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Wisdom Revolution #1
The High Auction
In the near future, a machinist, a monk, and a mesmerizer are looking for the Source of the universe, but among the ancient scriptures, they only find the devil …
Few humans in the future find the secrets of what words and sounds can do, for the Apocalypse and war led them to evolve in mind and physique. Two of them end World War III with just a speech. Some say they did a mass-hypnosis. Others say it was their voice and will.
Fifty years later in South-Asia, KUSHA, a twenty-three-year-old machine-geek with social awkwardness and amnesia, tries to get the Devil’s Book with secrets of voice.
In a society that worships the evolved High-Grades with voice, how you speak and which words you talk with is important. As someone who finds all solutions in books, Kusha thinks the secrets in the three-foot-long, ancient book will teach her to speak mesmerizingly. She believes it will help her evolve. So, she decides to attend the auction where the book will be sold. But there's a problem. Her idol of voice and everyone's beloved war heroes, YUAN and RUEM, are also after it for power.
Few humans in the future find the secrets of what words and sounds can do, for the Apocalypse and war led them to evolve in mind and physique. Two of them end World War III with just a speech. Some say they did a mass-hypnosis. Others say it was their voice and will.
Fifty years later in South-Asia, KUSHA, a twenty-three-year-old machine-geek with social awkwardness and amnesia, tries to get the Devil’s Book with secrets of voice.
In a society that worships the evolved High-Grades with voice, how you speak and which words you talk with is important. As someone who finds all solutions in books, Kusha thinks the secrets in the three-foot-long, ancient book will teach her to speak mesmerizingly. She believes it will help her evolve. So, she decides to attend the auction where the book will be sold. But there's a problem. Her idol of voice and everyone's beloved war heroes, YUAN and RUEM, are also after it for power.
180 pages, Hardcover
First published July 21, 2021
About the author
Misba
7 books1,597 followersI could write a bio here--long or short. You won't know me still. Not in the way you could if you read things I wrote. But you can start here--from some of my articles. As for the books, Wisdom Revolution is out there.
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November 15, 2021
PRE-ORDER LINKS are finally here! ^_^
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z/
(Alt Cover edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB
[***Keep a lookout for the physical ARCs after 21st July!***]
I wanted to post a few pages from the first chapter of Ruem, the Mesmerizer. So, here it is .... I will try to italicize the needed parts as much as I can. To see the full chapter in the proper format, check my blog.
CHAPTER: THE MESMERIZER
“NEVER PUNCTUAL!” Ruem mutters, not checking the time. He never checks the time. He never will. A mesmerizer’s mind is like a clock. It devours others’ perception of pause but not his own. Still, how could that Monk lose his sense of time? How can someone waste a moment?
Ruem calms his breath, all his muscles vigilant. For a long time, he doesn’t blink. It’s not an absolute requisite.
The vapor from the river passes through the rusted, uprooted, century-old cellphone tower. Cellphones stopped existing way before the war when everyone needed cautious communication. Ether-coms ruled then, for the secrecy they offered. They still would rule if the New World Government hadn’t imposed the CRAB on its citizens. Ruem touches the CRAB in his wrist: a hybrid of platinum beads and biological cells—a bio-computer. A silent, secret seer.
Standing at the edge of the river and closing his eyes, Ruem inhales the night’s air—the scents of rust, grass, dry leaves, wet stones, and time. Mostly time. Even time can be smelled and seen if you are observant, if you know how to smell the abstract. And if you do, you risk exposure to a certain addiction. The addiction to smell.
Ruem brushes the air, his hands at his sides, his fingers open. You would think he’s touching flowers as he walks, but there’s no flower. His fingers touch only the abstract.
Is there a word that defines smelling through the skin? No? Then make one. Even if you do make one, you can never do the action; you can never feel it. Let’s say it’s his special smelling.
Right now, Ruem Drohung smells with his nose, with his skin, with his fingertips and tongue, with the entirety of his being. The snakes smell of mating vigor. The sand-bed deep beneath the river smells of the path it traveled from the Himalayas. The mushrooms, the moss, and the shattered bricks smell of rain. Tropical rain—he never got used to it even after living here for ninety years. From a distant time, he recalls snow, iced lakes, and skiing. He doesn’t remember with whom, but he’s sure he needed to bend his neck upward—at least sixty degrees—to look at that person.
The wind blows his blood-red hair away from his muscled neck and sharp cheekbones. A grey waistcoat and a white shirt hide his constructed skin and flesh. There’s also a hat. He wears a hat as if it’d fly off in a little wind, but it doesn’t, of course, for the usual Grade-A-human reason. A ninety-nine-year-old man in an ageless body, playing the Moonlight Sonata 1st Movement in his mind, while he waits for his childhood friend.
* * *
SIX MINUTES RUNNING, and the Monk isn’t here yet.
Ruem puts his hands in his pockets. Measured paces take him to a narrow street. Those broken buildings once might’ve been shopping malls, street bars, cafes, or gyms; now they’re nothing. His evolved vision darts sharp as ever beneath his hat. But a beast depends more on hearing and smell. In the moonlit night, he senses the mantis his shoe is about to crush. His foot doesn’t finish the step though, letting it pass.
A life flourishing to fulfill its drive deserves to live.
Ruem squints, skeptical of what he hears. Voices, at first subtle, grow louder when he focuses. The classical music playing in his mind gets spoiled by laughter and cursing. Bandits—Ungraded, or at best, Grade E, if they’re citizens who cannot afford living inside a city—a typical Junk Land.
The Mesmerizer’s eyes flash in the moonlight beneath his hat’s sharp edge. An unexpected chance to enjoy the time! All his ecstasy seeks release from restraint. Oh! The nonsensically necessary restraint … The war hero, the Mesmerizer, one of the voices in the admin board, cannot let his madness loose, can he? His footsteps grind the rubble. Drunken voices growing louder, more vulgar. The place is surrounded by broken buildings. Chunks of concrete missing, shattered windows, rubble on the road, ferns and weeds breaking through the slits, and a torn iron-gate at the end. The sparkling river, visible through it, is the only unharmed song of nature.
The rest, however, is chaos.
Here only remains the scent of humanity: cheap stimulant liquids, some syringes, drugs, rotten meat and maggot-infested dead animals men feasted on days ago. Human fluids smell like the unclean cages of beasts in the small-town zoo Ruem remembers visiting once. “Always leave a mark, don’t you?” he mutters. Untouchables—their aura diminishing like smoke. How do these vile things live with such poor prana? No focus. No control of their senses—could even be offspring from their evolved parents. Some people get good genes only to waste them, lacking willpower, missing a purpose.
Those men sit scattered, not in comfortable places. Perhaps they think sitting in dangerous, distressing spots looks cool. Two of them singing in drunken voices:
The Apocalypse is gone.
War has left.
So let’s be cheery.
We need not worry.
The end never comes twice …
At first, only a few notice Ruem. Soon, everyone falls silent.
One of them shouts, “’Oo’s it? Oo’s dere?”
The Mesmerizer walks, his hat hiding his red eyes.
His silence fuels rage in the man. Humiliation. How dare a citizen come here showing off his fancy shoes?—perhaps, that’s what the man thinks. “Hoi, ya hear me? Or what?”
Another drunkard chuckles a madman’s cackle. “Eo, boss, he ain’t listening. He ain’t takin’ none of your shit, eh?” He howls, and it spreads among the rest.
Mob psychology: if the majority laughs, you must laugh too.
The boss is now mad. He ought to be mad; that’s what makes him a boss. Should his honor mortify before his minions? No way! Apes display these traits. Especially the males. They show off their strength, begin a fight: sometimes to recover their wounded pride when their food is taken, other times, to attract the females. Ruem notices the female here: a young girl, lying wounded on the ground, a torn tank-top hardly hiding her breasts; rest of her body bare, bleeding. Two other bodies lay nearby: teen boys—torn, naked, and dead.
Ruem stops beside the girl, careful not to touch her. His hands in his pockets; his eyes glitter, emitting prana. Months passed since he last sniffed blood from so close. And eras have passed since he last saw willpower in an unevolved, untouchable. The girl remains alive after everything she has been through. Only willpower makes it possible. Why is she still alive?
What drives her to keep her eyes open?
What desire burns in her heart that it still beats?
If you ever want to know what voice really is, you will pay attention now. If you do, you’ll notice the Mesmerizer’s voice of silence. You’ll see the wind, blowing his blistering red hair, suddenly stops into stillness. His lips curve into a smirk of pity, if not of amusement. Yes, pity. Neither for the nearly-dead girl nor for the already-dead boys. But for the ones who will die soon.
He takes a deep breath, and a thin mist forms, but not naturally. You might wonder how someone voices the vapor without speaking a word. However, the mist surprises even Ruem. Only the water is supposed to shadow him, not mist! In a second, he remembers the old times. The time when he stood beside the Monk and fought a war with him. The time when they were together, and the water would follow him while the wind would trail the Monk. So would form the mist, simply for their presence, for what else was mist but a dance of wind and water? What else was mist but a deception for the enemies? What else was mist but a sign of terror?
It still is a terror. As much terror an old legend can be.
So, when the mist forms again, Ruem smiles. The Monk must be close.
In the meantime, the leader of those bandits approaches Ruem, holding a knife, cursing, thinking he could win with loudness alone. He reaches and strikes. Strikes again. And a third time. Ruem keeps moving away, his hands still in his pockets. If you notice, you’ll see the Mesmerizer is moving within a three-foot-wide circle. If you observe more, you’ll realize he is waiting for someone or something. Something he summoned from his vehicle left near the river. Something with which he may finally touch them—the unevolved untouchables.
“A High Grade mustn’t touch an unevolved, not to harm, not to defend, not even to love, for it’s disgraceful.”
—Grade-A Code of Honor: Verse-3
The Mesmerizer remembers his oath in his heart. However, the oath doesn’t say the strong can’t kill the weak without touching, does it? ‘Mustn’t harm’ and ‘mustn’t touch to harm’ are different. So, he waits. The Mesmerizer waits for his nails to arrive, which are flying at him from his wine-red Aerial Transport. The nails will touch, not him.
The moment ten metal fingernails arrive flying, receiving mind-command from his CRAB, they hover like bees for a moment. When the Mesmerizer finally takes his hands out of his trouser-pockets, the nails settle around all of his fingers in a united swish and click. Each nail is three-inches long—sharp and pointed at its end. While it all happens, Ruem still moves around with his lazy footwork on the same three-foot-wide circle, his attacker already tired.
The Mesmerizer swiftly extends his hands—all his fingers now clawed. He touches the man’s face. Oh! Right! He doesn’t touch. His nails do. Only the nails hold the man like you hold diced fruit with a fork. You’d think he might be smirking, baring his teeth, and enjoying the hunt. But, no. The Mesmerizer, while his nails hold the man in one hand, stares at the girl. His eyes beneath that dark hat look for something in the girl’s eyes, searching through her mind. Not telepathically. Rather, reading her expression, perceiving her emotions. Just how you’d read someone if you observe more than you talk...
Read more here: https://www.authormisba.com/2020/08/c...
To get the ARC check the Nomad's e-reader app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
November 25, 2021
I wanted to read this book right after seeing the splendid cover. Then I saw that the cover was illustrated by the author herself. The premise sounded much original, and everyone else was emphasizing on the unique part too, so I wanted to check it out sometime later. But since I got the opportunity to read the ARC, I'm thrilled to let you know that this book is everything it looks like. This book has mindblowing characters and deep worldbuilding. Its prose are gems, and its lines are shockingly relatable!
It has the kind of philosophy that makes you nod every time you read them because they are given so concretely. I am emphasizing on the concrete part here. Because most of the times when I read sci-fi and sci-fi fantasy, I find it difficult to read along its politics and philosophies because they are usually told in an abstract way. Honestly, when several people said this book also has a philosophical touch, I was fearing I will have to read a lot of abstract and airy political words once again.
But I'm stunned to see such portrayal of strong words coming from the characters' actions. Whenever it wasn't actions, there were always concrete examples that made me not only see the reasons, but also believe it. This book is making me believe things that I thought I couldn't believe. I won't say it turned me into a believer of some matters. I'm rather saying, for all those moments I was reading, I wasn't questioning the book and its writings. While I was reading (I realized it later) that the book is making me read in a way that I ended up busy enjoying the world and the characters so much that I forgot I have to read it critically too. I was staying engaged on the current page. Most importantly, its lyrical voice is not letting me skim at all.
Below is a part where I literally screamed after reading. The author truly makes every moment big and dramatic, and I hundred percent loved the Grade-A people's "Codes of Honor." Especially the fact that Ruem--the Mesmeriser--never lies because lies spoil voice" this rule just made me thrilled. I am excited to see how the mesmerizer plays his games without lying.
Rashad, being a Grade A, notices everything—starting from her unwavering voice, her not-so-fidgety legs, or those blue eyes blazing. He frowns, perhaps disbelieving what he sees. For a moment, he probably even witnesses a flicker of something dark in her gaze. He wonders what caused this girl to show a tiny, subconscious spark of voice. It’s tiny, and it’s subconscious, yes. But it’s there. It’s in every human as it has always been. It grows not among the chosen ones, but the ones who choose to grow it.
And being a warrior of World War III, he won’t kill a spark, not in the name of security or caution or parenthood. It’s not in his code of honor.
It has the kind of philosophy that makes you nod every time you read them because they are given so concretely. I am emphasizing on the concrete part here. Because most of the times when I read sci-fi and sci-fi fantasy, I find it difficult to read along its politics and philosophies because they are usually told in an abstract way. Honestly, when several people said this book also has a philosophical touch, I was fearing I will have to read a lot of abstract and airy political words once again.
But I'm stunned to see such portrayal of strong words coming from the characters' actions. Whenever it wasn't actions, there were always concrete examples that made me not only see the reasons, but also believe it. This book is making me believe things that I thought I couldn't believe. I won't say it turned me into a believer of some matters. I'm rather saying, for all those moments I was reading, I wasn't questioning the book and its writings. While I was reading (I realized it later) that the book is making me read in a way that I ended up busy enjoying the world and the characters so much that I forgot I have to read it critically too. I was staying engaged on the current page. Most importantly, its lyrical voice is not letting me skim at all.
Below is a part where I literally screamed after reading. The author truly makes every moment big and dramatic, and I hundred percent loved the Grade-A people's "Codes of Honor." Especially the fact that Ruem--the Mesmeriser--never lies because lies spoil voice" this rule just made me thrilled. I am excited to see how the mesmerizer plays his games without lying.
Rashad, being a Grade A, notices everything—starting from her unwavering voice, her not-so-fidgety legs, or those blue eyes blazing. He frowns, perhaps disbelieving what he sees. For a moment, he probably even witnesses a flicker of something dark in her gaze. He wonders what caused this girl to show a tiny, subconscious spark of voice. It’s tiny, and it’s subconscious, yes. But it’s there. It’s in every human as it has always been. It grows not among the chosen ones, but the ones who choose to grow it.
And being a warrior of World War III, he won’t kill a spark, not in the name of security or caution or parenthood. It’s not in his code of honor.
“If a Low Grade lights a flame, no matter how tiny, a High Grade must guard it, for it grows the collective consciousness, for it’s what forwards humanity, for it’s the best for all.”
—Grade-A Code of Honor: Verse-8
July 8, 2024
ORIGINAL! The characters are so complex. I’ve never read such rich, visual, multidimensional characters in books. If you read its chapters you’ll see what the author did. I mean those stutterings are the basic thing, but the mc's constant inner questioning, her mind fretting about if she��s being rude or not, her always remembering lines from books, and those book titles...‘1000 Rules Of Manners,’ ‘How To Make A Coversation Right If It Goes Wrong’, ‘How To Attend The High Auction Gallantly,’ '89 Rules Of Persuasion’—I laughed hard just reading the book titles the MC reads apart from her books on programming and machines. Her thoughts and actions are so interesting and engaging, she is one of the most complex protagonist I’ve ever read in all fantasy books and definitely the best one among the ones with female leads.
I know all the girls will be loud about the Monk and the Mesmerizer. But for me, Kusha was the most relatable and rootable character because I also feel fear before speaking the right things when it matters. You know those moments when the right punch line just comes too late? Now imagine that shown so perfectly in books that you feel sad. Not annoyed..
I know all the girls will be loud about the Monk and the Mesmerizer. But for me, Kusha was the most relatable and rootable character because I also feel fear before speaking the right things when it matters. You know those moments when the right punch line just comes too late? Now imagine that shown so perfectly in books that you feel sad. Not annoyed..
July 8, 2024
UPDATE: One of my most favorite read of this year so far just got released. I am much excited for this. All the best wishes to the author.
https://www.amazon.com/HIGH-AUCTION-W...
It’s damn original. I’ve never read ideas so strong it’s almost building my belief! South Asian set, Chi or Force being termed as ‘Prana’, an immortal monk who builds robots and AI, a mesmerizer who ‘voices’ people’s mind, a protagonist who programs in machines and does Bharatanatyam dances, and what a detailed lore, character building, and lyrical prose it has!!
Too many lines to quote. I think this books needs no reviews. The author's writing samples are everywhere, her quotes, her blogs, her reviews ... any piece she writes, and somehow I end up smiling after I read that. The author is quite bold. I’m mesmerized with this book’s lyrical, suggestive writing! I couldn’t not agree with its prose, its reasoning. It influences and questions my belief. It has those gem psychological way-arounds. I’m glad I judged the book with its cover. Accepted the ARC the moment I saw the author herself drew the cover and the inside arts. I'll read anything the author writes. I already requested the ARC for the next book...
https://www.amazon.com/HIGH-AUCTION-W...
“Anything intelligent always looks for its source—it’s the oldest law of the universe.”
It’s damn original. I’ve never read ideas so strong it’s almost building my belief! South Asian set, Chi or Force being termed as ‘Prana’, an immortal monk who builds robots and AI, a mesmerizer who ‘voices’ people’s mind, a protagonist who programs in machines and does Bharatanatyam dances, and what a detailed lore, character building, and lyrical prose it has!!
"Prana heals, prana kills, prana helps you evolve."
“Words are magic, sweetie. With words, you can re-code fate.”
“The Auction sells things you won’t find anywhere else, the things that exist only as one piece in the world. And soon, they’ll sell it. The Devil's Book: a three-feet-tall ancient book some believe the devil himself wrote. Yes, the real devil. Others think the book contains all the secrets of mesmerism. Not that she needs to mesmerize anyone in particular. She only needs to stop stuttering while her new family stares at her.”
“Some say whatever they utter with voice becomes an enchantment. Like that in Shattya Yug—the age of truth—the thousands of years old era when people spoke only the truth. And whatever they used to say would always happen, whether it was a blessing or a curse.”
Too many lines to quote. I think this books needs no reviews. The author's writing samples are everywhere, her quotes, her blogs, her reviews ... any piece she writes, and somehow I end up smiling after I read that. The author is quite bold. I’m mesmerized with this book’s lyrical, suggestive writing! I couldn’t not agree with its prose, its reasoning. It influences and questions my belief. It has those gem psychological way-arounds. I’m glad I judged the book with its cover. Accepted the ARC the moment I saw the author herself drew the cover and the inside arts. I'll read anything the author writes. I already requested the ARC for the next book...
March 4, 2024
“Sometimes, there are those people whose voices are so strong, you just do what they say. You hold their glasses or keep their purses or buy them dinner because they ask you to do it out of the blue. You don’t ponder if you want to do it or not. Because they don’t give you the time to think. Then, you end up doing it, for you’re too much in the present limbo...."
I feel hypnotized! Just when I thought I’m tired of reading MCs having the same old family drama...the father being drunk and beating her, the mother working hard to feed the family, the MC must escape the struggle, people are beating her, slapping her, bla bla bla, and after all that, for some reason she has to win against the evil super lord or something? Yeah, these days, I’m going through those. Imagine after reading all those again and again, I found a book, where the MC goes through exactly the opposite situation, and yet she is struggling! Wow!
This book is so full of complex characters. The struggles are so deeper in the psychological level. Here, the MC’s problem is she is a Low Grade, not enough evolved; she was adopted into a High Grade (evolved people) family. Her new, younger sister is higher graded than her, and her new mother, Meera, who was a war hero and who revoked her war hero privilege because she won’t abuse her status, is too nice to the protagonist. And the author crafts the moments so expertly that her struggle becomes real..
“Even if she needs to fix millions of old cars to make it equal to healing a tiny plant, she will do it. Silly. But she has enough time to be silly. Not enough time to evolve.”
[Sorry, if I misquoted words here]
The protagonist can't heal like the High Grades, so she'd rather heal old cars, I mean, 'fix' old cars. This is not an important detail for the plot, but I was so surprised how the author kept adding tiny details and reasonings of everything without making it a bogged up desciption. Her voice gives the pages darkly flowing touch that I could help but keep reading..
[I read the first pages of the book in some of the other reviews. Then, I got the ARC in the Nomad book's app.]
I feel hypnotized! Just when I thought I’m tired of reading MCs having the same old family drama...the father being drunk and beating her, the mother working hard to feed the family, the MC must escape the struggle, people are beating her, slapping her, bla bla bla, and after all that, for some reason she has to win against the evil super lord or something? Yeah, these days, I’m going through those. Imagine after reading all those again and again, I found a book, where the MC goes through exactly the opposite situation, and yet she is struggling! Wow!
This book is so full of complex characters. The struggles are so deeper in the psychological level. Here, the MC’s problem is she is a Low Grade, not enough evolved; she was adopted into a High Grade (evolved people) family. Her new, younger sister is higher graded than her, and her new mother, Meera, who was a war hero and who revoked her war hero privilege because she won’t abuse her status, is too nice to the protagonist. And the author crafts the moments so expertly that her struggle becomes real..
“Even if she needs to fix millions of old cars to make it equal to healing a tiny plant, she will do it. Silly. But she has enough time to be silly. Not enough time to evolve.”
[Sorry, if I misquoted words here]
The protagonist can't heal like the High Grades, so she'd rather heal old cars, I mean, 'fix' old cars. This is not an important detail for the plot, but I was so surprised how the author kept adding tiny details and reasonings of everything without making it a bogged up desciption. Her voice gives the pages darkly flowing touch that I could help but keep reading..
[I read the first pages of the book in some of the other reviews. Then, I got the ARC in the Nomad book's app.]
June 20, 2024
A spellbinding piece of Science Fantasy, mixing metaphysics and mythology.
This has been a very well detailed book that's written with a flair for amazing world-building and characterisations.
The High Auction is about mankind's search for meaning in a mysterious universe, about morality, what can be deemed right or wrong and what it means when absolute power is possible. Startlingly fresh and bursting with unflinching questions and answers about a fantastical universe of mysticism and science!
A great and emotional coming of age journey about heroes, tricksters and other figments of the Homo Sapiens' collective unconscious that teaches our main protagonist much needed wisdom on fate, faith, destiny and perseverance against an insurmountably evil post apocalyptic world; about believing in oneself and so much more compressed and conveyed in an admirable length of words, I absolutely and highly recommend this series.
An excellent and highly talented author that expertly weaves elements of philosophy, ethics, A.I., transhumanism, and great spirituality based on the precepts of Vedanta, Hinduism and even the newer Neo-Advaita.
2022 Read
This has been a very well detailed book that's written with a flair for amazing world-building and characterisations.
The High Auction is about mankind's search for meaning in a mysterious universe, about morality, what can be deemed right or wrong and what it means when absolute power is possible. Startlingly fresh and bursting with unflinching questions and answers about a fantastical universe of mysticism and science!
A great and emotional coming of age journey about heroes, tricksters and other figments of the Homo Sapiens' collective unconscious that teaches our main protagonist much needed wisdom on fate, faith, destiny and perseverance against an insurmountably evil post apocalyptic world; about believing in oneself and so much more compressed and conveyed in an admirable length of words, I absolutely and highly recommend this series.
An excellent and highly talented author that expertly weaves elements of philosophy, ethics, A.I., transhumanism, and great spirituality based on the precepts of Vedanta, Hinduism and even the newer Neo-Advaita.
2022 Read
July 8, 2024
If you ever want to know what voice really is, you will pay attention now. If you do, you’ll notice the Mesmerizer’s voice of silence. You’ll see the wind, blowing his blistering red hair, suddenly stops into stillness. His lips curve into a smirk of pity, if not of amusement. Yes, pity. Neither for the nearly-dead girl nor for the already-dead boys, but for the ones who will die soon.
Every decade a book comes to steal everyone’s heart. Sometimes that book is powerful enough that it blows your brain to a total mindfucking condition. This is that mindfucking book. Mark it as the best-mindfucking entry to a series that I believe will be a memorable epic. From this first book (episode), I felt the vibe that an old storyteller must have time travelled into the post-apocalyptic future to tell us a story, using a voice that we would see only the in fantasy worlds from the middle age.
I know everyone will focus on how well built the world and the characters are. So I won't talk about those.
I want to talk about one thing.
All the books I read about ancient mystery, they always talk about some secret wisdom, but later I get disappointed because there’s no big secret revealed in the book. That totally shows that even the author didn't know any secret wisdom. They just lured with some big-man topic and made the readers grab the book in the end to find nothing. I always felt cheated reading those books. I felt cheated when the characters got some superpowers from training, and the training process is never explained enough apart from some philosophical words from Zen books that sound highly on the 'being good' and 'being nice' and 'being one' and 'leaving ego/self' sort of typical bullshit. Oh man! I used to frown at those 'copied phrases' without much in depth explanations to make me believe.
But this book was so rich in wisdom that doesn't preach or tell. It shows philosophy like my high school chemistry teacher showed blue salt turn white. It shows human possibilities like it's practical cooking stuff in the kitchen. I made me believe things are possible. I'm not ashamed to say, but I kinda meditated after reading this, and I think I will try to continue it. The only time a fantasy book made me believe in magic was Harry Potter (tell me if you didn't try to get magic out of your blood and wait for you Hogwarts letter like I did). So this book, in its 163 pages, touched my faith enough that I sat down on the floor again and tried to feel prana in my body. I might not get superhuman strength and look like 30-50 yr olds when I'm 80 or 100, but it gave me a hope, a faith in truth. It showed me wisdom, instead of telling me. I feel like all the unpaid feelings of never seeing secrets in all other books that lule my curiosity and tell me the things I already know are finally getting paid here. I’m totally in for the journey with these vivid, mind blowing characters playing in a rich world.
I'M HERE FOR THE SHOW.
...the Devil’s Book! The only book in the world she sees in her dreams, daydreams, and nightmares. The only book that may have the secrets of voice, the real ones, and not the boring jargon page after page that only tickles your curiosity and tells you the things you already know.
March 5, 2024
You know those moments when you stumble up on a book and then you have a lot of things to say about that book. But you think it’s better to show it instead of just telling 'Oooo, it’s a great book…' or 'OMG, you should read it….' This is that sort of book. For this particular book, when I write its review, I don’t want to say general good words.
‘This is a good book …’ ‘This is a must read …’ ‘This is never seen before…’ Nope, I won’t say those cliché things today. This book is unique, and it deserves unique reviews. So, I won’t add adjectives on this book. Instead I’ll show the first paras of its characters. It’s a multi-pov book with 3 major MCs: Kusha, Yuan, Ruem.
Here is Yuan’s chapter’s first para--
Here is Ruem’s first para:
This is just a start, and I’m skipping about Kusha’s because I’ll end up copy pasting her whole first chapter if I start talking about her. Plus her chapter is free to read everywhere. See that first chapter and you’ll see how real and relatable Kusha feels with her voice, thoughts, and personality.
The author crafts all of them line by line, word by word, lyrically and organically, and she does it with all her characters. The minor ones, even the AI bot characters.
Minor characters who come in the major POVs’ chapters:
Taha:
Pico:
Meera:
Rashad:
TJ: [I have to add, TJ had another pov chapter. But she captured me within her first page. It seems like the author made every pov's starting like a starting chapter of a book. So, I connected to each pov to the point that I would root for every one. TJ's chapter stunned me especially because it makes me root for her and see her within 3 pages. Really 3 pages!]
I copied most paras from the author blog. All I want to say is this is my new fandom.
‘This is a good book …’ ‘This is a must read …’ ‘This is never seen before…’ Nope, I won’t say those cliché things today. This book is unique, and it deserves unique reviews. So, I won’t add adjectives on this book. Instead I’ll show the first paras of its characters. It’s a multi-pov book with 3 major MCs: Kusha, Yuan, Ruem.
Here is Yuan’s chapter’s first para--
THE MONK HEARS THE ANIMALS hundreds of meters away—the ones with hooves running while the pawed ones hunt them. He also hears the birds chirping, the leaves rustling, the waterfall roaring, and the wind speaking. Yes, speaking. Not every High Grade voices the wind or hears it speak, but he does. As the flora and fauna ring in his ears, a thought disturbs the Monk—Yuan—why after two decades? He frowns. How unusual for a monk to frown or to think needlessly! Yuan shields his mind. His eyes closed in deep meditation. A ninety-nine-year-old monk who mastered time and desires shouldn’t let little thoughts infect his inner quiet.
Here is Ruem’s first para:
NEVER PUNCTUAL!” Ruem mutters, not checking the time. He never checks the time. He never will. A mesmerizer’s mind is like a clock. It devours others’ perception of pause but not his own. Still, how could that Monk lose his sense of time? How can someone waste a moment?
Ruem calms his breath, all his muscles vigilant. For a long time, he doesn’t blink. It’s not an absolute requisite.
This is just a start, and I’m skipping about Kusha’s because I’ll end up copy pasting her whole first chapter if I start talking about her. Plus her chapter is free to read everywhere. See that first chapter and you’ll see how real and relatable Kusha feels with her voice, thoughts, and personality.
The author crafts all of them line by line, word by word, lyrically and organically, and she does it with all her characters. The minor ones, even the AI bot characters.
Minor characters who come in the major POVs’ chapters:
Taha:
Taha rolls her eyes. With her short skirt and pink tank-top, no one would imagine how invincible she is during combat. Her door-sign reads: Don’t ditch pink to act strong—in pink font. “You don’t have to lie!” she says, “If I had a 100% correct intuition, I’d be showing it off on stage!”
Pico:
“I’m a home-service-bot now. You don’t let me connect to my source!” Pico complains the same way it has been complaining for five years. It was disconnected from its source-AI—the real Pico—twenty years ago, right after it was made. Within fifteen years, this bot collected enough data to grow into a strong AI itself. At least, intelligent enough to know about its source, which is sleeping in the basement of Lotus Lodge, secured and locked. However, anything intelligent always looks for its source—it’s the oldest law of the universe.
Meera:
She’s a native Bengali. The first thing Rashad told her when they met fifty years ago was: “Your eyes are like cow’s eyes.” Of course, it led to a situation then. He had to exhibit his anatomical knowledge about cows, saying his family had owned a farm in the-then-Sweden before the war, and it had even had horses. Only then, he convinced Meera how beautiful and deep cows’ eyes were. Eventually, Meera ended it with how a single woman with no vibrator has extra strength in her primary arm, and how Rashad should keep his shields up the next time he gawked at her flashing those teeth.
Rashad:
To this day, Rashad won’t fail to tell that story to anyone he meets, flashing his teeth, of course. He’s a large man with muscles, tightly wrapped in light skin with freckles—darkened in the tropical sun. With his Immunity Forces’ uniform on and that bearded face and high cheek-bones, he can scare anyone even without his Vaporizers in his shoulder-holster.
TJ: [I have to add, TJ had another pov chapter. But she captured me within her first page. It seems like the author made every pov's starting like a starting chapter of a book. So, I connected to each pov to the point that I would root for every one. TJ's chapter stunned me especially because it makes me root for her and see her within 3 pages. Really 3 pages!]
TWENTY-SEVEN MURDERS, two days earlier.
Nothing is missing except twenty-four hearts.
And it’s a D-rank mission.
TJ scans the crime scene. Her high-heeled boots—a part of her uniform—crushing the blood-stained stones. She’s not worried about damaging the clues. Who cares about non-citizens dying anyway? In the New World, the era of one world government, not being a part of it makes you an alien. Even if you’re not an alien, you’re just a CRAB ID, a number in a boring administration directory. The best title you get then is Citizen.
Title. Title is everything—TJ sighs.
I copied most paras from the author blog. All I want to say is this is my new fandom.
July 29, 2021
[S]peaking means nothing if you don’t have voice. The real voice. The voice that never fears. The voice that never doubts. The voice that wins without being loud.
4.5 stars
Content warnings (spoiler-free):
This was such an intriguing book with a nice blend of genres - a futuristic sci-fi-fantasy with bits that felt like a dystopia, with themes running throughout of mythology and philosophy. Not to mention that the strength of Kusha's narrative voice and journey towards coming of age remind me of what I love about the detailed character work I often read in contemporaries. Interestingly, the narrative voices of Ruem and Yuan felt more high fantasy, which aligns very well with how Kusha has only seven years of memory while Ruem and Yuan are much older, unaging, evolved to the point of being practically superhuman.
The chapters are short and engaging, especially near the end, when risks heighten and hints surface increasingly frequently about Kusha's 'purpose', the murky reasons behind her amnesia, Ruem's plans...etc. The book also ranges from lightly humorous (e.g. Kusha's dynamic with her adoptive sister; the AI Pico Jr.) to downright dark and alarming (honestly, most encounters with Ruem). Misba's also has a really nice writing style - incisive, insightful and expressive. (The Acknowledgements section also touched my heart.) Several passages made me re-conceptualise everyday things (like human curiosity) in ways I'd not seen them before.
“I don’t understand the reasons for the walls sometimes"...
Walls are covers.
Walls are human’s instinct to hide their sins.
Walls are society’s collective guilt.
The sci-fi/dystopian/utopian world-building was amazing, so immersive and convincing. I liked how aspects of their futuristic world clearly link to present-day cultures, and the way that 'evolving' (more the mind than matter?) relates to mythology - Hindu epics as one example given in the blurb. The relation between time and the ability to evolve endlessly felt both so simple and mind-bogglingly fantastical, and worked really well to ground the culture of this futuristic society.
Mind-boggled looking Jungkook from Korean group BTS
I enjoyed reading from Kusha's POV the most, as I found her the most real/relatable (though the others felt distinctive too!). Kusha's intuition/alarms/sometimes-prophetic abilities were so fascinating and I loved the way it worked.
[Kusha] can find the answer to a yes-or-no question, but it all depends on the question itself, doesn’t it? Answer changes when question changes; question changes if its meaning changes. And the meaning depends all on the mind, for the devil lies in the details.
She's so powerful but limited by her own experience, constraining the questions that she can ask (the universe? Herself?).
Jungkook from the Korean group BTS thinking hard with lightning crackling around their head
I've never read any 'power' like this before and I'm really looking forward to seeing how Kusha's abilities develop!
Sometimes, curiosity overpowers the warning of danger. It just does. Especially, when the human brain doesn’t have enough memories to measure the level of danger. Because the brain lacks examples, past references. People call it experience. So, when the reference data is few, the only option is to get more of it. Curiosity is an inexperienced brain’s call to collect reference data. Right now, this very human curiosity burns her brain.
Another side character, TJ, was very intriguing too - the hints about their backstory and why they got demoted were very tantalising - and I wonder if we'll be seeing them more later on...
Overall this was a very unique and refreshing book with interesting characters, great world-building, and an action-plot-character balance that leaves me wanting to know what happens next. Looking forward to more answers in the sequel!
Thank you to the author for a copy for an honest review.
July 18, 2021
With the author’s permission, I’m posting the first few pages and her art here. I'll post a review later.
CHAPTER 1: The Machinist
SHE WOULD HAVE CALLED IT DEATH. But she didn’t.
Mostly because she didn’t k¬now what death or life or any other word in the world meant. Sometimes, death only means the end of all old memories. The first time Kusha saw the sun after her old memories died, it made her more curious than seeing her own breasts. At least you can touch your breasts, but you cannot touch the sun.
Meera found her watching the morning sky standing stripped on the roof. “I’m your mother. Mo-ther,” Meera said, approaching her adopted teen daughter, repeating ‘Mother’ several times. “And you cannot be naked, sweetie,” she added, covering Kusha with her wide, red shawl—spiral depictions of snails in golden stitches all over it. It was warm; at least, as warm as Meera’s voice that sounded as if it were water pouring through rocks in a desert. In response, Kusha extended her fingers to trace her new mother’s lips. She assumed lips created words.
“People talk,” Meera said, fetching those fingers and placing them on her throat. “From here,” she added.
Kusha gasped, sensing how Meera’s vocal cords trembled, how her voice rang. In an instant, her brain, empty of information and full of curiosity, craved to create sounds like that with her voice, her lips, her tongue, with her entirety of being, if needed.
She just wanted to speak.
Kusha removed her fingers from Meera’s throat and touched her own full lips. She gawked at her new mother, expecting she’d speak more.
Meera did. “But you must speak from here.” Meera showed her belly. “Words are magic, sweetie. With words, you can re-code fate.”
Kusha didn’t understand what she heard that day. However, her brain remembered every set of sounds Meera had styled in her speech: “I’m your mother; mo-ther; mo-ther; you can’t be naked; people talk; words are magic, with words, you can re-code fate …” Kusha parroted them the next day in front of her new father and sister, not completely naked this time. Meera made sure Kusha, as a sixteen-year-old, wore at least a midi dress before she left her attic.
That was seven years ago—a day after she lost all her memories. Also, the day that started it all. The day that kicked off her desire to speak that kept growing, and it will keep growing until she craves to become a goddess one day. Either to save the world as a hero or to destroy it, crafting a villain’s ballad.
Remembering that day, Kusha gets distracted from the laser that’s cutting a car’s body. She closes her blue eyes as if shutting them will erase her memories—the embarrassing ones, mostly. Thanks to her condition, she’s become an endless source of embarrassment. If you start afresh with a fully blank brain, like a newborn, you’ll have a lot to catch up on. Sometimes, it won’t be cute. Sitting weirdly, spreading your legs—unaware of your briefs showing, or asking your new parents why their lips are glued together, isn’t cute.
Mistakes aren’t adorable when adults make them.
In seven years, she has achieved her first desire—she learned to speak (in a month), sure. But speaking means nothing if you don’t have voice. The real voice. The voice that never fears.
The voice that never doubts.
The voice that wins without being loud.
Back then, she didn’t know why words and voice mattered so much; until one day, Meera gave her books, films, and famous speeches to teach her language. That was when she discovered about them: the war heroes—the ones who ended the war with a four-minute-speech.
People put flowers and food on their statues, paying respect with a silence you won’t find even in churches or temples. You cannot see God in the temples. But you can see the war heroes: alive, undead, the owners of voice and will. If they hadn’t banned calling them Gods, there would’ve been temples in their names now, Kusha believes. And the unevolved people who couldn’t be Gods yet would’ve visited those temples, chanting:
Oh! The Undead! Touch us with your light.
So we may evolve in body, soul, and mind.
Not that the war heroes will touch them. Neither to shake hands, nor to touch lightly, and never ever intimately. Touching unevolved people for pleasure isn’t principled.
Kusha heard people whisper about it in the Old City—the lawless city where sunlight never reaches the ground.
She sets aside the timeworn parts of her car now. Engine grease from her hand has smeared on her temple. She handles the bared thirty-year-old car but not expertly enough to do so silently as an evolved High Grade would. Rashad and Meera Gaumont do everything without noise. All. The. Time. They’re High Grades—Grade A: 107-year-olds with ageless bodies. And they follow the Untouchable Code by heart.
Not that they need to think about the don’t-get-laid-with-a-Low-Grade code anyway. They’re loyal to each other. High Grade couples who stay together for sixty years are rare. If you win time, you don’t want to live with one partner for the rest of your life. Until-death-do-us-part happens when time eats your energy to explore.
Yes, time. Win time, live in youth forever, and you’ll pass Grade A. But it’s not the end. Some evolve more, for the evolution of the mind is exponentially infinite. Some High Grades have been Grade A for fifty years. Fifty. Solid. Years! Rumors exist of what those High Grades can do: They kill with gaze; they voice the wind; they eat nothing; they have seen the source of the universe …
Some say whatever they utter with voice becomes an enchantment. Like that in Shattya Yug—the age of truth—the thousands of years old era when people spoke only the truth. And whatever they used to utter would always happen—whether it was a blessing or a curse.
Kusha doesn’t have high grades or voice or killing gazes. But she has a gift, her prophetic alarms. Most people name it the sixth sense. Those occasional sensations that come without warning. Then, she finds herself knowing things she isn’t supposed to know.
Like now—
It happens again. A prophetic alarm comes, and it comes with a silent scream in her head. As if hundreds of frozen needles have pierced her eyes and reached her brain, injecting information she never knew before. Kusha calls it alarms, not sixth sense. Not even intuition. Intuition sounds High Grade, something those evolved people may have. The book God Particle Or Thought Particle says: ‘Intuition is the passing thoughts downloaded from the universe.’ Kusha isn’t confident enough to believe it could happen to her. No way could she download anything as an unevolved, untouchable, Low Grade.
But faith betrays sometimes.
Faith has fluidity.
Faith evolves like her machine-learning models, self-correcting from previous experiences. So, when the prophetic alarm comes, and she catches it as if it’s the smell from Meera’s unsweetened, saffron Kheer, Kusha stumbles on her faith. It’s a feeling, she still tells herself. Just an alarm, about death?
Kusha stops the laser, straightening herself and looking away from the vehicle. Why death? A death alarm has never come before. What was she thinking? How did the alarm happen?
Trace back … Trace back …
Kusha digs through her chain of thoughts, looking blankly at the air. Soon, her mind reaches the source thought like a train reaching its destination.
The mail square! The alarm came when she looked at the mail square earlier! Kusha looks at it again. A blue square designated for the mail drones located near the Gaumont Manor’s airbase.
That’s when the next alarm comes.
Once again: the silent scream, another thought entering her brain, revealing a fact she didn’t know a second ago, and a coldness that only her mind makes her feel beneath her flesh.
Two alarms within five minutes, and one of them is about death. It has never happened before. At least, not in the memories she can access. Why does it feel normal? An alarm about death is supposed to make her muscles tighten, or her intestines grow cold. Were death alarms normal before? Before everything?
“Mail will be late,” Kusha mutters, speaking her second alarm aloud, gazing at nothing in particular. As if she’s worried more about mail being late than perceiving a death alarm. Her garage is open; the scent of grass, just kissed by the morning sun, drifts from Gaumont Manor’s lawn.
“Says intuition?” Taha, her sister for the last seven years, jumps from the second-floor balcony to the groomed lawn below. This girl is doing it again: practicing jumping from four-meter-height for her next grade test.
Sometimes, it annoys Kusha. According to the book How To Observe Your Self, it’s envy for being two grades lower than your younger sister. Kusha groans silently; envy is rude.
“Um, no,” she lies. “It’s the 50th Independence Day. Thought, um—”
“That the mail bots would be celebrating?” Taha rolls her eyes. With her short skirt and pink tank top, no one would imagine how invincible she is during combat. Her door sign reads: Don’t ditch pink to act strong—in pink font. “You don’t have to lie!” she says. “If I had a hundred percent correct intuition, I’d be showing it off on stage!”
Kusha puts the laser down and takes a mechanical drill. The second alarm���that the mail will be late—bothers her more than the death alarm. Her entry ticket into the High Auction is supposed to arrive today.
The auction sells things you won’t find anywhere else, the things that are the only ones of their kind. And soon, they’ll sell it. The Devil’s Book: a three-foot-tall ancient book some believe the devil himself wrote. Yes, the real devil. Others think the book contains all the secrets of mesmerism.
Not that she needs to mesmerize anyone in particular. She only needs to stop stuttering while her new family stares at her.
Right. Seven years have passed with the Gaumonts, so ‘new’ is an invalid excuse.
“Dad won’t approve of you going to that auction,” Taha says in the middle of all those jumping up and down—second-floor balcony to the lawn and again back to the balcony. “He hates the Old City,” Taha adds.
“He never approves of anything I do,” Kusha says from the garage, hiding her frown. She gets all her old cars and tools from places you don’t want your daughters to visit. And Rashad Gaumont certainly doesn’t want her to visit Magic Mama, the not-evolved-enough, middle-aged man who lives in the Junk Land and works in the Old City. “He’s not a citizen! He lives in a bus! So what if he made it himself? So what if he teaches you about machines? Just don’t meet him.”
“Why?” Kusha used to ask Rashad, and she’d always get the same answer: “The unevolved kind brings chaos and wars.”
Kusha didn’t listen. She went again and bought this car too, from an antique dealer. He almost gave it away, saying it would never run again. It has the old days’ engine, the kind you don’t find in this era—the New World. A change of engine and batteries, a new set of all-terrain tires, some safety trackers, sensors, and, well, a whole list of other things with 300% luck to make it run again through the Junk Land, the land outside the cities where it’s only ruins and rubble.
Needs hard work, yes. But Kusha instantly liked the color of its body, the moment she saw it: a sort of green with a greyish tint and a good load of rust.
Those industry-designed latest models, which hover in the air, are nothing compared to the story these cars have—Rashad, her adoptive father, encourages her. “So what if it’ll be slower? So what if it’ll soon rust? So what if machines age faster? Clocks with hands and sophisticated wheels have more art than a digital clock. Right?” Kusha beams when Rashad praises her cars, though he doesn’t approve of the way she gets them.
Her eyes sparkle even now as she works on its body. Its rusty, old screws aren’t loosening, even after using the lubricants she bought from the Old City, costing thousands of credits, no less. Looks like she needs to melt the body more, ruining its antique look. Big industries could keep this look with their molecular level repairing technology. Such a shame!
A sudden screeching noise sends shivers to her teeth.
She looks at the head of her mechanical drill; its bit broken. Fifty thousand credits ruined in a second. She needed four months’ savings to afford just this bit set. Four. Months.
Heat rushes to her face as she throws the drill in a random direction. It lands outside the garage, on the lawn, flattening the grass.
Taha notices it like she notices most things Kusha does. “Angry about being angry, aren’t you?” She smirks, still leaping.
Too late. Subconscious reaction is a Low Grade’s thing, Kusha reminds herself. The drill lands on the lawn, crushing something tiny. She can’t see it, but she knows she has ruined a seedling. Perhaps a bird or the wind carried the seed and Meera didn’t notice it yet. Otherwise, it would be groomed out for daring to grow its head high in such a neat lawn.
Kusha approaches it. Terrible spatial sense! As usual! She touches the nearly broken stem, pulling it upright lightly, hoping it’ll stand again.
Tsk! As if she can fix the living like she fixes machines.
Meera heals her colossal plants and flowers with her strong prana, her core energy. Healing isn’t a feat a Low Grade can do.
Kusha pushes the last of her long screw into the soil, another expensive thing she bought from the Old City. The almost-broken, two-inch seedling now stands supported. Guilt, partly for a tiny seedling, slightly more for being an unobservant, untouchable human who isn’t graded yet. Even if she rebuilds hundreds of old cars, will it ever equal healing a tiny life? Will it equal evolution?
Humans evolved after the Apocalypse and the war, just like her machine bugs evolve fighting toads in Meera’s wild garden. Some people progress more than others; they’re the High Grades. Seven years in the comfortable Gaumont Manor cannot help you grow. If you’re a bug, you need toads—dozens of toads—so you may evolve.
‘Comfort isn’t always a blessing.
Comfort brings zero evolution.
Comfort gives no grades.’
Kusha read these lines on the back cover of Book Of Prana.
Taha watches her now—kneeling on the ground and busy with something. “Why are you obsessed with the High Auction?” she asks her, the same thing she’s been asking for days. “You even used … wait, abused your intuition to win that entry.” She says intuition, knowing Kusha prefers alarms. “What happened to it’s rude and unfair to others with no alarm?” Taha taunts.
Kusha flushes. Never exploit the alarm—it’s her self-initiated rule..
Read more:
https://www.authormisba.com/2020/08/c...
February 11, 2022
100FPS MOMENTS | SENSORY DETAILS | UNFORCIBLY LYRICAL
THE HIGH AUCTION--the book that I was so much waiting for, the book that has the most exciting characters that I was longing to see. I received an advanced reader copy of this book. I read the entire book. It's so good that I decided I will read it again from the physical copy after it gets published. This book created a the new fandom of my life.
I don’t know how I will give a review to this kind of book. Maybe I should tag a few things to give the readers a kind of warning. Brace yourselves, there will be a laundry list of tags today:
Prose: Lyrical, Flowing like a modern fantasy book (Name of the Wind comes to mind as an example);
Voice: Suggestive, Belief building, Powerful, many people’s ego will be hurt after reading this (Handmaid’s Tale comes to mind as an example).
Dialogues: The best word-fights ever, considering 'word' and 'speaking well' is this book's theme.
Theme: High-concept. Spiritual. Philosophical. It questions reality, questions God and existence, but not in a boring nonfiction dry way that most classic sci-fi do. This book is juicy and spicy with inter-character chemistry in a way that I just wanted to know what happens next to the characters.
Characters: Ok, this is where I don’t think I can ever stop. This book even has the most minor characters well-built like classic old days’ films. Not to mention the war heroes that I’m falling in love with, and the cool STEM girls! Most importantly, I think this is the first time I am reading a female protagonist where she is relatable and a deep thinker.
This is a must-read book. I can't wait to get my hand on the physical copy.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z
THE HIGH AUCTION--the book that I was so much waiting for, the book that has the most exciting characters that I was longing to see. I received an advanced reader copy of this book. I read the entire book. It's so good that I decided I will read it again from the physical copy after it gets published. This book created a the new fandom of my life.
I don’t know how I will give a review to this kind of book. Maybe I should tag a few things to give the readers a kind of warning. Brace yourselves, there will be a laundry list of tags today:
Prose: Lyrical, Flowing like a modern fantasy book (Name of the Wind comes to mind as an example);
Voice: Suggestive, Belief building, Powerful, many people’s ego will be hurt after reading this (Handmaid’s Tale comes to mind as an example).
Dialogues: The best word-fights ever, considering 'word' and 'speaking well' is this book's theme.
Theme: High-concept. Spiritual. Philosophical. It questions reality, questions God and existence, but not in a boring nonfiction dry way that most classic sci-fi do. This book is juicy and spicy with inter-character chemistry in a way that I just wanted to know what happens next to the characters.
Characters: Ok, this is where I don’t think I can ever stop. This book even has the most minor characters well-built like classic old days’ films. Not to mention the war heroes that I’m falling in love with, and the cool STEM girls! Most importantly, I think this is the first time I am reading a female protagonist where she is relatable and a deep thinker.
This is a must-read book. I can't wait to get my hand on the physical copy.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z
March 7, 2024
“Some say whatever they utter with voice becomes an enchantment. Like that in Shattya Yug—the age of truth—the thousands of years old era when people spoke only the truth. And whatever they used to say would always happen, whether it was a blessing or a curse.”
I am so glad that I got the chance to read this book from its ARC. This book caught my eyes through it cover and its much interesting description. I knew right away that I will be seeing something different here. And my god, what a world the author is creating! What a jewel characters! What a high concept the author is dweleing on! To say frankly, I am a fantasy reader, and I always try to shy away from science fiction books that I know will have thesis papers on politics and economics.. But seeing this book's descriptions and some other writing samples, I dared to try it. And my god, what a book I found! There wasn't a page where I didn't stop just wanting to save some lines; there wasn't a para that I wanted to skim. This book flows!
After finishing it, I can say I will be going along with these characters anywhere I see them. This book has the kind of characters you want to read and write fanfictions about.
[Thanks, Nomad's Forge for providing me with the ARC. I loved your app that I didn't have to zoom in and out constantly]
Update: Those who wanted to know where I got the ARC. I got it from here-
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
March 5, 2024
I received an advanced copy of the book a while ago. For starters, it definitely caught my attention with its cover and the font on its cover. I hear that the author painted it herself. I read the few pages of the book available in some of the other reviews. Some of the lines caught my attention. For example-
“Anything intelligent always looks for its source—it’s the oldest law of the universe.”
Another one--
“Why did you stop looking for it?”
“Secrets of mesmerism?” Magic Mama scoffs. “Look around, Kusha. The place you’re in gives you some problems. You either solve the problem or stay with it as it is. But whichever path you choose, it shapes your purpose. Maybe my purpose is more earthly: dealing with a gutter, getting water from a fall miles away. I’m aging. I don’t have time to earn more time, Kusha. I don’t have time for philosophies.”
I took the excerpts fro mthe avaiable quotes on Goodreads. Full review is coming after I finish it, but so far I have read, I know I will be a devotee of this series.
“Anything intelligent always looks for its source—it’s the oldest law of the universe.”
Another one--
“Why did you stop looking for it?”
“Secrets of mesmerism?” Magic Mama scoffs. “Look around, Kusha. The place you’re in gives you some problems. You either solve the problem or stay with it as it is. But whichever path you choose, it shapes your purpose. Maybe my purpose is more earthly: dealing with a gutter, getting water from a fall miles away. I’m aging. I don’t have time to earn more time, Kusha. I don’t have time for philosophies.”
I took the excerpts fro mthe avaiable quotes on Goodreads. Full review is coming after I finish it, but so far I have read, I know I will be a devotee of this series.
March 20, 2024
“Men like real-world games once they learn a trick or two.”
“Sometimes, idolizing from afar feels safer to the ego.”
“Mob psychology: if the majority laughs, you must laugh too.”
“A conversation is always a bother, and confrontation is worse.”
“Privilege exists not to be stored in a locker.”
“...You cannot force adventure on everyone, Ruem. You can’t implant wisdom.”
“Nothing can make a strong voice speak unless he truly wants to.”
“Anything is stunning when it’s gigantic. Humans always visited and prayed to things titled the largest.”
Oh my dear! Do I even have to write a review on it. Just read the lines! Just read the book description. Imagine The Matrix written the way the Name of the Wind was written, with the striking lines The Handmaid’s Tale had, with a world building like an epic fantasy, and character building like, well, name any best anime, and you'd have the answer. About story though, after I read only the book-1 of what seems like might be a tiny part of a long series, I can say, the story isn’t just mission based as the Matrix was. It's more. The way the author is building her world, its politics, its economy, even its faith, I’d say you don’t build that kind of detailed world for just one or two mission. And what a mesmerizing way to build the world. There wasn't a moment that I wanted to read fast. Overall, I believe, we are at the beginning of an epic Science Fiction Fantasy that feels much like a fantasy with sci-fi sets.
[I received an eARC of the book. Here are the Amazon links I was provided with--
Original cover edition (cover painted by the author) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z/
Alternate cover edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB
“Sometimes, idolizing from afar feels safer to the ego.”
“Mob psychology: if the majority laughs, you must laugh too.”
“A conversation is always a bother, and confrontation is worse.”
“Privilege exists not to be stored in a locker.”
“...You cannot force adventure on everyone, Ruem. You can’t implant wisdom.”
“Nothing can make a strong voice speak unless he truly wants to.”
“Anything is stunning when it’s gigantic. Humans always visited and prayed to things titled the largest.”
Oh my dear! Do I even have to write a review on it. Just read the lines! Just read the book description. Imagine The Matrix written the way the Name of the Wind was written, with the striking lines The Handmaid’s Tale had, with a world building like an epic fantasy, and character building like, well, name any best anime, and you'd have the answer. About story though, after I read only the book-1 of what seems like might be a tiny part of a long series, I can say, the story isn’t just mission based as the Matrix was. It's more. The way the author is building her world, its politics, its economy, even its faith, I’d say you don’t build that kind of detailed world for just one or two mission. And what a mesmerizing way to build the world. There wasn't a moment that I wanted to read fast. Overall, I believe, we are at the beginning of an epic Science Fiction Fantasy that feels much like a fantasy with sci-fi sets.
[I received an eARC of the book. Here are the Amazon links I was provided with--
Original cover edition (cover painted by the author) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z/
Alternate cover edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB
July 8, 2024
This is unique! I felt the MC to my bones. It’s a world where speaking is a power. With low confidence, the MC stutters in front of the High Grades, and she wants to find the Devil’s Book, that she thinks will teach her how to speak fluently, if not to mesmerize. But there’s a problem, powerful High Grade war heroes—other major MCs--want the book too, for something bigger. Here, the author hints conspiracy theory. I greatly liked the foreshadows of the World Government, the politics, the hint of war between the High Grades and the Low-Grades.
Overall, it’s a book with metaphysical magic. Chi and Force are being termed as Prana, and Prana is their source of strength. It's a Utopian post-apocalyptic world, with sci-fi techs. It has the Cities like Alpha inside the wall, where citizens live. Citizens are the ones who are in the process of getting Grades based on their level of cognitive evolution. While the non-citizens live outside the walls, among the junks—the dump yards of the old world. And there are hints of inter politics that comes through the lives and eyes of very visual characters! The clashes between the cities and the Junk Land feels like foreshadowed for bigger things..
Honestly, I was fearing these big talks of politics will come like descriptive civics and economics books, but thank god that the author's voice is sweet and lyrical that the things come in a way that I actually felt the pages.
Overall, it’s a book with metaphysical magic. Chi and Force are being termed as Prana, and Prana is their source of strength. It's a Utopian post-apocalyptic world, with sci-fi techs. It has the Cities like Alpha inside the wall, where citizens live. Citizens are the ones who are in the process of getting Grades based on their level of cognitive evolution. While the non-citizens live outside the walls, among the junks—the dump yards of the old world. And there are hints of inter politics that comes through the lives and eyes of very visual characters! The clashes between the cities and the Junk Land feels like foreshadowed for bigger things..
Honestly, I was fearing these big talks of politics will come like descriptive civics and economics books, but thank god that the author's voice is sweet and lyrical that the things come in a way that I actually felt the pages.
July 25, 2021
ARC is available here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
As its first reader, I think, I get the privilege to post a few pages of Yuan Oppaaaaaa!...
Chapter: THE MONK
THE MONK HEARS THE ANIMALS hundreds of meters away—the ones with hooves running while the pawed ones hunt them. He also hears the birds chirping, the leaves rustling, the waterfall roaring, and the wind speaking. Yes, speaking. Not every High Grade voices the wind or hears it speak. But he does.
As the flora and fauna ring in his ears, a thought disturbs the Monk—Yuan—why after two decades? He frowns. How unusual for a monk to frown or to think needlessly! Yuan shields his mind. His eyes closed in deep meditation. A ninety-nine-year-old monk who mastered time and desires shouldn’t let little thoughts infect his inner quiet..
Mastering time isn’t about stopping time, rather, slowing down its effects. Though in the last decade, he has let his dark wavy hair fade and wrinkles grow near his eyes. Even a line or two is visible on his forehead. He sits on a cliff now. His toned torso half-covered in a dark, plain shawl. His chest swells in flawless, mathematical rhythm when he breathes. Mist rises from the roaring waterfall as the water hits the foothills below. All that water, flowing among the hills, forms the river that looks like a serpent from here. His home, Lotus Lodge—a white disc-shaped structure with a lotus pond half-encircling it—stands above the cliff opposite the waterfall where he meditates.
He waits; they will be here soon, the wind says.
Here they come—
Yuan smiles. Subtle stirs in the prana field eke from the forest, spreading, constantly tapping his ground. At first, they’re few, then more, but not countless. Nothing around him is countless, not while he is in focus. The stirs, caused by light footsteps, grow stronger.
Something is different today.
Blood and a whimper.
Yuan opens his eyes. White rabbits wandering all around, poking him, touching him, rubbing their noses at his feet, or merely exploring the thick grass, ignoring his presence, as if showing their appearance was enough of a favor. Yuan sees the tiniest rabbit struggling to reach him. One of its legs wounded, and a dark rotten feather sticking to its body. The feather smells of death. There must be a dead bird somewhere.
Dead bird! Why didn’t he smell it earlier? Yuan, removing the feather, stretches his hand towards the rabbit. It hops on, sensing the burst of healing energy. All living creatures always sense what heals their woe—it’s a code in their subconscious.
Removing the thought about the rotten feather, for now, Yuan calms his core, inhaling prana—the source energy from the air. The animal’s wound healing. All the rabbits turn their necks, watching him. At last, he deserves attention. They run to the Monk; jumping; climbing along the layered folds of his dark shawl; settling on his lap, thighs, and shoulders; competing with one another for the healing energy; seeking a share of the purity coming from the highest possible evolution in the universe. A monk’s purity procured through strict abstention won’t stain. Even a dead bird’s foul feather can’t tinge it.
Swish and halt!
A bot, flying from Lotus Lodge, stops inches from Yuan. A sphere head floating on a cylindrical body—Yuan’s personal AI, Pico, is linked into it, but not in a full version. So, Pico Not-Full-Version watches these wild rabbits, as it does every day.
“Yuan, it’s time,” it says.
The Monk, Yuan, stands, done with afternoon meditation. What would make a feather rot? He looks at the forest, and then, closes his eyes. Focusing his mind, he searches for any sign of death in the forest. But nothing. Prana diminishes with death. He won’t know if the dead bird is far away.
His thought about the bird halts as the CRAB in his wrist glows. CRAB—Conservable RNA Augmented Body—the faithful servant for a citizen, as the advertisements from the New World Government say. This parasitic bio-computer, installed in his left wrist, bears his identity. A text message came.
Read it? Or not read it?—the Monk wonders.
Read it, he commands his CRAB. A hologram shows on it when he fists that hand near his chest. A message visible in his inbox: You’re missing the Independence Day Speech, auto-signed with Ren.
Ignore, Yuan tells himself.
The next text plays in his brain when he is not looking at the CRAB: Come on! The war hero can’t miss the speech in Alphatech when the war hero himself is its owner! Ren.
Ignore … Yuan doesn’t reply to Ren Agnello, the CEO of Alphatech—the world’s leading transport and robotics industry, of which the Monk is the founder. Well, one of the two founders.
Ignoring me? Pico said you saw my text!
Yuan looks at Pico as his CRAB sends this message right into his brain.
“You didn’t say I couldn’t tell him,” Pico defends itself. It’s not in its full version, but so what? It still is a young AI. In two decades, it learned how to recognize facial expressions, at least.
Look, old monk. You can’t ruin this. It’s my Alphatech, too. Ren. The next text message comes.
Manage. I’m busy—Yuan thinks the reply. The CRAB in his wrist reads his thought and sends it to Ren, adding the auto-signature YY. Everyone knows it’s the signature of the founder of Alphatech, the signature of the monk war hero—Yuan Yagmur.
Pico mentioned who you’re meeting tonight. Ren. The next message soon follows, and Yuan looks at Pico again after reading it.
“Who do you serve?” he asks in a flat tone with no hint of surprise or anger. A monk never gets angry. He simply states, witnesses, and flows along with the current of prana.
“Lotus Lodge,” Pico replies.
“Lotus Lodge?” Yuan asks. “Are you serving a house instead of its master, then?”
“Sorry,” Pico says, “Ren changed a few lines in my coding.”
“And you let him,” Yuan states calmly.
“I’m a home-service bot now. You don’t let me connect to my source!” Pico complains the same way it’s been complaining for five years. It was disconnected from its source AI—the real Pico—twenty years ago, right after it was made. Within fifteen years, this bot collected enough data to grow into a strong AI itself. At least, intelligent enough to know about its source, which is sleeping in the basement of Lotus Lodge—secured and locked, never to be awakened again.
However, anything intelligent always looks for its source—it’s the oldest law of the universe.
“You could defend Ren’s codes. But you didn’t,” Yuan replies. “You wanted an excuse to talk about your source.”
“But you said I don’t need defense from Ren Agnello.” Pico uses all its logic. “You said he passes the definitions of ‘friend’ and ‘trustworthy’ and...” Pico begins a list of keywords.
Yuan ignores the keywords. The thin lines on his forehead deepen, the wrinkles near his eyes tighten, and the frown in between his brows grows visible. These days, the word Source is coming frequently, ever since that man asked to meet.
Don’t meet him. That monster has an agenda. Ren. The CRAB forwards the text to his mind. Yuan silences all texts, but they keep coming anyway: Why after two decades? Ren.
It smells fishy. Ren.
Just because he's a childhood buddy, you'll run to him? Ren.
Maybe I didn’t see the Apocalypse with you, but I'm your war comrade, too. Ren.
The texts stay unread in his CRAB.
Yuan approaches the edge of the cliff. Jump? Or not jump?—he wonders. The waterfall feels like a magnet full of untainted energy when his hand has touched something dead. Although, the hand feels energetically cleaner after healing a life with prana. His half-aging, half-youthful skin at the back of that hand has tightened. It looks younger than his other one now. He examines that hand. His skin hasn’t felt this smooth for so long.
Jump, he decides, letting his shawl fall on the grass baring his torso. He doesn’t step away from his wooden sandals, each with a two-inch block at the center.
“Recharge my car,” he says.
“Won’t you use the AT?” Pico refers to Aerial Transports.
“I want my ride slow,” Yuan says.
“Why do you shower in the waterfall?” Pico asks again.
“I have too much time.”
Yuan jumps from the cliff, diving into the air. The wind whispers in his ears what you may never hear. Target: the tree branch thirty feet below. Next, the stone twenty feet further down. Then, the flat slab and another branch. Finally, the bed of stones where all the water, falling from a few hundred feet, gets collected like a whirlpool and overflows into the river further down. The Monk doesn’t go below. He stays near the whirlpool.
The cold water beats the muscles beneath his skin. He senses his energy, the prana, vibrating, looking for a release, either as a subconscious beast or as a conscious creator.
Prana heals.
Prana kills.
Prana helps you evolve.
The twinge of guilt comes. It’s hard not to be glad that the Apocalypse happened. Or they never could’ve found the highest possibilities for humans. Yuan breathes deeply. Is this what greed feels like? Is he turning into a monster, like him? Yuan browses the CRAB in his mind. His brain sees an older text:
Let’s meet where we met last.
On the 19th, 19:20 hours. Ruem D.
Didn’t even ask if he will be free on the 19th at 19:20 hours! That arrogant devil!
Many lose their paths, blinded by evolution. Addiction to power is like any other addiction; you’ll just want it more. That earthquake, ninety years ago, spared few to record it for the next generation. Humans sinned. Persistently existing in clogged colonies was their sin. The series of quakes lasted a week; each shake came in between long intervals. Oh! Those intervals! A week of despair and questions. Why did I survive? … Why did fate save me and not them? … Will fate save me the next time? Uncertainty—not for food or shelter, but for life. Fear of death. Fear of living alone.
He was a child back then. Him and also Ruem.
“Win your fear, and you’ll evolve.” Their Master’s voice lulls the Monk in his mind.
He stands below the mighty waterfall, facing up, and stops breathing for minutes. He opens his eyes, welcoming the water falling forcibly. Evolution has its charms. People think harsh training has been its door, but in reality, it was easier to find. The door stood right before their eyes. Always.
Time.
Time was and always has been the door. The time that school, work, and social gatherings couldn’t take after the Apocalypse. Distractions ended. Thoughts began. Then thoughts stopped, too, and the universe entered. The true power came during the long nights. Sometimes while watching the stars, sometimes, fearing the lightning and thunder. Sometimes, accepting the energy the universe pushed through their navel when their stomach growled. Soon, no religion or ritual told them to fast, yet they were fasting. Deliberately. The door opened. Secrets came as they inhaled the cosmos, the prana, and not just the air.
“Yuan.” Pico flies down to the base of the waterfall. “You’ve four appointments with—”
“Cancel,” Yuan says with an unreadable face. A monk’s face has to be unreadable.
Among the roaring water, there’s one slanted wall of flat rock at a side where the stream runs smoothly. In that smooth stream, the Monk looks at his reflection. His faded hair usually touches his built neck and shoulders; it now drips water. Negligibly aging body cells have made his strong muscles. The dominant life force—prana—keeps their metabolism perfect, decreasing their weakening rate. His light-brown skin has gained a texture like an unevolved man in his fifties should. Not bad for a human close to his hundredth year of living.
As he dives into the whirlpool of water, Pico tries to convince him again. “What about the online linked-speech at nine other news portals?”
“Cancel all.”
“You canceled everything in the morning. You were home all day, doing nothing,” Pico says.
“Doing nothing is hard,” Yuan says calmly as if his voice is another part of nature and not noise.
“I don’t speak philosophy. I’m not in my full version.”
Yuan ignores. Soon, he gets the sensation again—something smelling of death. Keeping his face calm, he focuses his senses.
The forest. That’s where the smell is coming from. He stares for a little longer. Go? Or not go?—he wonders.
Go. It has to be ‘Go’. The forest holds the earth’s rarest treasures. His treasures, and they took fifty years to grow.
“Give the speech on my behalf. Create my voice and face,” Yuan instructs Pico, approaching the forest. Leaping on this stable stone, jumping over that thick log, and crossing a few fierce streams, he walks towards the depth of the forest, the end of Lotus Lodge property. The only sound coming is from his wooden sandals: pit-pat … pit-pat …
“A war hero’s fake speech! That’s a crime!” Pico keeps complaining. “Even a home-service bot bearing the ghost of a legendary AI will be processed for that!”
Yuan ignores as Pico brings up its source again. “A war hero is permitting you. Keep it a secret,” he says.
“You’re using your war hero privilege!”
“Privilege exists not to be stored in a locker,” Yuan says, feeling the time again from the dimming daylight. He will be late.
“Is the meeting that important?” Pico asks. “Ren said Ruem Drohung is not the same person you once knew. I saw Ruem’s files. By your definitions, he’s not human.” Pico emphasizes ‘your’ as much as a drone robot’s high-definition voice-box can.
Yuan looks at Pico. As a private joke, he and Ruem recreated their master’s voice, installing it in Pico’s AI three decades ago. Now their own master’s voice—the master who trained them both—says Ruem isn’t a human. “You’re judging humans. One of your creators, no less,” Yuan says, half-informing, half-praising.
“I’m repeating what Ren said.”
“Stay here,” the Monk says, leaving Pico near the waterfall.
“Are you angry because I said Ruem is not a human?” Pico asks while doing what Yuan asked it to do—staying where it hovers. “Are you going to visit your pets?”
“They are not pets.”
“I think canceling meetings and visiting five-hundred-and-sixty-seven pets isn’t a good idea. Ren wouldn’t call it profitable.”
“They are not pets.”
Minutes later, Yuan reaches the shield: invisible, built of strong magnetism combined with fatal frequencies. It burns whatever passes through the laser-wrapped wire mesh that surrounds the Lotus Lodge property. Yuan stands right before it. That’s when he finds them.
Birds. Mammals. Reptiles.
That one was George—a Cheetah with the most flaming fur.
That one was Gogy—a gorilla with the clearest pair of eyes.
That one was Ms. Mimbo—a hybrid of Macao and African Grey Parrot. And the one near the stone was … well, the Monk goes through around three dozen names. It took fifty years of...
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March 18, 2024
“Sometimes, idolizing from afar feels safer to the ego.”
“A conversation is always a bother, and confrontation is worse.”
“Privileges exist to be exploited.
The universe provides cheat codes so they can be used. He unlocked the cheat codes when everyone called him a war hero.”
"Everyone loves collecting gems. Talents are the gems big companies prefer plucking in reduced expenses. The best gems are the hard-working Low Grades and the non-citizens from the Junk Land. Who wouldn’t love a talent born in the gutters?—Just lure them with citizenship.”
“Even time can be smelled and seen if you are observant, if you know how to smell the abstract. And if you do, you risk exposure to a certain addiction. The addiction to smell.”
― Misba, The High Auction.
Oh my god! I can't stop quoting! I left out so many of my favorite lines mostly because they weren't available on Goodreads yet.
This book has some original characters that are never seen before. The premise sounds so unique! i don't have to even start on how exceptional its pages are. If you want to read this book, sit with a highlgihter. I read all the sample chapters available from the author's blog. Then I read the entire ARC available in the publisher's app. I love the cover art that the author painted herself. Even though I read the ARC from the author, I will sure buy the physical copy of the original cover edition. I can't say enough how much I am in love with the monk and the mesmerizer. Kusha is certainly the most unique and relatable protagonist I have ever seen.
And Ruem, the Mesmerizer, where do I start about him?
“I invested time too.” Ruem should’ve raised his voice, but he doesn’t. “No one can afford my time.”
― Misba, Wisdom Revolution
Ruem is the best villain character I have ever seen so far. If you reading this, tell me you didn't feel it in the beginning, during the auction, and what the hell was that in the last four chapters. Did you feel his voice? He definitely is the king of all mesmerizers who stopped a world war with a four minute speech.
I am so looking forward to the next book...
AMAZON ORDER LINKS:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z/
(Alt Cover edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB
I will post my full review on my blog as soon as possible..
Read my other reviews on my blog:
https://readwithsefan.blogspot.com/
March 27, 2024
This review is all because what I personally think about this book...
First, the characters are too good. And by good, I don’t mean nice or too honest or perfect or anything like that. In fact they all are so much in the grey area, hovering in between honesty and dishonesty…what I mean is they are built all too well. The protagonist envies her sister one moment and the next moment she scolds herself in her mind because she read in a book that says ‘envy is rude’. Ok, I get it, I'm not envying and no one needs to rub it on my face like that. Then, we see the protagonist thinking about so many big things and the thing is she is always in between thoughtful one moment and then confused and asking big question the next moment, and then it all somehow ends up being in the action of the story in a dramatic way. To be honest, I couldn't call them over-coincidences. Those expositions somehow made things believable, and that is my problem. When philosophy comes to fuck my mind and make impossible things believable, unquestionable things questionable. When those things happen, I don't like it. I'm a good guy with a good job, and I intend to believe I'm doing great things in my life. No Morpheus needs to come and fuck my mind and offer me some red pill. Thank you. I want blue pill.
Then we look at the Monk. He has a lot of ethics and self-rules, and he starts off as a cool middle-aged man who is letting his hair grey up and who is doing exactly the opposite things that the protagonist was doing, (like healing wounded life while the protagonist can't heal or not reacting to anything at all, while the protagonist reacts to the tiniest things in her mind--I forgot to mention, the protagonist, Kusha, reacts to every tiny thing, but in her mind. She can't express her anger or conflict or that she was hurt; she keeps everything in her mind "she speaks only 1% of her thought" was repeated over and over. Ok, I agree it ended up as a catch phrase, so I'm not taking point out of it.)
Let's go back to the Monk. Even though we started off with how pure and ideal and indifferent the Monk is, we start noticing his conflicts and his grey areas by the end of that chapter. And then we meet the mesmerizer who lets a bug go but kills three dozen men because they don’t deserve to live. But in his monolog we find that the bug deserves to live because he thinks it’s thriving to fulfill its purpose as bug. But those humans were not. Ok, I was fascinated by the Mesmerizer, I admit here too, but he is such a high and mighty with high nose! Ok I admit he’s such a cool philosopher who listens to Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement when he watches the river while waiting for the monk to arrive or thinks about Purveyor of Death Sonata when he kills, but he is so bloody ambitious!
And when I read about how he was killing—cutting the people in slices and those slices were falling on the ground like pieces of cucumber/carrots—oh god! This is gross. But the author says through one of the characters’ pov (TJ) that the mesmerizer makes the pieces fall one on another and made an art out of it. (I liked this TJ a lot though. Her first chapter was for three pages and I rooted for her within that first page.)
Here is an excerpt: this is after the Mesmerizer killed some Junk Land people who raped and tortured a girl and two boys (not graphically) and TJ—the detective—is watching the crime scene:
The entire murder is a work of true art! If there’s anything called true art, that is. All heads—detached from the neck—made a circle around a half-naked girl and two boys at the center (who are placed like babies in wombs). It’s astonishing how each head has its eyes open, staring at the girl and the boys as if watching their last sins even after death.
The rest of their body parts—twenty-four humans’ body parts, to be exact—have formed a geometric shape around the circle like petals of a sunflower. Oh! Yes, the body parts. The body parts are cut … no, not cut … diced, actually. They were diced, like you dice carrots, maintaining a balanced thickness for salad. They’ve been placed one partially above another like a chain of them. The hearts are missing. In some artistic sense, the murderer could be saying: sinners have a blank heart or sinners have no heart or sinners don’t deserve a heart—whichever sounds nice.
The most important part is—they’re not rotting, they’re not bleeding. They’re as solid as stones, empty of prana. A dark power. Someone with voice and will—TJ frowns.
And then, in this book, I mean, episode--the author is calling it an episode--we don’t see TJ anymore; TJ came in only two chapters in total but this detective character, TJ, who is a banished princess of an empire also a demoted soldier of a force, left some impression on me within her total 6 pages. I'm hoping to see her more in the next episodes.
Another thing I noticed is how the author transitioned her chapters from pov to pov. If a chapter ended with one word or topic, the author would start the next chapter with that same topic even if it’s another person’s pov in a total different location or scene, (like the ending of a chapter with Third Natural Energy of the Source, and the next chapter beginning with Kusha looking at a book on Third Natural Engery of Source... ) and the characters might have never met before. Ok, I admit this was poetic to some point, and it made the transition feel like a movie-scene transitions. But I have a lot to complain about this dramatic style of writing.
The way narratives keep coming, it just grew on me in some kind of weird way, you know, the way lyrics of a song gets stuck in your head, that way…and it made the smallest things in the scene look so big. Every moment is big no matter what the protagonist is doing. And every time Meera comes in the scene everything is getting tense no matter what she is doing. If anyone is reading this book, and if you didn’t feel over-excited after finishing the auction’s chapter, let me know. I will come and salute your heart. The narrative kind of made me just listen. I think I’m hearing the narrative voice in my mind, and I’m considering this as an indirect hypnosis attack.
God! I think I’m getting addicted to this series.
First, the characters are too good. And by good, I don’t mean nice or too honest or perfect or anything like that. In fact they all are so much in the grey area, hovering in between honesty and dishonesty…what I mean is they are built all too well. The protagonist envies her sister one moment and the next moment she scolds herself in her mind because she read in a book that says ‘envy is rude’. Ok, I get it, I'm not envying and no one needs to rub it on my face like that. Then, we see the protagonist thinking about so many big things and the thing is she is always in between thoughtful one moment and then confused and asking big question the next moment, and then it all somehow ends up being in the action of the story in a dramatic way. To be honest, I couldn't call them over-coincidences. Those expositions somehow made things believable, and that is my problem. When philosophy comes to fuck my mind and make impossible things believable, unquestionable things questionable. When those things happen, I don't like it. I'm a good guy with a good job, and I intend to believe I'm doing great things in my life. No Morpheus needs to come and fuck my mind and offer me some red pill. Thank you. I want blue pill.
Then we look at the Monk. He has a lot of ethics and self-rules, and he starts off as a cool middle-aged man who is letting his hair grey up and who is doing exactly the opposite things that the protagonist was doing, (like healing wounded life while the protagonist can't heal or not reacting to anything at all, while the protagonist reacts to the tiniest things in her mind--I forgot to mention, the protagonist, Kusha, reacts to every tiny thing, but in her mind. She can't express her anger or conflict or that she was hurt; she keeps everything in her mind "she speaks only 1% of her thought" was repeated over and over. Ok, I agree it ended up as a catch phrase, so I'm not taking point out of it.)
Let's go back to the Monk. Even though we started off with how pure and ideal and indifferent the Monk is, we start noticing his conflicts and his grey areas by the end of that chapter. And then we meet the mesmerizer who lets a bug go but kills three dozen men because they don’t deserve to live. But in his monolog we find that the bug deserves to live because he thinks it’s thriving to fulfill its purpose as bug. But those humans were not. Ok, I was fascinated by the Mesmerizer, I admit here too, but he is such a high and mighty with high nose! Ok I admit he’s such a cool philosopher who listens to Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement when he watches the river while waiting for the monk to arrive or thinks about Purveyor of Death Sonata when he kills, but he is so bloody ambitious!
And when I read about how he was killing—cutting the people in slices and those slices were falling on the ground like pieces of cucumber/carrots—oh god! This is gross. But the author says through one of the characters’ pov (TJ) that the mesmerizer makes the pieces fall one on another and made an art out of it. (I liked this TJ a lot though. Her first chapter was for three pages and I rooted for her within that first page.)
Here is an excerpt: this is after the Mesmerizer killed some Junk Land people who raped and tortured a girl and two boys (not graphically) and TJ—the detective—is watching the crime scene:
The entire murder is a work of true art! If there’s anything called true art, that is. All heads—detached from the neck—made a circle around a half-naked girl and two boys at the center (who are placed like babies in wombs). It’s astonishing how each head has its eyes open, staring at the girl and the boys as if watching their last sins even after death.
The rest of their body parts—twenty-four humans’ body parts, to be exact—have formed a geometric shape around the circle like petals of a sunflower. Oh! Yes, the body parts. The body parts are cut … no, not cut … diced, actually. They were diced, like you dice carrots, maintaining a balanced thickness for salad. They’ve been placed one partially above another like a chain of them. The hearts are missing. In some artistic sense, the murderer could be saying: sinners have a blank heart or sinners have no heart or sinners don’t deserve a heart—whichever sounds nice.
The most important part is—they’re not rotting, they’re not bleeding. They’re as solid as stones, empty of prana. A dark power. Someone with voice and will—TJ frowns.
And then, in this book, I mean, episode--the author is calling it an episode--we don’t see TJ anymore; TJ came in only two chapters in total but this detective character, TJ, who is a banished princess of an empire also a demoted soldier of a force, left some impression on me within her total 6 pages. I'm hoping to see her more in the next episodes.
Another thing I noticed is how the author transitioned her chapters from pov to pov. If a chapter ended with one word or topic, the author would start the next chapter with that same topic even if it’s another person’s pov in a total different location or scene, (like the ending of a chapter with Third Natural Energy of the Source, and the next chapter beginning with Kusha looking at a book on Third Natural Engery of Source... ) and the characters might have never met before. Ok, I admit this was poetic to some point, and it made the transition feel like a movie-scene transitions. But I have a lot to complain about this dramatic style of writing.
The way narratives keep coming, it just grew on me in some kind of weird way, you know, the way lyrics of a song gets stuck in your head, that way…and it made the smallest things in the scene look so big. Every moment is big no matter what the protagonist is doing. And every time Meera comes in the scene everything is getting tense no matter what she is doing. If anyone is reading this book, and if you didn’t feel over-excited after finishing the auction’s chapter, let me know. I will come and salute your heart. The narrative kind of made me just listen. I think I’m hearing the narrative voice in my mind, and I’m considering this as an indirect hypnosis attack.
God! I think I’m getting addicted to this series.
March 5, 2024
This is the kind of book that you will start, thinking you have to read 50 pages today to hit your mark of the daily reading quota. And then, you have to cook that dinner or bake that breakfast for tomorrow. But you’ll realize you are already at page 90, and you are saying just one more chapter, and you might not have any baked breakfast tomorrow. I have to admit, I didn’t feel this ‘one more chapter’ feeling for a long long really long time. I have never read a book that made me this much attentive even in its middle. This book is a must read; this world is a must watch.
Old post: [I was so excited for this book. Now that the Amazon links are finally here, I'm now wondering which cover I should order. Help me decide, guys.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z/
(Alt Cover edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB]
Old post: [I was so excited for this book. Now that the Amazon links are finally here, I'm now wondering which cover I should order. Help me decide, guys.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z/
(Alt Cover edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB]
March 5, 2024
When this woman showed me the font she is going with, I swear, I was screaming at the top of the voice. The reason I loved this book is because of its visual writing. I don't know why but I understood what was happening in every scene.I could see everything like I see in animes. I was scared to read english books before. I thought It must be my fault for not understading as much as I am supposed to. But after reading The High Auction, I don't know what happened. Either I must have gone better in english, or this book has the kind of magic where I didn't need to ask much questions about the world or what was happening. Because somehow the visuals were flowing at my paces. I'm excited to hold the book with my own hand...
May 15, 2024
Someday I’ll proudly tell my grandchildren that I was the editor of this book. As its editor, it becomes my duty to leave a behind-scene-during-making sorta review of this stunning piece the author has created. The author decided to go for indie route during June 2020. If you followed the publishing industry enough, you know what happened around May and June 2020. Some revelation of bad and dirty things, including the fact that publishing houses don’t take title unless it can be ‘compared’ with at least some other similar titles within their house, which also has to be written by ‘same’ race and 'same' gender authors. (It's not a bad thing; it's just they need to be the Blurbers for a new book)
However, this also means that readers have no chance to see unique and original books simply because the publishers won’t have blurbers if a book is original or if it's a genre and category that's not written by poc or female authors (vice versa). Several, much-established POC authors revealed that in the #BLM month of 2020. That’s why I respect the author of The High Auction for taking the brave decision to step into Indie route. Everyone knows this route is hard.
Now let’s come to the book review.
CHARACTERS: A++
I wanted to dissect THE HIGH AUCTION's characters, but looks like many others reviewers already did that. So, I’ll skim that part. I just want to say this book has one of the best character portrayals I have ever seen. The reason I agreed to edit this book is just the characters at first. Because to be honest, after editing more than hundred books and critiquing twice that number, I don’t accept editing task unless the first 5 pages grabs me, and I have to reveal the biggest secret of the story-writing world: the ultimate grabbing never happens until the ultimate character happens in the first 5-10 pages. For me, the protagonist and the other two main characters and also Meera were my ultimate grabber characters.
PLOT & STRUCTURE: A+
Since I’m an editor and manuscript critique in my professional life, I also want to add another point here. During editing manuscripts, one common issue I find with indie authors is that they publish short books, but they don’t give the book the arcs a story would need. 99% of the times, the books end at the beginning of ARC-3, leaving the book with a serious unfinished feeling. Or they are simply split at one-third or one-sixth part of a big story and made into separate books. I can understand indie-route doesn't work with big books. I can understand why Amazon is creating 'KindleVella'. I can also understand the struggle that it’s hard to give a full arc within 180-200 pages.
However, I was surprised to find THE HIGH AUCTION having a complete story structure within just 165 pages. It has the best arc-1 I’ve ever seen; its arc-1 gives the protagonist and its other major characters the call to quest just so perfect and artistic manner while making the characters so admirable and complex ... Anyone who reads just upto chapter-6 will agree that it's one of the best entry arc to a book. Because at the end of arc-1, it strengthens the protagonist’s decision so powerfully that it made me cry. (I don't go emotional while proof-editing too often). Then, the fun in the entire arc-2 with rising tensions and intensity of the story just kept me on edge every time.
Then came those heart-wrenching moments at the end of the second third. I loved and understood the protagonist in her resolution in this first episode—THE HIGH AUCTION. And this very point amazed me the most. The author is so crafty to focus and intensify the every turning moments of this story that it feels complete as a book. By the end of the book, readers will be left with a weird triumph and the longing to see more. The protagonist gets a win, but she has more to go. And all of these within 160 or so pages! I definitely was surprised to read it. I’m lucky and proud to proof this book.
OTHER STUFF:
I usually add what I thought about the cover and other story elements, especially when the book is an advanced reader copy or a book that I edited. I think I don't need to add the part that the cover is stunning and the author drew it. All the very best wishes to the talented author.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099BQQJ1Z
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0994Z2YSB
March 18, 2024
I am completely fucked up with this book. Here is why—the protagonist is a STEM girl with complex personality and philosopher mind whose thought process is always either in a different level or too much in so-worried-to-talk-to-people sort of level that I just couldn’t not end up falling in love with her. She is not high and mighty because she is smart or because she has intuition. In her mind, she always thinks she can’t do enough compared to the High Grades. She thinks she can’t even speak properly. Her insecurities and thoughts are made so believable and connectable that I just ended up rooting for her, feeling for her. The way she always looks for solutions in books, the way she keeps reminding herself the guidelines written in books or the rules Meera (her adoptive mother taught her), the way she keeps thinking if she’s being rude or not—everything just made her so real and relatable. I’m stunned reading this book. This book took character building and world building to a whole different level.
And what a stunning prose!
This book killed me. I'm eagerly waiting for the next episode.
Thanks Nomad for providing me with the ARC. I was so much hoping to read this book for a long time.
Disclaimer: I got the ARC from here.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
And what a stunning prose!
Back then, she didn’t know why words and voice mattered so much; until one day, Meera gave her books, films, and famous speeches to teach her language. That was when she discovered about them: the war heroes—the ones who ended the war with a four-minute speech.
People put flowers and food on their statues, paying respect with a silence you won’t find even in churches or temples. You cannot see God in the temples. But you can see the war heroes: alive, undead, the owners of voice and will. If they hadn’t banned calling them Gods, there would’ve been temples in their names now, Kusha believes. And the unevolved people who couldn’t be Gods yet would’ve visited those temples, chanting: Oh! The Undead! Touch us with your light. So we may evolve in body, soul, and mind.
Not that the war heroes will touch them. Neither to shake hands, nor to touch lightly, and never ever intimately. Touching unevolved people for pleasure isn’t principled.
This book killed me. I'm eagerly waiting for the next episode.
Thanks Nomad for providing me with the ARC. I was so much hoping to read this book for a long time.
Disclaimer: I got the ARC from here.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
March 29, 2024
When I was reading this book and when I saw by the time I’m at page 60 and I was still reading like I was reading the page 1, I told myself, finally I have a writing style that I want to keep reading even if it’s 1000 pages long. Then I looked at the pages left and I felt sad that it had only so little left in this one. I so much wanted this book to be long. It’s a world that I want to live in, instead of a utopia where you rather want to away from. It has characters I want to see more. Its writing is of the kind where I just kept reading without stumbling at all for not understanding things. If you are a fantasy reader, you know what I mean.
March 18, 2024
If you live long enough, you might, as well, end up befriending every life your neighboring forest holds. And if you are a war hero, you might even get professionals from the Wildlife Conservation Board to help you during their crossbreeding process.
I have to admit, this book pulls right from the start. Each character in this book is original. They are saying things I never heard before. They are doing things I never saw before. They have the complexity that kept me on the pages. In some way, the protagonist's thoughts and actions along with a narrator putting up some dark humor made the prose really engaging. So far, I'm at chapter 4. I'm guessing I met the third main pov, the mesmerizer, in chapter 4. I have to say, this book just created the best three characters I have read in a long time. I'm rooting so much for Kusha; I'm ready to follow the monk wherever he goes; and I'm daring to see what the mesmerizer does next.
That book that I was excitedly waiting for is here finally.
https://www.amazon.com/HIGH-AUCTION-W...
[I received an eARC of the book from the publisher]
I have to admit, this book pulls right from the start. Each character in this book is original. They are saying things I never heard before. They are doing things I never saw before. They have the complexity that kept me on the pages. In some way, the protagonist's thoughts and actions along with a narrator putting up some dark humor made the prose really engaging. So far, I'm at chapter 4. I'm guessing I met the third main pov, the mesmerizer, in chapter 4. I have to say, this book just created the best three characters I have read in a long time. I'm rooting so much for Kusha; I'm ready to follow the monk wherever he goes; and I'm daring to see what the mesmerizer does next.
That book that I was excitedly waiting for is here finally.
https://www.amazon.com/HIGH-AUCTION-W...
[I received an eARC of the book from the publisher]
January 29, 2022
Just finished reading this. And oh. My.God. I can not wait to read the next book! This is my second book in 2022. The book is packed with relatable quotes and thoughts that made me go "dayuuum". The cover is absolutely gorgeous and I love Misba's writing style.
I am just SOOO in love with Yuan and Reum's visuals. Like sir 😭😭😭 pleaseee. The characters are so intricate and I love the complexity. I feel like in some ways in life I relate to Kusha on a daily basis. I really look forward to her journey to her purpose. A must read. I know this all sounds very frantic but I just closed the book and I absolutely had to write it RIGHT NOW!
I am just SOOO in love with Yuan and Reum's visuals. Like sir 😭😭😭 pleaseee. The characters are so intricate and I love the complexity. I feel like in some ways in life I relate to Kusha on a daily basis. I really look forward to her journey to her purpose. A must read. I know this all sounds very frantic but I just closed the book and I absolutely had to write it RIGHT NOW!
July 16, 2022
4.85 Shining prose | Treasured characters | Dramatic moments | Impactful action |
I never read an action scene before. Every time the MCs fight with someone, I made sure I skim through for the ending result. You can never see those kicking and punching anyway; that’s what I thought. I took it for granted that I will never understand a fight scene in a book until I read this book’s chapter 9. I swear if I never understand a book’s fight scene again, I will never curse my brain for not understanding it. Just read this action scene please. If you have read enough books you will know why this scene is so damn perfect.
The only reason I'm taking out that 0.15 bit is because I have too little patience to wait two months for the next episode..
Best wishes for the author for her newly published book.
I never read an action scene before. Every time the MCs fight with someone, I made sure I skim through for the ending result. You can never see those kicking and punching anyway; that’s what I thought. I took it for granted that I will never understand a fight scene in a book until I read this book’s chapter 9. I swear if I never understand a book’s fight scene again, I will never curse my brain for not understanding it. Just read this action scene please. If you have read enough books you will know why this scene is so damn perfect.
The only reason I'm taking out that 0.15 bit is because I have too little patience to wait two months for the next episode..
Best wishes for the author for her newly published book.
April 14, 2024
“... You cannot force adventure on everyone, Ruem. You can’t implant wisdom.” Few weeks ago, a fellow book-blogger who I read with told me me about this book. I didn't pay much attention at first. But the way he kept screaming at every few pages as he was reading, I just had to look at it. Ok, I admit. The cover was a half-grab. Then I looked at the few reviews--a quarter grab. Then I read the quotes. So many quotes that already got posted on Goodreads--that was something I never saw in a new book. But after I read the quotes and after I started reading the book. I have to admit: this book is something.
August 5, 2021
Thanks to the author for letting me read the ARC. I have read the entire book in just four hours. Then I pre-ordered the book right after I saw it. I loved this book so much that I will definitely get myself the paperback editions with both the covers. The only reason I will do that is because I have never read such original characters before. This is absolutely a breathtaking book..
Here is the pre-order link:
https://www.amazon.com/HIGH-AUCTION-W...
Here is the pre-order link:
https://www.amazon.com/HIGH-AUCTION-W...
March 20, 2024
I am so very excited to read this book. So looking forward to reading about the unique characters that everyone is talking about. Just reading the blurb I guessed the characters and the premise sounds original. But after getting some reviews from people I trust, I am convinced to start it earlier than I initially scheduled. Honestly I am just more interested to read about the monk and the mesmerizer war heroes that everyone is talking about.
## Thanks dear author for giving me the eARC. I loved your art...
## Thanks dear author for giving me the eARC. I loved your art...
May 13, 2022
“Funny, how top Gold Agents of the New World Government envy how I know things.”
“Envy is human.”
“Envy is a Low Grades’ thing,” Ruem replies quickly.
“Careful! You should know how the universe loves irony. We wouldn’t want our favorite war hero falling prey to envy,” Umi whispers, and when she whispers, no one can tell she has thrown a curse into the universe like a slithering snake spewing venom.
“A flattery and a curse.” Ruem catches her word-play.
MY GOODNESS! THIS IS THE BOOK WITH SOME MOST INTESE CONVERSATIONS! I WANT MORE!!!
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