Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Traveller: John Twelve Hawks

The latest book I have read is The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It is very obvious that it is a pseudonym and what a weird one at that!

It seemed to be a broad cross of The Matrix (with Keanu Reeves), where everything is an illusion and The One (with Jet Li) where there are multiple parallel universes (Realms as per JTH)!

The book was interesting in parts and extremely inane in others… The characters are not well developed though the only character I really liked was Maya because of her human frailty – if you will! Maya was an interesting name to choose considering that she is half Indian (her mother is Sikh) and Maya in Sanskrit/Hindi means illusion – which is what the author was propounding – what we see all around is nothing but an illusion, which is something that Hindu mythology has been saying for centuries!

The theme of the movie was Governments controlling the general population through Fear and this is such a beaten theme – I thought Michael Crichton did a far better job in “The State of Fear” and of course “1984” written way back in 1949 by George Orwell.

There are way too many organizations such as the Harlequins, Tabula, Brethren and none of them have been properly introduced – In a way, JTH is been a complete anti-thesis to Arthur Hailey who I have always felt, loses the plot because of the way he introduces his characters – he gets so detailed that you need to go back to figure out where you are in the story!

All in all – a very average book.

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