The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
Published by William Morrow on 05/06/2018
Genres: Fiction, Dystopia
Pages: 492
Format: eBook
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When I came across Peng Shepherd’s debut work, I was foremost attracted by the mysteriousness of the cover of her book. There is no drug that can give you that much high than a book’s beautifully designed cover on which you set your skeptical eyes.

Imagine if you lose your shadow today, somehow. How will you respond to that? What will be your reaction? Will you overreact? Will you have thought that you have lost something close to you? The storyline of this dystopian novel toys with the idea of human beings losing shadow due to some vibe. This doesn’t sound creepy and weird at all, does it?

After losing the shadow, an individual’s memory starts to fade. For some, it takes weeks to be completely reborn in their mind for some, it happens overnight. I found this concept fascinating and dark enough if you think about it. The storyline revolves around multiple characters majorly Max and Ory, a wife and her husband who are trying to escape the Forgetting disease. Yes, they have the name for it. Heights of creativity! This Forgetting disease is spreading out like the plague and wiping the memory of all those who are affected. Until one day, Max’s shadow disappears.

Knowing that she will forget everything, Max runs away Ory refuses to give up on her and tries everything in his possession to find her before her memory completely disappears. The adventure starts and a series of events unfold. The history of the disease Forgetting is told to us, about its origin, whom it affected first and how it is related to elephants. Ory’s attempt to find Max is another adventure in itself that runs parallel to the background of the theme.

There’s a difference between when the mind forgets and the heart does. #BookReview The Book of M (Peng Shepherd
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Written from multiple POVs the book shows feelings and emotions of a being so intense that it gave me goosebumps in between. The overall theme of the book makes it interesting to dwell but the characterization is the core of this book. Everything revolves around them. The start, the ending and even the MAJOR climax in the book.

The writing style is mesmerizing and surreal. The genre of dystopia is well displayed here. The organization of the novel along with ever-changing narration is perfect. Various perceptions make it more thrilling and chilling at the same time. There are twists and turns that caught me off the guard and I am sure, on reading it, you will experience them too.

I read this book in two sittings in one day. I could not keep my hands off it. It is gripping, surreal and a delight for fantasy/urban fantasy/dystopian audience. The reason I am giving it 4 stars is that it could have been more mysterious. Sounded like Mad Max in the end.

4 out of 5!

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Indian writers creating the word of fantasy is rare. Mostly are busy writing of what happened in past, but Shweta Taneja’s Cult of Chaos— a fantasy sprinkled with the touches of dystopia is indeed an attraction to a reader.

Since the time I received the book, the cover meticulously designed, I knew this book will be a good one to read. To arouse my interest, I read first few pages and was amazed by the amount of humour used.

The story is set in Delhi and surroundings, which has been taken in upon by a different society. A society with humans as well as devas, asuras and more importantly Tantriks of different clans. They have their own council, police and justice systems. Each clan has its own set of followers but Anantya, a bright young Tantrist is taken in by the road to independence. She is powerful and lives life by her own strict moral code. Her glory lies in the help of humans and her own from where a new enemy has arisen. Incidentally, hell and chaos is just where the world is headed.

In Delhi, little girls are being sacrificed in a tantrik ritual. A desperate daeva is trying to blackmail Anantya. Someone is trying to call up the God of Chaos. A three-headed giant cobra turns up in old Delhi. The White and Red tantriks are facing off, and there is one or more Black tantric brewing some dangerous shakti (power). As Anantya struggles to stop the madness, the supernatural underworld – peopled with creatures humanoid, barely human and inhuman, comes alive in all its bloody, gory glory. If humour is not enough, the supernatural stuff touch might do the work for you.

The downside of the story is the Bollywood touch that author has experimented with, which after a point becomes platitudinise. Moreover, the momentum of the plot is lost somewhere in between at times because of it.

The setting of the story is what I liked the most. The reader who is familiar with city of Delhi will find it quite fantastic as much as the one who is not much familiar. Author has done her readers justice by keeping the language comfortable and inducing characters in the plot with the constant build-up.

3.5 out of 5!

Author’s Bio: Shweta Taneja is an author with a weakness for the occult, the eccentric and the oral traditions of Indian mythology. Her latest book Cult of Chaos is a tantrik detective fantasy based in Delhi. Find more of her at www.shwetawrites.com or @shwetawrites

Check out the book: Cult of Chaos, an Anantya Tantrist mystery on AMAZON or FLIPKART.

Check out the Guest Post she wrote for Confessions of a Readaholic: Five procrastinations in writing and how to strike them down

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Laura van den Berg’s debut novel FIND ME is a rare novel. You won’t find it on everyone’s bookshelf, and if you do, make a plea to let you read it, stop everything, and start reading. In this, you explore a dystopian future in which the major cause is an ‘epidemic of forgetting’— a disease that begins with memory loss and silver blisters on the skin.

FIND ME is a gripping, imaginative, with some grim fun elements, tale of a young woman named Joy Jones who is a grocery store clerk working outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past, when the epidemic starts. Abandoned by her mother in winter when she was a baby, Joy grew up in foster care and group homes. She is haunted by the original abandonment and by a series of disturbing events, some of which are shrouded in the mysteries of memory. However, Joy seems to have a single advantage. She is one of a small group of people who are immune to the memory disease.

Shortly afterward, Joy is invited to a former state psychiatric hospital in Kansas where doctors claim to be studying those who are immune to the disease in order to find a cure. She shares a room with a young man named Louis and in their group are two twins. Pilgrims appear outside the hospital windows. While watching television at the hospital Joy realizes that her mother is an undersea archeologist who hosts a television show called Mysteries of the Sea. She begins to research who her mother is and to imagine where she comes from, and what her identity might be.

The first half of the novel shifts between the present and the flashbacks. Characters appear and disappear as they do in real life without handing their reason of coming and going. The second half of the novel is a road trip as she travels through America to find her mother.

One thing that I like about this book is the van den Berg’s focus on the character’s life rather than the epidemic itself. The narrative is gripping, her words won’t let you go even if you are not reading the book. Well-written. This novel expresses loneliness in so aching and beautiful manner that you’d want to ignore the outside world and lie on your couch and spend time reading it. I find this book honest, highly addictive, and engrossing as the text of the book is enough to raise one’s curiosity.

FIND ME is here to stay longer in a reader’s memory until the fiction comes to life itself.

4.5 out of 5!

A theory on why stop remembering: there is a part of our story that we do not know how to tell to ourselves and we will away its existence for so long that finally our brain agrees to a trade: I will let you forget this, but you will never feel whole.

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