PLOT: 2/5 CHARACTERS: 2/5 CLIMAX: 2/5 WRITING STYLE: 3/5 ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3/5
From the best-selling and award-winning author of Men and Dreams in The Dhauladhar comes another spine-chilling new adult crime thriller.
First things first, the book cover is innovative, captivating, intriguing, and captures the essence of the thriller aptly. The idea of blood dripping off the heart-shaped half diamond says a lot about the content of the book and this is equally reflected in the title.
At the very core of the book is the idea of keeping faith and the notion of being one’s beloved. It talks about loving someone wholeheartedly only to discover a completely different side to their personality that eventually comes as a shock.
Faith and the Beloved is Book 1 in the series and it is specially dedicated to the men and women who strive hard to keep faith in their loved ones. To create a sense of subtle foreboding, the novel also comes with a mild warning: “May your faith and love remain true.”
The book opens with the character Alice Cherozil holding a knife as she recalls the passage from the Bible about Jael. She is also contemplating the murder of her step-father who is fast asleep. With a firm determination in what is an otherwise gory and descriptive scene, she tries to murder Tony Dsouza, her step-father.
What follows is an action-packed scene full of drama as Alice realizes that she did not foresee a lot of things coming her way when she planned on committing the murder. Yet, in the end, she succeeds in killing him and runs away leaving her mother Naithy in a coma. The next chapter is all about Prem whose elder brother gets killed in a strange and unfathomable situation pushing him to know more about the murderer and avenge his brother’s death.
The third chapter is about Naithy followed by Kannan, Bhanu, and Prakash. Meanwhile, Prem is looking to kill Alice and her mother, but what arises is a set of questions about why are all these things happening to these characters. The underworld is how they get related to one another and this only complicates the plot further, setting into action a sequence of events that are bound to raise some eyebrows and leave readers wide-eyed and gaping.
The plot is gripping and highly entertaining though several tales are running parallel to one another. Further, many underlying themes and motifs are watermarked in each chapter. This makes the novel rather complex and also complicates the main thrust of the story. It sees luck, fate, and a set of chance happenings conspiring to bring together different characters from varied backgrounds to put forth their grievances and take revenge.
To some extent, the plot may seem a little impractical and even far-fetched. It works on the extremes of everything and is a little over-imaginative in its fictional narrative. Thereby, reminding us of the word drastic. There is an excess of everything which makes for a burdensome read. However, the novel is difficult to ditch midway because of its subtle semblances to contemporary international politics. The errors in editing, grammatical mistakes, and incorrect sentence formation need looking into.
The characterization is weak and the plot is crowded with too many characters who are each equally important and contribute to the conflicts in the novel. Neither one nor a few characters emerge as protagonists and this dilutes the main theme of the novel. This makes it seem like the story does not have any main theme, except for the happenings that intertwine these characters’ lives, and put them in rather difficult situations by getting them involved in national and international underworld activities.
The language is moderately difficult. The narrative is in the second person and is interspersed with dialogues that bring out the true colors of the characters. There is a generous use of cuss words throughout the text.
Despite the loose ends, twists, turns, and the severely fast pace of the novel with too many things happening at once, the enjoyable part of the novel is its descriptive style of writing. Also, what comes across as striking is the adage like sentences used every once in a while, – “Keep silent because the world of silence is full of vastness” or “Life always offers you a second chance, that is called tomorrow”. These are not just soul-stirring they also reflect the bountiful wisdom of its writer.
Buy your copy of Kochery C Shibu’s Faith and the Beloved using the link below.
