An ancient desert city, mysterious ruins, the constant cosmic conflict between good and evil, a powerful but lost talisman that could affect its outcome, a young heroine yet to come to terms with her hidden abilities but thrust into the maelstrom, and the like - all these portend to be sparkling ingredients for an engrossing urban fantasy.
And fledgling author Sunali Singh Ranaa doesn’t disappoint with her first work, which promises to be the first of a riveting sword-and-sorcery series - with a unique Indian infusion but also a twist, as we shall see.
In ‘Whispers in the Cursed Desert: Inked in Blood’, the first of ‘The Enchanted Dunes Saga’ (Readomania/pp244/Rs 399), Rana, who happens to be an energy expert leading sustainable energy practices at industry chamber CII, spins the tale of Layla, a resident of the ancient desert city of Zephyria and beginning a graduate course in archaeology at a university said to be in Egypt.
While both her home city and her institution - and the people - are more than what they appear to be, she is yet to achieve closure over the disappearance of her father some years back, and the strange things that suddenly begin to happen to her. And the simplest - ostensibly - of these is a budding romance, but this also is fraught with complications for our festy heroine.
Revealing any more of the storyline may be a spoiler for interested readers, beginning right from the ominous prelude, the cliff-hanger ending, and the enigmatic epilogue, so it will be better to focus on some overarching trends about Ranaa’s saga. Urban fantasy has always been a fertile realm of literature, and well before the advent of the Harry Potter or the Percy Jackson (and its numerous spinoffs) series, but Ranaa, whose journey combines “her professional expertise with a deeply intuitive approach to living”, creates her own special brand.
Comparisons with the boy wizard’s tales are bound to be drawn, given the underlying theme of magic, parent-linked trauma, an institution where magic is not looked at askance, and even a rather singular teacher, whose name, approach - chocolate for the disturbed - and favoured abode brings to mind a popular Defence Against Dark Arts teacher of Hogwarts! (IANS)
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