Fantasy with a touch of mythology and history is my favourite genre. When I browsed the bestseller fantasy books in Amazon, I found it featuring in top ten books consistently. Also it was just 49 bucks and 75 pages, so I had to pick it up. Jean Angel is a different fantasy as it had neither mythological nor historical India as a backdrop. I mean to say that the story is of India but the setting of kingdom and people was all work of imagination. Anyways, the author didn’t scratch much the canvas of landscape and ethos; he was more focused on the main story.
Since it is a short book, so I would not be routing much around the main plot. The scaffold of the story is built around a boy named Jean. At the time of action and adventure, he is 15-year-old, still growing. But this boy has a secret legacy which he discovers when other auxiliary characters like Angel, Tara, and Radha get in touch with him. Why is so special and how did he was born? I mean much of the story is about his growing and the past that is buried for his safety.
The semblance of the story features antagonist: the King Robert of the kingdom Zesia. He is afraid when one saint foretold his ominous future. According to it someone will replace the King Robert and that guy will be different in senses, i.e. he could talk to invisible figures. This premonition scares the hell out of him. As a result, he augments his dose of torture and kills innocent people of his kingdom who found talking in the air.
The story also has a healthy share of Tara – the original mother of Jean. Her part is part romantic, part catalytic to the overall plot. She, when finds out about Jean, collaborates with him so that he could be proved as that prophecy child. In all senses, Jean is that magical personality that we often see in movies, right after the birth, he is seen into action and other things that children his age find impossible to do.
It is a lovely read, short one, much like any short Netflix TV serial. I enjoyed it and hoping its sequel will be full of adventure and credibility that the author, in snatches, missed. All in all, a good try in fantasy genre.
ibooksta 