Sassy fantasy

It is rare to find good sci-fi or fantasy and even more rare to find it written in English by an Indian, especially such a young one. But a couple of years ago, that drought looked like it had come to an end with the publication of The Simoqin Prophecies: Part One of the GameWorld Trilogy, created by the 24-year-old Samit Basu.

Young and sassy, superbly melding Indian lore with western linguistic acrobatics to tell a story that occasionally dives deep into startlingly familiar waters like the Mahabharata and the mysteries of Stonehenge, Simoqin got rave reviews.

And it was no first-time fluke, as is evident with the publication of Basu’s second book, an intriguing story that launches off from the end of the first. Called The Manticore’s Secret, it continues chronicling the (mis)adventures of the heir to Danh-Gem’s legacy, the soon-to-be-crowned Dark Lord of Imokoi.

Like with his first, Basu sprinkles his second novel with sass and spice, telling the tale from different points of view and in different voices — Maya’s, Kirin’s, Steel Bunz’s, Asvin’s, the sexy ravian’s, even the Manticore’s — moving between each with ease and a sense of humour that is infectious.

In The Manticore’s Secret, Kirin has new enemies to fight. This time around, he has to deal with mysterious shapeshifters and lethal mind-controllers in a classic battle of good versus evil. The whole is made even more exciting — or deadly, depending on whose point of view the reader is listening to at that moment — by the presence of a beautiful woman who is not a woman (read: human female), but a rakshasi with morals that are…well…fairly dubious.

Kirin knows that “This girl is important, I can feel it,” he tells his friend and cohort, Spikes, “But I like her.” And, best of all, “She’s a very good kisser.”

Basu is a master storyteller, never letting go of the myriad strings he inter-tangles in telling his tale. But somehow, even through all the complications and convolutions, characters and their shenanigans, the reader is allowed to keep track of who is doing what to whom, and, perhaps more importantly, why.