The Oath of the Vayuputras (English)

Shiva Trilogy, Book 3

By: Amish Tripathi

Narrated by: Manish Dongardive

Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Only a god can stop it.

Shiva is gathering his forces. He reaches the Naga capital, Panchavati, and Evil is finally revealed. The Neelkanth prepares for a holy war against his true enemy, a man whose name instils dread in the fiercest of warriors.

India convulses under the onslaught of a series of brutal battles. It's a war for the very soul of the nation. Many will die. But Shiva must not fail, no matter what the cost. In his desperation, he reaches out to the ones who have never offered any help to him: the Vayuputras.

Will he succeed? And what will be the real cost of battling Evil? To India? And to Shiva's soul?

Discover the answer to these mysteries in this concluding part of the best-selling Shiva Trilogy.

©2013 Amish Tripathi (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

Good book fictionalizing mythology

Loved all the 3 books. I was a little confused that towards the end the author referred to Mahabharat happening after the events of the story but earlier in one of the conversations between Shiva and the vaishnava pandits, the pandit referenced Gita. I will revisit that section again but other than that it was good.

Anachronism galore

So many times, the author becomes too pretentious and says things that make absolutely no sense! Black holes, the big bang, radio waves, computer binary signals, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and whatnot! These things were mentioned in the previous books also, but this part takes it up to 11. I had to skip through many times because I was facepalming.

So many times, it's mentioned that the timeline of the story is a few centuries after the time of Lord Ram, but so many times, they quote the Bhagavat Gita.

If the author intended to connect with the modern reader, then I think they did a poor job because this broke the charm of the stories.

Don’t get me wrong, the overall story is good, but all this makes you cringe if you know even a little about Indian history and mythology.

Big let down to the buildup

The oath of vayuputras is so not the title for this book as it gets so lost in the other elements of the story that you actually don’t even remember what oath did they took and was protecting. Some of the scenes which are wrote for the main character does not make sense as if they are marketing the book as a “godly figure becomes human and go on his adventure,” then its a big mess, after an heartbreaking moment, as everybody was expecting some big form of destruction via main character out of retribution as it has been in the original history of sanatan dharm. They just made him quite the opposite and frankly not someone you want to root for. The climax was very very boring compared to what it was building towards as something huge.

The anachronism is painful to hear

I enjoyed the first book despite the anachronistic language. The second one was a little worse, however the third one gets really painful. The author could have put some time and thought into it and come up with a more time appropriate explanation.