From The Bookworm's Desk

Who says that non-Americans can't write good books in English? Everyone has the mindset that all those English books you read are written either by an American, or British. I admit, even I used to think that way. But I've learned over the past few years that you don't have to be born English to write good English fantasy novels.

I recently read a book by an Indian man named Samit Basu. It is a series of three books called the GameWorld Trilogy. I immediately fell in love with it, and you seriously can not compare his work to anyone else's. He wrote the books in English, but a lot of the names and concepts are derived from Indian mythology, beliefs and are overall Indian in origin. His work brings out the true meaning of utilising your resources. He had expertly woven Indian traditions with the basic lifestyles of fictional fantasy characters to create something very different, and also very fun to read.

The story idea is also very original, and I really liked it. It's not your average save-the-world-from-the-bad-guy story. One major point that the author has tried to emphasise is that a villain in not necessarily always evil. It depends on the way you look at things. From one side, the victim feels the villain to be the bad guy. But for the villain, he's only doing what he thinks is right. For example, in the usual cat-chases-mouse stories of Tom and Jerry, Tom is always looked upon as the villain who tries to get rid of Jerry in the most cruel ways possible. But from Tom's point of view, he is only trying to do his duty to his mistress and secure his own survival by eradicating the pesky mouse.

Samit Basu's tale is extremely colourful, with humour on every page. He has combined various extremely popular stories like those of Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood and also those of Indian and Greek mythology to get a fresh and very original piece of work. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his stories and I would definitely recommend them to all those who thrive on fantasy fiction.