The Rozabal Line - Ashwin Sanghi, Shawn Haigins (Nom de plume)

3/5 stars

When I began the book, I had high hopes and many expectations from it. That's probably because I read Sanghi's third book before this one. My bad.

The one thing that characterized the entire 346 pages of this book is the overdose of historical and current facts and the innumerable characters that kept popping up faster than I could digest them. The entire story was built on snippets, constructed out of little bits and pieces that went back and forth on the timeline of human civilization so rapidly, it left me feeling drained - like a ping pong ball that has been whacked around one too many times by a ruthless invisible paddle.

Even the politics are too convoluted for simple understanding. He keeps flinging about international relations facts and throwing around political entities in a bid to make it more interesting, but in the long run it only leaves the reader scratching his head and thinking , "Eh, what now?"

Even so, this being my kind of story genre, I managed to keep up fairly well, but I doubt a newbie to historical thrillers would be.....well......'thrilled'.

Ashwin Sanghi attempted to make this - his debut novel - one stacked with mysteries of the past and conspiracies of the present, but in the process ended up cramming the story with too many tiny little sections dealing with continuing topics. This tends to be misleading to readers who understandably expect each section to have something fresh, something new for him to discover. It also gets the reader lost in a labyrinth of information and it's easy to completely lose the several threads along the way.

That being said, each section does seen to have its own little cliffhanger which compensates for the sheer number of partitions on the text.

I also have to say I wasn't too happy with the overall writing style. Especially when it comes to a couple of poems mentioned in the book, I would like to suggest that the author either brushes up on his poetry writing skills or stops dabbling in poetry completely. The childish poems allegedly written by his main mature characters are completely out of whack and at one point I had to physically stop myself from tearing out my hair after reading the infantile verses. It's alright to accept it though - not everyone can be a poet.

Thankfully, having read The Krishna Key, I can safely say that Sanghi's overall writing skills have improved drastically over time.

For his research skills, I have nothing but applause. He has plunged deep into every subject that he touched upon in this book and has consistently maintained the high standard of research and exceptional quality of information in his other works as well.

Overall, an entertaining read if you're ok with being drowned in facts, figures and characters; if you enjoy a thrilling journey across various swashbuckling, spiritual and mysterious moments in history and if you look forward to an enjoyable culmination of all the mysteries in one eye opening resolution at the end.

Happy reading folks!