Indian epic fantasy, at times brilliant

Mohanty is clearly a talented writer. I love the way he inspired the story on the epic poem Mahabharata, with which I was not familiar. Therefore I can unfortunately not make a comparison between both works. However, if I understand correctly, Mohanty set out to create a story of his own: to write 'Indian epic fantasy'. At that, he has certainly succeeded.

When I started Sons of Darkness I did not know what to expect exactly. Based on the marketing I had high hopes. And am always looking for a story that'll sweep me away. With imperfect, slightly dark characters I can relate to. Preferably also an intricate storyline with lots of intrigue and twists and turns. Yet, original and 'not tried before' .. So much for reasonable expectations I guess, because that is a lot to ask of any author. And I'm not a very patient listener either: it probably makes me and people like me a tough audiance to please.

However, when I started Sons of Darkness I was at first pleasantly surprised. Both the prologue as well as part one of the book are, I must confess, absolutely brilliant. The prologue and some of the chapters can also be considered 'grimdark'. Which is a more dark and raw subgenre of fantasy, usually featuring villains instead of heroes.

Mohanty sets out to introduce an interesting cast of characters that I could relate to very quickly and wanted to know more about. At the background is the clash between the Magadhan Empire and Krishna's Mathuran Republic.

From part two onwards, however, new points of view are introduced. And the main storyline kind of slows down in order to elaborate on some of the other events taking place simultanously (with these new POVs). But these chapters, though probably making sense from an author's point of view, to me felt very much like a lengthy aside. And in the end I started skipping some of these chapters.

Also, sometimes references to GoT and The First Law trilogy are too obvious and very unoriginal. For example: Shakuni is in my opinion too reminiscent of inquisitor Glokta (The First Law Trilogy-Joe Abercrombie), which could raise the question whether this (and just a few other parts of the book) are authentic enough.

All together, credit where credit is due: some parts of the book are absolutely brilliant and inspiring. Near the end the story features an epic battle. The narration is very good. Some POV could have been left out imo. And it would have been better if some references to other epic fantasy had been less obvious.

To conclude I would like to rate this novel 3.5 stars, but will settle for four as Audible only allows either three of four stars.

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