Sunday 22 July 2018

Attack of the Ravens (कौवो का हमला) Hindi Novel Review

How fitting is the fact that the last Hindi novel that I read way back in 2007 was once made into a movie by sir Hitchcock, and now 11 years later, I'm reading another Hindi novel which is inspired to a degree from Hitchcock's classic thriller, "The Birds"!

Being an ardent comic book and novel reader since '98, I always try to look out for interesting stuff to read. When it came to novels, I mostly stuck with the ones in English language and if I remember correctly, the last Hindi novel I read was Robert Bloch's 'Psycho'. This was a suspenseful ride from the very first page to the shocking end, and was made into what is now considered the greatest horror film of all time, 'Psycho', directed by one of the absolute best directors of all time,  Sir Alfred Hitchcock. 

Ajay sir's promotion of his book on a regular basis on FB caught my interest one day and I decided to give it a try. When I heard about the flash sale, I anxiously started counting down the days but recently came upon a post stating that he had released the pdf of the book. I couldn't wait anymore now that the book was on the palm of my hands on my phone's screen.
I read it in one sitting in a span of 2 hours. 




The story follows the journey of a brother-sister duo and their laid back supportive father, who lock horns with a murder of evil crows in order to rescue their pet dog. The author has tried to inculcate a bunch of interesting facts in the story, so as to make the story even more engaging and informative to the reader, be it a curious young kid or an experimenting adult.

The chapters are short and don't seem to drag on unnecessarily, which helps with the pace of the story. The story is somewhat of a kid adventure tale that most certainly holds the power to engage an adult too, as it did with me. I used to read RL Stine's Goosebumps horror novels when I was a kid and the tone of this particular novel gave me a vibe of those stories, which were always a treat to read.

I especially loved the cover of the book. The evil dark crow amidst the dark bluish background looks stunningly beautiful.

Overall, I'd recommend it to Hindi readers to read on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I would also like to add that if you have kids, do try to give them this novel to read, as a kid would definitely love the light hearted tone of the story.

Although I've read the story, I'll definitely buy the hard copy in the flash sale because of 2 reasons:
1. The author has spent hours and hours promoting the book, and deserves something in return for this piece of art.
2. This is a kind of novel that one should have in their collection, not only to read themselves but to hand it over to their kid or even the neighbour's kid so that they can develop the habit of reading at an early age while having fun with it.