Good for children, but not the next Harry Potter

If I come off as too harsh in the below it's because I had high expectations for this book that weren't met. Too high. I read some reviews on book review sites calling it "Indian Harry Potter". And loving Harry Potter I rushed to buy it hoping for a decade worth of new books to enjoy. Sadly that exaggerated claim was one it could not live up too.

To summarise, overall it's a decent read for children. May even be a excellent read for children - if I was a parent reading this to my child I may have given it a 4 stars. But if you are an adult like me, and someone has told you its basically Harry Potter but with Indian Mythology, then they have missed that the tone isn't as wide ranging as Harry Potter. This is a young children's book, and adults looking for next HP should keep looking.

The Good:
The audio book is very well narrated. I was concerned to see it was the author narrating, but fears were unjustified as her delivery fantastic. I don't know if she has experience in voice work or not, but she's solid.
Grammar and story structure is fine.
There's a lot creative ideas here and children should enjoy it.

The things I didn't like:
Not 30 pages in we are introduced to the 2 love interests. Both are 12 year old supernatural super-model attractive Princes. But they are not perfect, oh no, for the most "dreamy" one has a bent eyelash, and the other is brooding with a tragic story for the lead to uncover and emotionally heal.

I honestly got vibes of Twilight's Bella, Edward and Jacob love triangle here, and wondered if this book started off as Twilight fanfiction, or at least was influenced by it. I put it out of my mind until page 100 odd, when the author gives a wink-wink that this probably was the case. One of the Prince's (who isn't from Earth and I wouldn't think should know about American pop culture) starts making jokes about sparkly vampires, to which the lead says that Twilight is her favourite book series. So yeah, the Twilight overtones are acknowledged.

Again with the Harry Potter comparison, at age 12 the HP trio weren't thinking of romance, they were fighting a Basalisk. HP waited for the characters to age before bringing in romance. Certainty HP didn't spend time emphasising how attractive its 12 year old characters were. I just felt a little uncomfortable reading it here. But I suppose this is part of me bring the wrong audience. Little girls will probably lap up the "dreamy" Pre-teen Princes.

As well as Twilighy jokes, the book does have a number of modern cultural nods that date the story. Harry Potter is set in the 90s but does its best not to discuss 90s culture so future audiences aren't left out of the references and could imagine it set in the 2010s, 2020s etc when they come to read it. It's timeless. This book's jokes about Twilight, selfie-taking demons etc place it firmly in the 00s. It just feels cheesy, and detracts from that timeless quality. The last Twilight book was published in 2008, and movie released in 2012. It was a fad that pre-dates the birth of this book's key audience. Audiences now may get it, but those reading it 10 or 20 years from now likely wont.

The humour was also aimed very young. There's a recurring joke about the lead being Princess "Just" Kiran that goes on too long. And a lot of the other worldly creatures go overboard with silly rhymes that take the tension out of the scenes. Plus there's jokes about Mustouche theft and other weirdness, and characters calling each other childish insults like "fart-faces" etc. It's key audience is probably children around the age of the protagonists (12) or younger.

In the end I really struggled to finish this. The problem, as I said the opening, that this book is aimed a pre-teens, and isn't really catering to a wider audience. The reviews that directed me to it did this story a disservice by comparing it so heavily with Harry Potter, something it cannot live up to.

I saw some reviews also compare it favourably to Percy Jackson. I never read those books, but saw 2 bad movies. And yes, on that issue, I enjoyed this audio book more than the Percy Jackson movies.

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