Baramulla Bomber Reviewed

Blurb Of The Book:
An Ancient Weapon from the Vedas & Bible
Once Hunted by the Nazis
Powered by the Sound of the Universe

Reborn with the Help of Quantum Physics
Going to be Unleashed onto the World
And Kashmir Holds its Secret

Sounds quite intriguing doesn't it? When I first came across the book via BlogAdda's book review program, I was very much curious as to how can a plot be carved around such a diverse range? For Baramulla Bomber claimed to have one  "that revolves around Kashmir, Pakistan, China, cricket, ancient secret societies, and espionage". Well, the end result is bit of hopscotch.

Frankly speaking, the initial 20-30 pages gave me a headache. I hate chapters that start off in the middle of nowhere & then the next one too begins wham! in the midst of something else. Nevertheless having gone through that, I was glad the author picked up pace & did turn this into the racy thriller that it claimed to be.

Baramulla Bomber has a political backdrop with our neighbours China & Pakistan being involved, but of course. Not to mention the CIA. The ancient weapon is sonic in nature, one that had been used since ancient history. But now the secret of its use has been revealed to the wrong people who are planning to use it against India. I'd read about the spiritual power of the Hindu scared chant of 'Aum' but the author has given a much more detailed explanation of the same. The description of the beautiful land of Kashmir is what I enjoyed the most. Though this book does reflect the in-depth research done by the author, it somehow fails to do so in a clean, smooth manner.

Coming back to the story, Mansur Haider is the protagonist & unlike normal thrillers, we do not come across him until a few pages have been read. And even then we don't realize that he's the lead for  he comes across as just a calm, deeply religious human with a natural talent for cricket. I liked the way the others  like Samir-his best friend, Aahana-his girlfriend as well as Adolf-the Swedish intelligence officers Adolf, have been given fair amount of introduction & as much importance in the story.

To sum it up I'd say that this book being a debut is fairly good barring some typos, the lagging first few chapters that try to feed you with too much information that one can keep track of at a time & some rather far-fetched scenario(specially related to the cricket team selection). Suraj Prasad who goes by the pen name of Clark Prasad has done a fair amount of research into this &; you can see that the author holds promise as the book starts to get better at the end with an apt climax. Baramulla Bomber is the first of the Svastik trilogy. I just hope the next time Suraj Prasad would definitely cut down on all the information-cramming in the first few chapters. For now I'd give Baramulla Bomber a decent 3/5 rating. 

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