Whisper of Worms by Marcadian

Book Cover

Title:Whisper Of Worms

Author:Marcardian

Publisher: Cactus

Pages:300+

Price:240/-

Source: review copy via Tales Pensieve

         Being a book blogger, I have had the chance to read and review a good number of books in the past few years. In my initial years as a blogger, I never screened the review requests and used to accept whatever books that came my way. As the years passed by, I figured out that it made sense to accept only the books which I would potentially like reading. So when this book my ‘Marcardian’ (I guess it’s a pseudonym) came up for review, I was in two minds initially. I had never heard of this title before, the publisher was little known and the ‘author’ was virtually unknown. Still, I decided to give it a try, more out of curiosity than anything else.

To be very frank, I am confused what to say about this work. Where will I start?

To which genre does it belong?

 Is it a thriller? Hmm…, though it has traces of one, it never elevates itself to become a nail- biting experience.

Is it a love story? Partly yes, but terming it a love story will be like calling Rahul Gandhi a full time Politician.

Then is it a revenge saga/crime thriller? Definitely Not.

         May be, I can term ‘The Whisper Of Worms’ as a brutally honest, satirical account of a Man’s (Thobias Mathai) life as a banker and his rustic, eventful days in his native-the imaginary land called ‘Marcadia’. In the beginning of the story, Mathai who is recently diagnosed to have Cancer in the United States decides to come back to his native place to spend his final days there. The initial chapters are more of Mathai’s nostalgic trip down the memory lane and the reader is introduced to his childhood friends and the bonding which he had with them. These portions are sure to remind you of Anita Nair’s ‘Better Man’ and ’Mistress’, nevertheless are fun to read. As the plot unfolds, we get to know about a financial fraud which had happened in the bank for which Mathai was working. The remaining part of the book is all about the investigation of this fraud and has been narrated narrated in a humorous and satirical manner by the first time author.

        This one can be a decent read if you are someone with a lot of patience. It’s slow paced but once you get used to the mood of the book, I think it won’t be much of a problem. The language is plain and simple but sentences often feel like they have been translated to English from Malayalam. The writer definitely has got good ideas but he has to really work on his writing style. The problems which I felt with the book were the poor design of the book, formatting and typesetting (though the author cannot be blamed for it). The cover design is not at all appealing and I still cannot fathom why a title like this was given for this work. The pricing is okay. 

To Conclude, I feel Marcardian's debut work as an author is an okay read. It’s definitely not run-of-the-mill stuff. Pick it up, you may actually like it.

Verdict-A decent debut. I’m giving it a 2.6 out of 5.

The book was received as part of Reviewers Programme on The Tales Pensieve

-nikhimenon