Time Crawlers by Varun Sayal [Book Review] 9

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 “I believe a writer’s brain can somehow tap into this multitude of universes and take a peek into the events happening in each of them. This book, comprised of six stories, is my attempt to narrate to you tales from six different parallel universes.”

From his Facebook page

Summary

6 stories. 6 universes.

“1. Nark-astra, The Hell Weapon: The weapons he possesses make him the destroyer of worlds, and he burns for revenge. A high-tech take on ancient Indian mythology.

2. Death by Crowd: The dark desires of the masses; darknet websites fueled by a crypto-currency. What lurks in the background – an advanced artificial intelligence?

3. Genie: He rubbed a lamp alright, but what he got was the shock of his life. An entirely sci-fi take on the djinn myth.

4. Time Crawlers: There are individuals who existing in multiple time periods at once, and there are those who know about them….

5. Eclipse: No attacks, no blood-shed, yet there was an invasion and a conquest. Who are these shapeshifter aliens being hounded by an eclipse?

6. The Cave: The fate of an advanced imperial race hangs in balance as a dark celestial entity meets a legendary protector.”

-From Amazon.com

Review

I was provided this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

When I received an email from Mr. Sayal, I was immediately intrigued by this book. His email stood out to me among a few other emails I had gotten that day.

He wrote in his email,

“Alien Invasion, Dark Artificial Intelligence, Time-Travel, High-Tech Hindu Mythology, Djinn Folklore, Telekinetics and life-consuming Cosmic Entities are the themes in my book which has 6 tightly-knit, fast-paced Sci-Fi stories.”

Immediately, I was like, “I NEED THIS BOOK IN MY LIFE, LIKE YESTERDAY!”

Usually I don’t read sci-fi books because I never find one that catches my interest. I always find them not able to really describe what is happening very well. But this one had 6 short stories, so I was curious, and had such a range of themes that I just had to read about it all.

So, I got my PDF and immediately sat down to read it. 3 hours later I was done and my head was spinning with facts and such horror (in a good way!).

The book had this Clive Barker kind of vibe going on with the stories – specifically The Scarlet Gospels and Tortured Souls.

The stories themselves were simple. The themes simple as well. But the way that the situations occurred was dense and complex. We had scientific explanations of how space and time worked that my brain hurt, but I was oh so loving it. If you don’t like a book that makes you think about the universal questions, this may not be the book for you, but if you do then this is it! We had entities traveling through time and space, people existing among different time lines. The book even questioned time itself. I was like ‘WE FINALLY HAVE A BOOK ASKING GOOD QUESTIONS!”

I absolutely loved that fact.

Now the stories themselves were kind of dark, especially Death by Crowd. It was focusing on the darknet and how people could purchase a way in to watch someone burn alive. The idea itself seems crazy, but not far from the truth at all. These things do happen and I’ve never read a book before that brings that idea in and then starts to question the morality and talk about the situation, and how it occurred, in the way that this book did. I mean honestly, it just blew my mind!

As the stories were short, some did move kind of fast and I would have loved for them to have gone on longer as there were some explanations that were avoided or cut short. I understand why, and the shortness of the stories was a draw, but I just wanted to read more!

Honestly, overall, I was really surprised. It was one of the best e-books that I’ve been asked to read. I was thoroughly impressed in the way the stories were written and the sheer specificity the author went into to describe these situations.

I can’t stop thinking about the book and it has really stuck with me.

Find him on Facebook here and Twitter here.

Check back tomorrow to see a fantastic interview with him!

About the Author

“VARUN SAYAL is an engineer and MBA from I.I.T. and I.S.B. (top schools in India), who has been involved in theatre as a playwright, actor, and director, and has also been an independent movie-maker. His genre of writing is predominantly science fiction blended with mythology and a sprinkle of the gruesome actualities of life. In his own words:
“I think of each story as a surreal, fast-paced narrative that pulls in the reader right from the beginning, takes them through a voyage into an alternate dystopian realm, bequeathing to them images etched permanently on their minds. I live by the quote, ‘a true art calms a disturbed mind and disturbs a calm mind.’”

-From Amazon