The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi

This is the first book in the trilogy of Shiva, a Hindu god of destruction.

The plot of book is a combination of Hindu mythology and author's imagination.

This book is about the migration of Shiva from Tibetan mountains to the plain land. He lands in the city of Daksha the king of Suryavanshi. The city is prosperous and it has its own culture of law abiding citizens who live peacefully preforming their responsibilities for the proper functioning of the society.Suryavanshi worship all the Hindu gods and Ram is their god who put the base for the better society and its management.

Shiva is a great swordsman and a warrior but he has his own nightmares.

The legend says that a Savior will come to Suryavanshis who will destroy the evil, Chandravanshi, who are their enemies. Shiva falls in love with Daksha's daughter and accepts that he will lead his soldiers in war against Chandravanshis.

Shiva makes a good war plan and executes it well which results in the victory for Daksha.

After win the Shiva doesn't feel like he had won something or the reason for war was right at all.

There is one more angle of Nagas who are said to be evil and have great powers and they are believed to help the Chandravanshis in their mission against Suryavanshis.

After the war Shiva realises that their was no real reason for war and Suryavanshis are only different from Chandravanshis but not evil. This leaves a big void in his belief. He feels sorry for judging the situation as it was told rather than trying to find out the truth. It leaves Shiva in the dilemma of things being right or wrong, evil or good. And who can decide what belongs to which category.

In the last of the book the Nagas attacked Sati and Shiva in Ayodhya and the story is left from their for the next part 'The Secret of Nagas'.

The book is fast paced and kept me glued to the pages till the end of the book and ends at such a note that you are bound to read the second book. Language is simple and expressive but the author fails to express the emotions of the characters at some places specially at the scene before war when Shiva makes a speech.

Another thing is that the author used the name of a god Shiva and his story and tries hard to show that he was just a man with extraordinary human skills only. But the characterisation of Shiva is like a dude. He speaks a cool language and jokes a lot which doesn't fit to a character like that. It seems like he has tried to create a character from mythology with a flavor of current language (lingo) and Shiva sounds more like a guy-next-door rather than a Savior.

The book is a good read and makes you go for the next book in the series.