Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

The Thirteenth Tale  By Diane Setterfield  Rating 4/5  Genre : Mystery, Gothic, Historical fiction, classics, Biographical fiction.  This is really good. A very successful and aging author Vida Winter calls for a practically unknown biographer to record her life history..which she hasn't shared with anyone..which if sees the light of the day could startle the world. Sounds familiar? Doesn't it sound very much like the backdrop to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo? Yes, but that's where the similarity ends. The past of Vida Winter is far less complex/twisting, has an appealing Gothic feel to it and the mystery gets quite unpredictable..it almost goes out of hand. One the downside, I felt the mystery is rather too simplified..although the reader couldn't have been able to predict/figure it, the biographer sure didn't have much of a problem unraveling it.. Vida Winter's past is a mystery. She concocted a different tale to all the interviewers that came ...

 Akhenaten : Dweller in Truth By Naguib Mahfouz Genre : Historical Fiction, Ancient Egypt, Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Biographical Fiction,2021-read Rating : 3.5/5 Akhenaten was a heretic king that took Egypt by storm. He with his wife had denounced all the existing gods and tried to establish a new religion with Sun God Aten as the supreme. Akhenaten made himself a prophet and priest in Aten's command. He created a new city Akhetaten where only Sun God is worshipped. He passed decrees ordering the  demolishing and closing of  temples for other gods(Amun) all across Egypt also stripping the powers of Amun priests. But his attempts to crusade for this new religion of "love,peace and equality" fails to sustain when internal strife in the form of civil wars and external threats in the form of enemy attacks rock the country. Instead of raising to meet the occassion as befitting a king, Akhenaten chooses to remain shrouded in his faith hoping "love" would conquer "wa...