Oath of the Vayuputras

India’s mythology is rich and beautiful and, honestly, would provide enough fodder for plenty of fantasy novels. Luckily for us.

This is the last one in the Immortals series by Amish Tripathi.This is the book that promises us all the answers that have been sought through Shiva’s journey and, personally, I found it slightly disappointing.

The Vayuputras turn out to be a cult ; THE cult, in fact, that is responsible for the picking of the Mahadev. Though, it would probably be more accurate to call them a tribe. And this book tells us the secret of how Shiva came to be the Mahadev (nothing mystical in the ‘secret’, unfortunately).

In the Oath of the Vayuputras, Shiva learns the secret of the Somras and the cost the Meluhans are making innocents pay for their own immortality. Needless to say, Shiva decides the Somras is the ‘true evil’ and must be destroyed. This at the end of over a thousand pages in the series that asked the question. If you ask me, it was slightly anticlimactic. Not that it isn’t awful but somehow it doesn’t sound as earth- shattering as it should have after all that work. Maybe it was in the way the author had built it up? I mean, it wasn’t really a surprise that the Meluhan King was a weak, self-serving man who would do something like that.

Needless to say, Shiva’s plan to destroy the Somras isn’t universally popular and soon we find that war (once again) is imminent. Many twists, turns, divided loyalties and heartaches later, we arrive at the point where Shiva journeys to Pariha, the land of the Vayuputras where he eventually  procures the Brahmastra (an ancient mythical nuclear weapon which was very popular in the myths).

Does Shiva use the Brahmastra? And what is the Oath of the Vayuputras? For those answers you’re going to have to read the book. If you’ve been thinking of picking up your copy, here’s where you should go – The Oath of the Vayuputras (Shiva Trilogy)

‘I, meanwhile, would rate this a 3.5.