to the usage which felt good while reading. I like to collect differ words from other languages. 

Must read!