Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Book Review: Tantra By Adi: A Thriller On Secret Of Tantras: Demons And Vampires


Childhood of Adi seems similar to mine – while making others in home believe that I am asleep under the blanket, it would be an interesting storybook being read otherwise under dim lights passing through the blanket. Adi is a degree holder from Stanford University and Harvard University. But still Adi is quite impressed by the versatile religions and their existence in deep harmony in India. Probably that is one of the reasons that he picked India as the happening place in his first novel Tantra.

Tantra is an interesting thriller that strongly engages its readers - page after page, keeping them hooked onto the plot and thinking about what would be happening next. The cover image seems quite fitting with the theme and plot of the story knowing that the lead role is played by a female. Tantra is a word derived from Indian mythical and spiritual powers. This is probably first attempt from an Indian author on writing a vampire story and that too successfully. A sincere attempt of Indianization of a vampire story has probably paid back successfully to Adi.

It is Anu Aggarwal mostly depicted as having stake in her hand and is in leather pants. She moves from the United States to Delhi in India in search of Brian’s killer. Brian and Anu were in love with each other. While trying getting clues of Brian’s killers in New York she moved to Delhi after getting hints about her target being in Delhi. But while coming to Delhi she never knew the different kind of adventure and thrill she would be going to encounter in Delhi. She came with a mission of finding her target and destroying it completely to take revenge from Brian’s killers.

Anu decided to wander around in Delhi during night time so as to find out her target easily. During her hunt she encounters a vampire who is on a dangerous mission of killing children for a altogether different purpose. Anu meets Amit become two guardians of the city that is under danger of getting its innocent children getting killed by a vampire and no one has got a single clue about who is doing it and what would be the purpose behind these killings. Both Anu and Amit find a friend in Dr. Sharma who gives them knowledge about Tantras and Tantric activities being used by the killer in the city. Gradually they come to know that it is Baba Senaka – an expert Tantric who is applying his dirty tricks for killing children in the city with a special mission of his own. Baba Senaka turns out to be a powerful villain in the story who needs to be tackled in a very different manner.

A number of characters have been kept as less prominent in this book but might appear strongly and prominently in next series by Adi. Lot of terms related to Indian mythology and spirituality would be new for many readers. Keeping that in mind, Adi has taken care his readers, though encountering those terms for the first time, must get an idea on what those terms and make them quite clear about the same. Terms like Tantras, Ratris, evil powers, astras, balancing of power, maya and good (or satvic) power to encounter tantric power.


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