Book Review - Arthla - Sangram Sindhu Gatha

I have received "Arthla - Sangram Sindhu Gatha" after a year of patience. Frankly speaking, I just waited to read some Hindi books from my favorite genre. Looking at cover or title I was not able to visualize what should be the story. Though blurb helped me trust the book and I tried it. Again blurb was also not exactly for this book. After reading the book I felt that blurb was written for the whole series.

Book Blurb

मिट्टी से घड़े बनाने वाले मनुष्य ने हजारों वर्षों में अपना भौतिक ज्ञान बढाकर उसी मिट्टी से यूरेनियम छानना भले ही सीख लिया हो, परन्तु उसके मानसिक विकास की अवस्था आज भी आदिकालीन है ।

काल कोई भी रहा हो - त्रेता, द्वापर या कलियुग । मनुष्य के सदगुण और दुर्गुण युगों से उसके व्यवहार को संचालित करते रहे हैं । यह गाथा किसी एक विशिष्ट नायक की नहीं, अपितु सभ्यता, संस्कृति, समाज, देश-काल, निर्माण तथा प्रलय को समेटे हुए एक सम्पूर्ण युग की है । वह युग, जिसमें देव, दानव, असुर एवं दैत्य जातियां अपने वर्चस्व पर थीं । यह वह युग था, जब देवास्त्रों और ब्रह्मास्त्रों की धमक से धरती कम्पित हुआ करती थी ।

शक्ति प्रदर्शन, भोग के उपकरणों को बढ़ाने, नए संसाधनों पर अधिकार तथा सर्वोच्च बनने की होड़ ने देवों, असुरों तथा अन्य जातियों के मध्य ऐसे आर्थिक संघर्ष को जन्म दिया, जिसने सम्पूर्ण जंबूद्वीप को कई बार देवासुर-संग्राम की ओर ढकेला । परन्तु इस बार संग्राम-सिंधु की बारी थी । वह अति विनाशकारी महासंग्राम जो दस देवासुर-संग्रामों से भी अधिक विध्वंसक था ।

संग्राम-सिंधु गाथा का यह खंड देव, दानव, असुर तथा अन्य जातियों के इतिहास के साथ देवों की अलौकिक देवशक्ति के मूल आधार को उदघाटित करेगा ।

Coming to the story part, protagonist of our story is Vidhan. But I feel that Dhananjaya, Sattu, and Vasundhara would be contributing to equal footing incoming parts. The country was under pressure. Manavas (specially Arthala) is under hidden attacks from Danava, Daitya, and Asura. Their previous hero was killed and his legacy came upon Vidhan. Not ready for big scale events, Vidhan followed mighty hero Sinhnaad to Arthala. Life changed for Vidhan once he left his village in pursuit of answers.

I would like to applaud efforts of Vivek for building this plot. Though Indian mythology is rich, he had taken names of clans and prepared story based of his own. So to mythological book lovers, Arthala is not a re-telling Mahabharata or Ramayana or Vedic Stories. Only familiar words you will encounter are Dev, Danava, Asura, and Daitya. Vivek has even conceptualized country names. So in terms of originality, I will give 5 out of 5 to the author.

Talking about characterization, narration style is the third person. And when the story of a person starts you will feel that the current person as a protagonist (be it Sattu, Vasundhara or even Dazan) Fight scenes' narration were also good. Till now I haven't read this nicely written fight scenes in Hindi novels. Description of various places and palaces were apt. You can even visualize them. I have divided book in three part. The begining portion was somewhat slow and it needed slight efforts to continue. The second portion was still slow but started becoming entertaining. And last 120 pages were fast and interesting. Will eagerly wait for next part.

Ratings

1. Cover - 3/5
2. Concept - 4.5/5
3. Characters - 3.5/5
4. Overall - 4/5

Book can be found at Amazon & Flipkart

Review from other readers can be found at GoodReads