By Rashmi N. Kalsie and George Dixon. Grade B.
A few days ago, we planned to watch a movie. I was expecting Pacific Rim, and was all excited to see huge monsters oozing out of some vortex in the Pacific Ocean and huge manually controlled robots mercilessly gutting each other. But due to a sudden change in plans, I was sitting in the theater and watching a period romantic drama ‘Lootera’. While my friends were still in their long undisturbed spell of cinematic juicy showcase, I was in reveries of colossal and eye popping CGI I could have seen in Pacific Rim. Honestly speaking, my discontent ruined a very accomplished film. Something similar happened with “Oh! Gods Are Online”.
An intriguing concept and a book authored by two writers who have never met. It made me pregnant with excitement. If you judge a book by its cover or by the back cover that gives you the synopsis, then you are reading a wrong book here. It give an impression of humor but it is more of philosophy. All the lead characters are present on the book cover: Christ known as Chris; Buddha as Buddy Roy; Lord Krishana as Krishana himself; and Old Nick, the God of misfortune, the antagonist of the story.
Chris is living on attractive coastline settlement of Clacton-on-Sea, England, periodically switching from human to God form when required. Krishana lives in poverty plagued chawl in Delhi and work as pantry boy in hospital, close to people in suffering. Then we have Nick, feeding on the greed of humans, inflicting mayhem on mankind, inducing people to do all the stuff our moral compass deems wrong.
There are aspects of book which make you smile and think. It is one part philosophy, one part satire, and one part fantasy – which we can say is perfect recipe for a good book, but most of it is half baked and tasteless. To be fair, a story where Gods live as humans and networking to each other via Internet aroused excitement. The concept is interesting but somewhere in its production it went awfully wrong to the point of irreparability. The writing style is flat and tone is slow which makes it pretentious philosophical preaching. It would have been easier to read if authors had chosen analogies to explain their message rather than bombarding the readers with lectures on transcendence, spirituality and morality.
Also ahem! The book has something for the Atheists too; Ati in the book is living on an island with his own set of followers. And if you are wondering who is Phil Cherry mentioned in acknowledgement and dedication part, then let me inform it is the pen name of the co-author George Dixon, which took me a while and bit of internet browsing to understand…
The characters are well developed, the concept is experimental and fresh but the most important aspect of book, the narration, is empty and shallow. The plot might work as an interesting short story but certainly not as a novel. Above all, bad marketing. The book must have its own class of readers which would be left out because of an incongruous synopsis and cover; instead it ended up becoming a victim of its own marketing disaster.
Originally reviewed at Vaultofbooks.com, a close-knit community of fanatical readers. We are looking for perceptive readers who can write well, and we are eager to provide lots of free books in exchange for reviews. Shoot us a mail at contact@vaultofbooks.com