“A great page-turner of a novel!”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Wasar Island is a journey through the growth of a child’s imagination. It explores Aaditya Raj’s progress from a nine to a 12 year old and delves into the fascination that young people have for foreign places. Raj sets Alex Drake and his friends Lester and Angelina in Miami – Drake is a young businessman on his way up and he and Angelina are invited by Lester to join him on a trip to Japan – Lester has conveniently won three free tickets. However they never reach Japan – the plane crashes in the sea and Jurassic Park takes over.
Young Raj populates Wasar Island with indescribably horrifying jelly bodied creatures and proceeds to guide his characters through a scary maze. Along the way characters from history pop in with Sansrkit names and his American characters display an acute knowledge of Vedic principles and characters. Aaditya does what other children, given a pen and time would possibly like to do, turn a book into an amalgam of favourite influences, gamification and all while parents hover somewhere in aerospace trying to figure out how to rescue their children. Children will relate to one of their own and enjoy telling their own versions of the curse, the weird man and the levels of difficulty involved without having to worry about grammar or grades.
What the story needed was the editorial hand of someone experienced to guide the story and author where they wanted to go and sort out continuity glitches.
Reviewed by:
Anjana Basu
Added 28th May 2021
