Smorgasbord Fantasia

Vineeth Sreenivasan tries his hand at wielding the megaphone once again and this time, he’s struck gold. With this simple, endearing love story that has managed to get the youngsters mooning and starting to believe back in blissful olden days style college romance sans Facebook-SMS-Skype hype. Vineeth has set the cash registers ringing with this romantic movie, Thattathin Marayathu.  It’s fresh, maybe it’s a little dated and yet this laid back old school feel is what makes this romance count. Not to mention a mind-blowing performance by Niven Pauly playing the love-struck nair boy who is hopelessly in love with his “ummachi kutty” (local slang for muslim girl) and some fantastic cinematography that has captured the serenic beauty of local areas in and around the Malabar region, including the thalassery beach. And how can I forget, a brilliant soundtrack by Shaan Rahman that is the toast of the singing population in Kerala these days. Mesmerizing, absolutely bewitching tun...

Anthony Durham David is no stranger to history – Having gained fame through his historical fiction, “Pride of Carthage”. And this time around, he brings in his entire skills at historical fiction and momentous research skills into this new epic fantasy series – Acacia – beginning with the War with Mein – an wickedly fascinating fantasy tale with set in a wonderful secondary world, the scale of which I have never seen in a long time. Never have I loved a world so rich, so visceral, with back stories, histories and steeped in detailed folklores that vary from place to place within the Known World. The last I fell in love with the entire setting of a fantasy novel – was perhaps, Westeros or harking even further back, maybe the Middle Earth. The Known Worlds of Acacia comes very close. In its scope, richness and depth.  Not to say, it’s just the world-building that is master class in this book. Durham’s got it right when it comes to the complex characters, thunderous battl...

As the credits rolled past with the haunting “Batman” soundtrack developed by the inimitable genius, Hans Zimmer, playing in the backdrop – I couldn’t help feel sad. Sad that this colossal movie franchise has finally come to an end. And what a conclusion to one of my all time favorite movie trilogies! Everything that I looked for in a series conclusion.   Darker, more fantastic with the action amped up to beyond the “maximum” level, with a hero that your heart bleeds and cheers for. A massive, grim and brutal conclusion, but a satisfying one nevertheless.   What began with an eponymous low-key start in the “Batman Begins” took on spectacular mind-boggling proportions with the second installment, “the Dark Knight” that just blew the minds off people, taking the bar to an entirely new level. Nolan’s been known for his intelligent movies, movies that tickles your grey cells and of late, made on fantastic budget – huge beasts meant to boggle your minds and transport...

Australia has had numerous imports into the world of fantasy - Karen Miller, Glenda Larke ( Stormlord Series ) Rowena Cary Daniels comes from the same lineage of such illustrious authors. And this marks the debut of an ambitious series. I know I'm late to the party as this book came out a few years ago, Rowena has gone on to write some fairly explosive stuff as follow up on this one, making her a major figure in the fantays literay landscape but this definitely ain't gonna be on my A-lister. It's a solid effort no doubt and I enjoyed it to a fairly large extent. But I do have some reservations. Maybe blame the forces of Joe Abercrombie or some of the publishing houses like Night Shade Books that pack a punch with some noteworthy debuts that literally force you to drop very thing else and get sucked into them. So when recommendations on Goodreads mentioned this as a "Good Book" naturally my expectations were pretty sky high. Coming down to the book itself, ...

I had never heard of this novel – naturally as I do not follow YA/MG novels unless of course they are like hot-on-fire runaway international bestseller and probably has like five Hollywood studios fighting over movie rights ( The Hunger Games anyone? Or maybe…the Twilight saga?) So this came out of the blue to me – as Michael reached out to me to check if I was interested in reviewing his debut YA/Urban Fantasy book titled “Crashing Eden” – the hook was, how would it be if we regained Paradise? I jumped for it. Two reasons: a.   a.   This was going be my first foray into “Urban Fantasy” realm as I have not yet really been caught with that bug.   b.        b.This was kind of like the first ARC Copy I was getting direct from an author. A minor one, if not very instrumental, was Michael’s casual mention that the book also featured an “Indian” as a central character. It piqued my curiosity but I decided to play it profession...