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I still don't know if I'll be able to do enough justice to this book by writing this review. I feel this book is too underrated, so had to write it this big. I have read this book year back and its next part and the series was and still is a 5-star rating for me. For a person like me who never read a book in childhood, this book has immensely helped me to fall in love with books. It looked challenging for me as it has got more than 400 pages yet it was quite reminiscing, delightful and I remember being utterly hooked into it.

This work is about the great Mahabharata from Duryodhana's (Suyodhana) POV. In this book, Kauravas are the protagonists and Pandavas are the antagonists. The author embellishes Duryodhana as a good person right from his childhood and how he always wanted to create a society without caste system, thereby showing that the fate of a person shouldn't be determined by his caste from his birth, but rather must be made through his hard work and actions. Yet his dream remains a utopia. Despite being such a person who was always against the caste system, people all over consider him to be a sacrilegious person to date. I feel it's quite true when people say, there is nothing that didn't happen in Mahabharata which will happen in the future, like how certain heinous crimes happen amongst loved ones out of greed, ill-treatment against women in a patriarchal society, the prevailing caste system, injustices happening, etc.

I vividly remember when I told my friend that I was reading this book and Duryodhana was a good person, she said, "oh, he has got good qualities too?". I agree that there is no fault of my friend to think in such a way. From childhood, we have always been seeing how few dull-witted serials and movies portray him as the greatest villain in Indian history, like having a wicked smile, monstrous laughter, and despicable background music whenever he enters into the scene. I get it that through these gestures they want the audience to understand that he is a very bad person from the very beginning. But what I don't get it is, why didn't they show his positive side? Or why is it too imperative for these serials to show that heroes are never flawed and villains are always flawed? Why is it so important to show a person as a villain in every story from the very beginning rather than making people know about what were the circumstances did those villains face? And now for those reasons, I feel a little betrayed. It's also true that no person is too bad or too good, and almost everybody has got their reasons for turning into a cold-hearted person. So, all these "whys" have been answered by this author, which is the main reason why I loved this book so very much. After reading, I really felt it's very important for each one of us to know a story from two sides.

Coming to the:
-characters: He has mentioned many characters that most of us are unmindful of.
My most favorites are Balarama and Karna.

-writing: it's very simple, engaging, and a page-turner. Anybody can easily get along with and the description of all the characters is just exemplary.

I so want to write 2 reviews on this book, like one without spoilers and the other with spoilers. 😛 Also, I regret not reviewing this book before.