The Prophecy of Trivine (Book Review)

I am no fan of Science Fiction novels because of some prejudiced reasons that I have no intention of displacing. My irrational reluctance to read books from that genre fails to even be a logical obstacle to forming obviously biased opinions. I cringe at the thought of reading current science and technologies elongated and stretched by authors just the right amount for those to be ‘creative’ enough for becoming integral to the plot. I cringe at the necessity that authors feel regarding inclusion of super-scientific devices transcending known human knowledge, because those are either writerly actualizations of impossible human wishes or airy imaginations; ideas that are incapable of criticism because anything can possibly happen in the genre and reducing anything in a book of such kind to improbabilities or impossibilities is to be shunned. This inability to treat Sci-Fi stories with rational skepticism, makes me avoid that genre altogether since it takes away a sense of participation from me. (Of course, because of my own prejudices rather than anything inherent to the genre.)

The Prophecy of Triumvirate Authorship

Prophecy of Trivine, thankfully, is none of that and any evidence in the book that would have solidified my misgivings about the genre, was tactfully threaded with common scientific myths and hypotheses so as to be not far from the domain of possible realities. An extra-terrestrial superior race that might have planted life on this planet is already part of popular lore and much more digestible, if part of a story. And for once, an alien visitation did not happen in the United States. Thank Pulkit Gupta, Srivatsan Sridharan & Tnahsin Garg for that. Thanks to them also for adopting a different tack from the current crop of authors with a technical degree who are eager to discover love and sex in writing their works, if not during their semesters and internships. The writing style is very neat, smooth and polished. The shared dream sequence was an absolute pleasure to read. The writing also makes an effort to refrain from falling into clichéd college lingo, though Phil (a college student) expectedly does that, but his knowledgeable personality and mild sense of humour helps him escape from an empty and hackneyed college boy caricature. Siv (the scientist), with his common cursing ability, helps break away from the scholarly image expected of a scientist. He is a rebel, fed-up with the academia, and therefore does not feel restrained.

In fact, all three characters who come together in the Jungle, are rebels in their own way. The three authors, have managed to bring out rebellion as an outcome of a positive purpose at variance with conformist structures. The overarching context of the book makes it tempting for one to label this as a desi version of Into the Wild, coupled with an environmentally sensible Sci-Fi story. Phil thinks inwardly that, ‘he was no criminal. He was simply a victim of society’s double standards. He knew he had done the right thing.’ The story’s stress on environmentalism also avoids hypocrisy by setting the forest as a living-breathing sub-text. It also threw well-informed explanations for phenomenon, peppered with a sweet tinge of generational humour. Nothing was over-done and all requirements of a good story were neatly checked.

But, there lay the book’s weakness too. There appeared no strand of a vociferous  (keyword: vociferous) espousal of an idea or a cause, although the youth’s frustration with globalized problems appeared in the presentation of the story, but disappointingly not in the minds of the characters. But the benefit of doubt must be given to the authors since Xona made the characters revisit grave evils of humanity, events that they might have missed because of their self-indulgent lives. (Perhaps that was the intention?). However, there were few things that deserved better clarity and explanation and maybe future sequels might deal with those. Gucutep's ability to express disapproval, anger, respect for authority, insult but inability to understand “love & hope” was a little difficult to accept simply because all those emotions are part of a single spectrum and reserving the supposedly positive ones for humans while highlighting the negative ones in Gucuteps appeared as a contrived attempt at differentiating between the E.T race and homo sapiens. Also ‘destroying’ an entire race because it was anyway self-destructing was a contradiction not explained Gucutepically enough, apart from brandishing humanity as a ‘failed experiment.’ So intra race rivalry is not acceptable, but inter race destructiveness is alright? Also, if Arty’s singing could restore flora to their natural essence, it should not by extending that logic, mollify feral wolves into stopping from attacking Arty because their natural essence, of course, is being ‘wild and feral’ and not being non-violent. Therein lies the anthropomorphization of human values onto animals, and this time, aliens too. If environmentalism is to reign supreme, this prominence of human emotions has to die out.

All in all however, this book read like an open air enactment of a quaint play. An unfrayed form of story-telling with an occasional breeze to enhance your reading pleasure.

Image from here.