Skip to main content

Book Review: Six, Five by Binary

Six, Five by Binary is a well-placed novel with cross-cultural setting. It’s a college campus story where two lead characters Violet and Victor play the most part in it. If you have read the blurb, you must have got the hunch that it is partially sketched on Sherlock Holmes lines i.e. a series of spectacular detective work. It means stories that require sleuths, detectives, and investigation, riddles littered here and there, and enigma along the roads.


Let’s focus back on the novel, there we have Violet and Victor, the students of E.G. Millennia. Violet is carefree and chirpy girl pursuing psychology, on the other hand, Victor is a bit serious and studious kind of guy. As the novel chugs ahead, Violet, the narrator, tells basic things about her, Victor, college campus, surrounding, and so on. The most important thing to understand is Zenith – it’s their college campus online newspaper. It’s Victor who manages stories for ‘Unveil Squad’ by investigating cases, mostly from the campus, at times outside as well.

Initially, readers may feel as Victor is being lauded and praised by Violet overwhelmingly. But when he begins tackling a series of cases, brilliance of Victor simply amazes and outpaces Violet. Further, to assist him there is gang known as Unveil Squad which consists of people like Julia, Casper, Krishna, Laura, and of course Violet. So the count of characters in the novel increases, but the point that awed us most was that roles and responsibilities of all characters are well-defined. It’s not a chaos.

In total, there are ten chapters, but the cases are not ten. The novel is lengthy one, stretches over 450 pages, and most of the cases are subdivided into parts that runs into chapters. Investigating cases is a concurrent theme in the novel, but this aspect has been placed slightly, carefully, and subtly, as you see that personal stories and idiosyncrasies of Victor and Violet run well along with everything. For instance a chapter opens up with guys hanging in the cafeteria, the chemistry between Violet and Victor ups and down like a graph, and then suddenly there is a case comes in. In fact with some of the serious cases, Victor outpaces the police in finding evidences and stitching the puzzles.

Cases presented in the novel are interesting but somehow sound soft. The first case ‘Weakness’ was based on discrimination for a football team’s selection. It was rather short and straight case. Cases like Zombieland and A Scandal in R.R.A and Yasmine’s Story are intense, lengthy, and gripping. As the novel moves on, Victor and his team hops from one case to another, gathering clues, ranging from CCTV footage to arriving at unusual and surprising conclusions. Victor as a lead detective thrives more on his instincts than logics. However, in the end everything goes right and people bow down before his brilliantly solved cases. All in all, this makes the novel a worthy engrossing read.

It is a brilliant pack of detective stories, with same set of characters and setting. Through the cases the author has tried to convey the message that drug abuse is a common problem plaguing the youth across the world, be it a case of Yasmin or Zombieland or The Infector.

We found this book mix of many into one such as thrill, suspense, mysteries, and personal stories – though from time to time there is a tonal shift but the overall doses of wit and humour never dips down. This is a book to be savoured slowly, not meant for hurried reading. The language used in the book is lucid, easy-to-grasp, and certainly promising. With a more acute and consolidated plot, this novel could have turned out to be more intriguing, like spy thrillers.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversatio...
65 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should ...
68 comments
Read more

Character Sketch of Binya from ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond is a popular children’s story. It features Binya as the main character, though there are other important characters as well, but the story revolves around Binya and her little beautiful umbrella. The story is widely popular among children, thus it has also been included in the schools’ syllabus all across the country. Since it is often taught in the school, thus the character sketch of Binya is often demanded by students from year to year. Character Sketch of Binya from The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond Binya is the main character of the novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond. Her full name is Binyadevi. As in the hills or anywhere in India it is a kind of trend to call children with their short nicknames. Binya’s elder brother’s name is Bijju, whereas his real name is Vijay. Binya aged eleven is a hilly girl. She lives with her small family in the hills of Garhwal. Her father died when she was two years of age. For sustenance, the...
41 comments
Read more