Customer Reviews

Golden Fire

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An interesting book which transports you to the ancient indian culture and history. Full of intrigue,sex,voilence this book delivers a punch and more.....
An epic story which really gives the reader an idea of what India was really like.A book which i got from a vendor, and which i read on pure instinct. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to all book lovers who dont mind knowing a bit of indian history,culture and rich heritage.A page turner no doubt!!!

I read this book 20 years ago and loved it , just read it again and enjoyed it even more now that I am more mature.You won,t be disappointed.

A glance at the subject headings for this book give an indication of the obscurity of the setting: Gupta Dynasty India. Not your usual time period. We're back in the time of the brahmin kings, before gunpowder, before the Muslim invasion, just after Alexander's invasion, the time of Kalidasa, a time of sword fights and battle elephants. Jonathan Fast has done a careful job of recreating this colorful age; his book is full of rich, sensuous detail and colorful imagery. He is a little too fond of hyperbole, but such exaggerations can be forgiven in such a wealth of pageantry. What can't be overlooked, however, are his synthetic characters and simplistic plotting. Sometimes reading more like a Dungeons and Dragons potboiler than an historical novel, Golden Fire resembles the "historical" films of the 1930s, when Hollywood could make broad historical epics with little or no historical accuracy and cast whomever they pleased without regard for ethnicity. Fast leaves no doubt as to who is villains are, nor whom you're supposed to be rooting for - just like Hollywood. But unlike Hollywood, he's obviously done his homework. Full of sex, violence, intrigue, royal depravity, etc. In short, something for everybody. Enjoyable if not taken too seriously, and an earnest introduction to an overlooked era