The story is simple.. Something that had come into (Lord) Krishna's possession and then had been passed down through the generations is being searched for by a descendent of a descendent of Lord Krishna..finding it is the story which is made interesting when the one who wants to find it turns out to be the villain and the one who is trying to find it before them is the hero of the story!!
Like every good book has there are few negatives in this one too:
1. Right from page #1 the story sounds like Da Vinci Code with an Indian touch.. It starts with a murder too of an important person (like Father Sinclair in DVC) by a hired assassin! Then there is Ravi Saini's intro where he is lecturing to a group of students showing some clips of archeological findings..rescue scene..then the bank stuff.. and so on.
2. For a bestselling author there are some silly typos which I have not seen before in other novels.. In places the character names are mistyped eg.. Instead of Radhika the name is Priya who is actually a negative character in the story.. Its like the story plays out like a movie in your mind while reading it and then suddenly Radhika becomes Priya and you pause the movie in your mind and wonder "huh Priya? Radhika right?" and then press the play button again :p
3. Its obvious that Ashwin Sanghi has done so much work in collecting so much details about Krishna, Dwaraka, etc, but he has tried to put it all in the book and it ends up with Saini talking so much like a chatter box almost non-stop.. If there is a find he starts chattering away with all the history around it.. There is just a hunch and Saini goes off chattering again.. Ashwin makes Saini look like a human Google+Wiki!!! Saini gets a bit irritating by the end of the story when he keeps saying "let's go back in time for a moment SHALL WE", Let's look into this in further detail, SHALL WE"
The funny part is Sanghi seems to know that readers are going to feel this and so at one point he says through Priya "Oh shut up and spare me the lecture....I'm fed up of your persistent whining..."
4. I feel this is the biggest flaw in the story: There is a Raja Mann Singh who inscribes something about where to find the 'thing' that Saini, SK, etc are looking for..the flaw is that the place (which is a monument) came into existence after Raja Mann Singh's time.. Even if the inscription was supposed to refer to the Tejo palace that preceded the monument, still it does not fit the details mentioned in the riddle such as the seven storeys and stuff..Still wondering how Sanghi missed this one!
Being the third book with anagrams that I have read, it felt like "not anagrams again" I even managed to guess that the name plate was an anagram :p
The story actually is like a number of pages of proof that Krishna was not a myth but a real person, an incarnation of God Vishnu...So much of findings and the author has put down I suppose everything that he found in the novel...Its more like teachers taking 10+ chapters of your 20+ chapter history book in one sitting, like they do before your final exams (it happened in my school and this is what i remembered while reading the book) But it is not boring... in fact i ended up googling the links given by the author in the references section. I was even wondering if we have magazines related to archaeological finds in india at least a yearly one to be updated with such finds..
+s: A lot of archeological updates, insight on Krishna, Dwaraka, etc, a novel purely that happens purely within India giving you a number of places worth taking a trip to titled "Krishna Key Route" (like the Da Vinci route) a crash course on Mahabaratha for ppl who have not read it before (like me) with the story given at the beginning of every chapter!
-s: If you have read Da Vinci before this you cant help comparing the two stories because of the similar scenes. The confusing thing about Mann Singh's inscription referring to a place that comes into existence after his time, the silly typos which make you put a brake to an otherwise fast paced story
Forget the similarity to Da Vinci Code and the silly typos, this book is definitely worth the time & money you spend on it :)
Personally I am all excited to finally to have some good novels (by Indian writers) about ancient India in my historical fiction books collection. Fact or fiction I am happy to be another citizen of India where a person like Krishna (The Krishna Key) and Shiva lived (The Shiva trilogy by Amish Tripathi).. Going to read more in this genre by Indian writers..
All in all this is a history book you won't want to sleep on :D I mean you its a fast paced thriller that you wont want to sleep without finishing :D
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