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April 11, 2004
REVIEWS: Mythology unlimited
“Bolvudis village, Togermonth 4th, 5 a.m. Muwi visions acted in 7, New spells learnt several, Warrior skills 3/10, Magic 8/10, Attraction for Asvin don’t know.”
I thought I’d picked up a warped version of Bridget Jones’ Diary or some form of role-playing game manual. Just fifteen pages into Samit Basu’s The Simoqin Prophecies and I am engulfed into another world — a veritable tsunami of literary, cultural and social allusions — Greek, Indian, Egyptian and Sumerian mythology, Alice in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, comic books, 1001 Arabian Nights; the whole nine yards.
Basu’s book is a terrifically fun piece of work despite its slow beginning and sometimes-frustrating melange of characters and races. Any fantasy novel worth the paper on which it’s printed deals well with the oft-problematic creation of a universe. Ursula LeGuin and Tolkien are perhaps the foremost practitioners of the art of world-building, but newbie Samit Basu has managed to create a fairly detailed world, populated with a dozen species from mythologies of different cultures, but each species with its own behavioural idiosyncrasies. This is, in and of itself, a singular achievement.
And where writers such as LeGuin and Tolkien can frequently become dull by virtue of their almost-obsessive attention to detail, Basu has managed to evade the issue by throwing in enough wry one-liners and puns to let all concerned know that he’s not taking himself too seriously. There’s a lot of inventive playfulness tossed into the mix: imps “Ortant” and “Oster”, a team of crime-fighting superheroes known as the “Hex-Men”, and a city named Kol, also known as “The Big Mango” (an amusing, magic-carpet version of the Big Apple).
Now for the book itself. In The Simoqin Prophecies, the rakshas Dark Lord Danh-Gem, who was defeated by a race of otherworldly immortals known as the ravians, seems to be preparing to rise again. The magical beasts have begun to reappear, the non-human races are conspiring against humans, the somnolent dragons of Xi’En (Basu’s version of China) are tossing and turning, and omens that predict the return of Danh-Gem seem to be plummeting from the sky like a rain of anvils.
Luckily for humankind, the ravian martyr Simoqin had prophesied the coming of a Hero who would destroy the Dark Lord when he rose. The Chief Civilian of Kol, the world’s richest state, hires spy/assassin/world’s-greatest-lover, the Silver Dagger to find that hero (or should I say Hero?). The Silver Dagger is perhaps one of the most entertaining characters in the entire story, despite his relatively infrequent appearances; a sort of James-Bond-meets-the-Last-Samurai-meets-Casanova character, he combines a nonchalant carelessness with a self-mocking seriousness that is hysterically funny at the same time as it provides a subtle undercurrent of danger.
Basu also gently pokes fun at the traditional fantasy epic, constantly referring to the protagonist as the “Hero” who must go on a “Quest”, always making sure that the upper-case first letter differentiates the main protagonist from his allies, some of whom are more heroic than one would expect. After all, allies in a fantasy novel rarely progress beyond either cannon fodder for the enemy, or as dramatic plot devices to enrage heroes and hinder villains in their nefarious plans. In The Simoqin Prophecies however, the same allies frequently wind up saving the hero’s hide, simultaneously providing him with much-needed disillusionment, as in the case of a Quest involving a sea serpent: “Most of the rescues in the legends were, Gaam said, either fictitious or pre-arranged, and hardly ever sheer coincidence or fact. In the end a grumbling Maya had let herself be tied to a rock while Asvin, sword in hand, prowled the beach. The fact that the serpent’s arrival had created a huge wave that had swept Gaam and Asvin far away and Maya had had to burn off her ropes and kill the monster on her own was, they all agreed, a best kept secret.”
The best thing about The Simoqin Prophecies though, is undoubtedly the manner in which it straddles (without ever really crossing) the line between being an entertaining fantasy novel and a tender satire on the genre. For example, one particularly wicked scene involves a boy who finds a lamp, which produces a huge genie: “‘My three wishes!’ said Hasan. ‘You will grant me three wishes, won’t you?’ The genie thought for a while. ‘Why?’ it asked. ‘That’s what genies do! Don’t you know that? Everyone knows that!’ Three wishes, thought the genie. What was he talking about?” Not only does the genie eat the boy and his camel, he remains thoroughly baffled. “What wishes? Why wishes? Another, very disturbing thought struck the genie and kept it awake for a long time. Why three?”
There are points in Basu’s novel at which one begins to feel that the length of the text is less for the sake of narrative progression, and more indulgent of the human tendency to simply show off erudition. Samit Basu’s book is important both for itself and for what it represents as “the first Indian science fiction/fantasy novel”. But when all is said and done, had the author been less impressed with his own wit and more inclined towards narrative development than epistemological meanderings, a sequel or trequel would probably have remained unnecessary, and the book could easily have been called simply “The Simoqin Prophecy”. It’s a good read though, especially for a lazy day.
The Simoqin Prophecies
By Samit Basu
Penguin India. For more information log on to
www.penguinbooksindia.com
ISBN 0-14-303043-4
505pp. Indian Rs250
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