Here’s a guy who’s read his tolkien, read his pratchett, read his epics, read the arthurian legends, watched star wars and now written a book peopled with the varied characters he’s met and taken a fancy to....not a single idea, plot or character in the simoqin prophecies is the author’s own...consider this:
.....the geography...pratchett would be proud..kol is the discworld’s ankh-morpork, enki it’s unseen university, the hero school it’s guild of assassins and the fragrant underbelly it’s broken/mended drum....artexerxia is klatch and holy wood becomes bolvudis (surprise surprise - hollywood, bollywood anyone?)...middle earth’s mirkwood makes an appearance as bleakwood and imokoi is is obviously mordor
...the species...vamans-the beard and battle loving engineer dwarves from the discworld.... golems-the giant men of clay again to be found on the discworld...the ravians-the elves of middle earth who sailed into the west....asurs-while obviously inhabitants of our own epics also recall tolkien’s orcs
....the characters.... kirin- luke skywalker who has to wrestle with a fearsome truth, frodo on a secret quest....... danh-gem- meghnad, sauron, lord darth vader complete in his role as daddy to kirin’s luke.... asvin- han solo??? more style than substance but not without star quality..... spikes- chewbacca deadly to all but his chosen master, faithful sam to kirin’s frodo....... gaam- combines in his person both obi-wan kenobi and master yoda mantric- gandalf the grey....... maya- princess leiea without her gold bikini but armed a keener wit and a dab hand at magic....... chief civilian of kol- the patrician of ankh-morpork with a bit of gender reversal........ silver dagger- commander vimes of the ankh-morpork night watch, but of course
bottomline - ...the very least samit basu could have done was dedicate the book to tolkien, pratchett and george lucas...slyly inserting overt references to tolkien is not clever, merely pretentious... ’’there and back again:a rabbit’s tale’’?!!!!....the sphinx’s question ’’what have I got in my pockets’’?!!!!! why not call both of them bilbo and be done with it.....other people in the world apart from samit basu have read and loved tolkien and pratchett and if we wanted more of them we’d read their own books not samit basu’s confused, rambling book in which many fantastic literary worlds collide in ’’a tale old by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’’