 The Immortals of Meluha or Meluha. I'm I'm not sure how to pronounce a lot of words in this book and Well, I apologize in advance for that. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long So just off the bat I want to say that this review was requested by Aberhaj Singh and I will actually be reviewing the whole series just not all at once and If you want to suggest more stuff for me to review then check out my patreon page. There's an option there. So the Immortals of Meluha was pretty good overall. The story is about Shiva who is a Hindu God and basically this takes place in around 1900 BCE and the idea is that Shiva was originally a human but he became a God through his crazy actions, crazy antics, whatever you want to say and So that's an interesting idea right there. Like we know from the beginning that okay, this guy is going to somehow rise up to Godhood. How is that going to happen? And He's also like a chosen one. We find out pretty early on in the story. So right off the bat we kind of know where it's going, but we don't know completely and This book alone. I don't know about the later ones but this one actually does play around with some of those ideas. So it's really interesting and throughout the story we get some other interesting ideas as well but it is really bogged down by just Okay, so show don't tell is sort of a shorthand when it comes to criticism like basically when you say show don't tell you're saying that I didn't believe what you were trying to tell me. Like if you want to show a character being sad you don't just have them say I am sad now because then you're not really believing it. You're not being pulled into the story that way. You have to actually show them crying. You have to show them being in pain. You have to show them having difficulty moving on past whatever happened. Like that's how you show and not tell and this book has a huge huge problem with that. Like there's a lot of times where characters are just saying what they feel. There's a lot of times where they're just saying what happens saying what's going to go on. There's a lot of a lot a lot of exposition in this about the world and while I did like that I did like the world itself. It can get tiring, you know it can get tiring just have them say oh, yeah this is how we do things and this is why we do it this way and here's how other people do it and it's just like we could just see that we could just watch it, you know, and that would be more interesting. So that right there is by far the biggest issue with this book that keeps it from being great because I think it could have been great if it didn't do that. To put it in a short concise manner, everything feels kind of shallow in this book even though it's going for some ideas that could be taken really deep. So that out of the way, it's still pretty good, you know like I said there was a lot of exposition and in fact the first like half to two-thirds of this book is primarily exposition but it's still pretty good, you know, like the world this takes place in is you know, it's ancient India and it's really neat, you know it's not a huge world, but it's a deep one, you know you feel that this place does have its own strange culture, its own strange customs and you can tell that it has a lot of history, it has thousands of years of history already by the time you come in. So that's like that's really cool. There's a little, there's a couple of weird parts like how Shiva and his tribe are apparently this these people that live way off in the Tibetan Plateau, which is sort of I guess the backwoods, they're like not even the backwoods, like they don't even really know about Meluha when they, the story starts but then as soon as they get contacted like they can understand each other's languages and then they come down and they have no issues communicating and they have no issues communicating with the other peoples there. So it's a little weird in that regard and maybe there's an explanation for that later. I don't know, but it was, it just threw me off and there's a couple of other things like that that honestly like when you keep them in context, they're not huge issues, but like they're there. The main character, Shiva, is also decent as a character. Like, you know, like I said, the biggest issue is just that everything is told directly to us and we don't really get to see most of his why he is the way he is. But there are a few moments where things shine through and overall he's not like annoying or anything. You know, like he is the leader of a tribe who is just at constant war and at the beginning, like, I feel like they could have spent more time really hammering that in. They could have spent more time like really explaining, yeah, a lot of my friends are dead and life kind of sucks right now. And that's why he would take this opportunity to move his tribe into the Maluhan Empire. They don't really do that, but at the same time, you still feel like, okay, yeah, Shiva is in charge here. You know, he's a leader. He wants what's best for these guys. That makes sense. And then when he finds out he's the chosen one, they really play around with that idea a lot. Like, he's thinking, why are you people putting so much faith in me? Like, you don't even know me. It seems kind of silly to do that. And the book itself and some of the characters in it also seem to be really hitting that angle. Like, yeah, it's kind of weird. Like, we don't really know this guy. And I mean, our religion says that there will be a chosen one here. But I mean, how do we know this is him? How do we know for sure that we can trust him? And then near the end, I'm not gonna go into too much detail about that, but like, there is some twists around that which say like, okay, so maybe being the chosen one actually means something different than everyone was initially thinking that it meant. And so that basically, it's a very old, old idea, but they are playing around with it here. And that was probably my favorite part of the book overall. Like, it was... It was, it was interesting. I'm really excited to see where that goes in the later books. Shiva's romance with another character is... I have mixed thoughts on because, like, it does that classic thing where, like, they meet and it's just love way too quickly. And that's kind of annoying. But that being said, a lot of times in really just all sorts of stories, all sorts of media in general, the main couple will, like, not really be in a relationship even if they're in love, whereas in this one, he gets married. I don't think that's a big spoiler, but you know, he gets married and we just get to see them be a couple for a while and hopefully we'll get to continue seeing that as it goes on. And that's just, that's a small thing, but it was, it was nice to just let the romance happen and not try to stretch it out and add other stuff in there for drama. I just, I appreciated that it was doing something different in that regard. There are a couple of battle sequences in this book, which are, you know, for the most part, decent. And then there's like a big one at the climax, which is, um... Not that great. It's like, it's not awful, I don't think. I think it's... I think it's alright. It's just, it's, uh... Well, it's over a little too quickly. And that kind of takes me over to another criticism of this book where the emphasis was put in the wrong places. So, like I said, I wish there had been more time spent at the beginning talking about Shiva's life before the main story begins. But even beyond that, like with the exposition and stuff, there's just way too much time spent on certain mundane aspects. Like for example, there is an elixir that people can make in Meluha, which makes them live for a very long time. It doesn't make them live forever, but it makes them live for centuries even. And, um... When you bring something like that up in this sort of story, you can just say like, Yeah, we make it, uh, and it's cool. And you don't really need to go into detail about it, and you don't really need to give it a scientific explanation. Scientific explanation, because... Well, once you do that, it's inevitably going to fall apart, at least a little bit. And this book, they spend way too long just going over how they make it, how it works, and then they try and explain like, oh, yeah, your body has oxidants in it, and this flushes them out. But those oxidants coming out are toxic, so we have to bathe ourselves, and we have to make sure the river water washes away somewhere where there aren't people, and it's just like, You don't need to go into this much detail about it, guys. You can just sort of say like, Yeah, we drink it, it makes us live for a long time, it's kind of difficult to make. We don't need emphasis put in that area, is what I'm saying. And there's just a lot of other spots that are like that throughout this book. Another example is this passage near the end of the book, and I will remove the, uh, names to avoid spoilers, but basically, there's this big battle, and they capture an enemy leader. What? Asked name, take it aback, but we only just dispatched our soldiers to the enemy camp. They can't possibly have arrested him so soon, but I sent my personal guards, much earlier said other name. We could tell from the viewing platform that the Chandravanchees, I'm sorry, like I said, I can't pronounce these. Chandravanchees had already lost by the time you began the third charge, the benefit of the perspective you get from a distance. I was worried that name might escape like the coward he is, so I sent my personal guards to arrest him. But your majesty said name, shouldn't we discuss the terms of surrender before we bring him in? What terms are we going to offer? Offer, correct. Like, see, it just goes on like that, where it's just, you could have had like two sentences explaining, oh no, I sent some guys in to sneak in and capture him, and then they'd be like, oh, okay, and so it really just makes the writing of this book come across as extremely unfocused, and that's annoying. There's also a couple of modern terms in here, like they refer to the bad guys at a couple of points as terrorists, which just feels, it just feels out of place, and every time I read it, it took me out, because terrorist is just such a modern term, or at least it feels like such a modern term. And I already mentioned oxidants, they mentioned those, it's just like little things like that that just feel off, they feel a little odd, and they pull me out of the story every time I read it. So overall, I did enjoy the Immortals of Meluha, but it has some issues, I don't know how I can recommend it, but I will be reading forward, you know, because there was some really good stuff in here, there was some genuinely great stuff in here, and hopefully the writer, his name escapes me right now, but hopefully he has gotten a bit better after this first book, so, and that happens sometimes, you know, sometimes when authors are early in their career, you can read the first one, go, this isn't very good, but then you can read the second and third one, and you'd be like, okay, you can see their improvement, like the Summoner trilogy was definitely like that, but I don't know, we'll see, I don't know if I can recommend it, but you know, thanks to Abrahash Singh for recommending this, and also thanks to Aposavalanen, Christopher Hawkins, David Martinez, Joseph Pendergraft, and Melanie Austin, and all my other patrons, whose names you should see them here, you guys are great. Everybody else, thanks for watching, please rate the video, comment, subscribe, because that's unfortunately how YouTube works, you have to do that stuff to help me continue existing on here anyway. Anyways, see you later, bye.