Nagasravika's Book Reviews Blog

 The Chola Tigers : Avengers of Somnath  (The Indic Chronicles #2) 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...

 Down Among Sticks and Bones  (Wayward Children #2) By Seanan McGuire  Published Year: 2017 Page Count: 189 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Coming of Age, LGBTQ+, Vampires, Fantasy, Magic, Multiverse, Parallel Worlds, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 😀 Mind blowing. One of the very indulging and engrossing series ever! I couldn't put the book down, I had to finish it! Two twin sisters, raised by apathetic and unloving parents, travel to a parallel world (called the Moors) populated with humans, vampires, werewolves and drowned Gods/monsters, through a door in their closet. They are twins but they couldn't be more different. While one wants to be decorated with rich gossamer clothes, the other wants to be toughened with hard work and tomboy looks. They are brought up by their parents in a certain way but they throw cautions and rules to the wind in this new world. They choose opposite paths and spend a few years there. They don't want to ever go back but...

  The Voyage Home   ( Women of Troy #3) By Pat Barker   Published Year: 2024  Page Count: 320 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe   Genre : Historical Fiction , Mythology , 2025-read, Ancient Greece , Women Empowered, Murder, Vengeance.  Rating : 4.8/5 The main story - Agamemnon comes home,flaunting his ego, after ten years of war at Troy, destroying Troy and taking his share of war spoils. Before setting out for Troy, he callously murders his daughter Ipigenia, offering her as a sacrifice for the Gods, for fair weather. His wife hasn't forgotten this, despite the time that has passed. Agamemon's father, Atreus, has murdered and offered his brother's children as edible meat to his brother, to show off his power. Someone doesn't forget this either. Cassandra, his new concubine, doesn't forget the blood that flowed in Troy and all the children that are slaughtered by Agamemnon or under his direction. Its all about and about all these children and doing th...

 The Spacetime Pool  By Catherine Asaro  NEBULA AWARD WINNER Novella  Published Year: 2008 Page Count: 136 pages Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Multiverse, Time Travel, Fantasy, Magic, 2025-read.  Rating : 3.75/5  I thought her prose is good. It is easy to understand and flowing to keep me riveted. But she took some logical leniencies with the plot and didn't tie all the loose ends for me. I had many questions that had no answer and I felt a bit dissatisfied as a result. This book has two short stories/one novella and another short story - The Spacetime Pool and Light and Shadow .. both with elements of Science Fiction and the first with Fantasy, Magic too.  The novella The Spacetime Pool is really good .. I wished she expanded more on the story. A woman who is kidnapped by accident by a man from another universe finds that she is part of a 40 year old prophecy and that she can never make it back to her world alive. She becomes the object of ...

 Its Kind of a Funny Story  By Ned Vizzini  Published Year: 2006 Page Count: 444 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: Young Adult, Mental Illness, Clinical Depression, Drugs, Psychiatric Clinics, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 🌟 😎 😀  This story is so so relatable. It could easily happen to any of us. The world has become very competitive and there is FOMO among people for everything. Looking at others and comparing our life with them and wanting, craving things that they are enjoying has become the norm. This builds and places enormous pressure upon young people right from a very early age.  One such individuals is the fictitious main character in our story - Craig Gilner. He has studied real hard and made it into a very competitive school. Unable to cope with the pressure after entering there, he begins thinking in a loop - without doing anything - of all the study he must do for homework, all the things that he must do to finish the school bec...

 Whereever Seeds May Fall  (Seeds #1) By Peter Cawdron  Published Year: 2021 Page Count: 360 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Science Fiction, First Contact, Aliens, Horror, 2025-read.  Rating : 3.5/5  For the most part, this books is suspenseful and intriguing. Then there are some parts where it felt dragging and drawling. Reading near 60-70 percent, this book managed to put me to sleep multiple times. But I trudged through. This book is about a first contact with an alien race. An alien object is identified and a plethora of reactions erupt among humans. Some countries make hostile overtures while others prepare for safe and friendly connection. Conspiracy theories flourish and crazy ideas are bounced off of people from all sides. I thought a few redundant characters like Jorge and Veronica are added .. maybe to give on the ground reality but it didn't add any new information to that already known. Kath's character is given more importance ...

 The Warded Man  (The Demon Cycle #1) By Peter V Brett Published Year: 2008 Page Count : 416 pages  Medium Used : Kindle Scribe  Genre : High Fantasy, Magic, Sorcery, Action, Adventure, Demons, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5  This book is so so good. I was riveted to the plot and style of writing from the start. I have come to like a few characters and hate a few other .. all because the character development and world building are so fantastic. It is hard for me to believe that this is a debut novel by the author! Even now, as I write this review, some of the horror lingers with me. The three main characters are little older than teenagers and they are all as naive as they as brave, as wise as they are gullible and as loving as they are demon hating.  Enjoyed reading this book very much. I liked how the three characters are brought together and they unite against a band of these demons. I liked how the warded man evolves into his state of being and convinci...

 The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6) By Dan Brown  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 677 pages Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: Science Fiction, Consciousness, Thriller, Mystery, Prague, Intelligence Agencies, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 🥰 Brilliantly written. Until the end, I didn't see the twist coming. There is one suspense after another that kept me hooked. Until the very end, I felt like there are loose ends to be tied. And two major questions remain in mind : how did Pavel make it to the underground laboratory of Gessner without her keycard and access codes? How did The Golem survive the explosion without anything happening to his physical body? The rest all seems to fall in place seamlessly. Two scholars .. Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon are on a visit through Prague where Katherine was invited to give a lecture on her newly written(but not yet published) book about non local human Consciousness. At this point, i thought this book is riveted on the ...

 The Last Devil to Die  (Thursday Murder Club #4) By Richard Osman Published Year: 2023 Page Count: 417 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Mystery, Murders, Suspense, Heroin smuggling, Cozy Mystery, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 😇 Well, let's see. This book felt different. This is my first book with the author and the series. I remember starting book 1 in the series but not finishing it - due to some time constraints. Now that I have read this one and enjoyed it, I might give the full series a retry. There are many scenes where I would go over the sentence and come back to it in a blink like what the hell has just happened? There are multiple murders in the plot and some of them are revealed in regular chats and conversations.. like totally taking me by surprise. There are cops in the story but they are sidelined by NCA (National Crime Agency) looking into the murders and so these cops tag along with the members of a Thursday Murder Club. The Murder Club con...

 The City and its Uncertain Walls  By Haruki Murakami  Published Year: 2024 (English Translation) Page Count: 672 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Magical Realism, Alternate Worlds, Young Adult, 2025-read.  Rating : 4/5 This book has 70 chapters and until I reached 67, I was fully inclined to give it a 5 star rating. To say that Mr.Murakami botched the ending would be an understatement. He left many loose ends untied and unanswered. Some aspects of the novel left me totally combobulated and asking myself, what the hell is this logic? Where is this driving the narrative? I am fully sure that the author didn't come up with the plot framed fully in his mind before he started writing but went on building it up as his work progressed. Unlike his other books where I gave a similar low rating, it is not because of some cringy sex scenes or overwhelming smut that I am removing points here. I must be either stupid to look for logic in a magical realism sto...