I am fond of genres that deal with doomsday weapon and how the good guys race up to thwart the attempts by villain group. While the ending is always positive with good triumphing over bad, despite knowing the ending, its the kind of weapon, how it is developed, its back story or historical significance, how it impacted any past event or geography, such trivia makes this genre interesting, with a liberal mix of fact and fiction. When you have relatable or recognizable events thrown in the mix, it makes it all the more interesting, trying to decode which is real and which is not. With this backdrop i started with this book. My initial target was "Origin" by the same author which had decent reviews but ended up with this one. One of the person who had reviewed about this had wondered out "thought they had stopped writing these kind of books". You see the problem with written statements as against oral being, the modulation with which they are conveyed. You dont get the actual emotion or meaning behind the sentence unless you hear it out loud or in person. Let us see how this comment turned out to be!!
The story starts like any fantastic fiction with several apocalyptic events happening world over simultaneously for anyone to make sense of them or where they even trying to?? Pet dogs suddenly turn on their owners devouring them. Birds attack planes and makes flying a death wish. Tsunamis and earthquakes happen out of the blue with no warning. People go crazy all of a sudden and turn violent at the blink of an eye. Is it a zombie outbreak or some virus cooked up in a lab that everyone knows but no one has the guts to question the maker? Is it like end of days as prophesized across many a holy book? Is it nature finally deciding enough is enough and wreaking havoc to save itself? The answer is a glorious NO for it is the world's most powerful army testing a new weapon!!! CLAP CLAP CLAP. The best part about that weapon is, it gets tested on its own people and the perps have the gall to claim it as a weapon to defend all Americans from their enemies!! With defenders like this, who needs enemies begs a question!! The lead pair is one heroine who is a mountain climber cum reporter and the hero being an involuntary addition while she tries to break into the high security area where they host the weapon. And by reading couple of files she makes out everything to know about the weapon. The hero, being a computer expert, immediately agrees to help her, without even bothering to know anything about her, says so much about this patriotism and background check done for such crucial project. Ithu pona IT job kay 1008 docs and bgv vaikaranunga..oru defense research project of such critical nature...ipidiya hire panuvanunga!! Doomsday machinekana mariyaathaiye poachu!! The all powerful army general and his never ending supply of soldiers and arms deployed in hunting and killing the lead pair on the run, suffers in making a single direct hit on them with all those hitech gadgets at their disposal and gets killed by them with means no mightier than rock, paper and scissors!!! American army should sue the author for showing them so badly. They make B grade movie soldiers sound like Avengers when compared to how badly they have been written in this book. Ultimate kodumai being, the hero kills the heroine point blank in the end for twists of all twists, he belongs to the cult that wants the world to end. And he does switches ON the world ending machine as well. So the world also ends. Adhukaprum oru epilogue that happens after million years where the then humans find out the dead bodies of hero, heroine and the cult leader who was killed by the heroine, intact and someones says the punchline that "we were never the first and we may be the last". More of a word of advice for the readers i guess..you may be the last or you may never last if you keep reading these kinds of books!!!
Naan ellathiyum kooda mannichidren. But the reason why army was after them was because, they feared the heroine will release the news on her ondraiyana news paper, of which she is not even the owner!! And ithupona office laptopsla kooda they block pen drive or any data from being downloaded. The ease with which they copy data from chief of staff's system in a pen drive and adhu thedi edukka the army stopping internet, telephone, and everything that moves in sight and yet failing ...ennatha solrathu. In a place that is under curfew, internet lockdown and army patrolling the strees, news paper padikrathada thala pora vela!!! As it is people are rioting, idhula reason therinja enna theriyaatii enna. Back to the modulation bit - "thought they had stopped writing these kind of books"...avvvvvvvvv.
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