Book Review: Time's Up by Velamur Vasu

Time's Up by Velamur Vasu is an engrossing fantasy thriller with elements of sci-fi and time travel. The story commences with three college friends roaming and trekking the hills of Munnar in South India. Suddenly, they come across a helicopter crash in the jungles. They chase the location and find an enigmatic device. Thereafter, the story revolves around this device. They try to control the device and think of playing around it but it happens the other way. The device shows what the person is thinking who holds it.

For much time, these people i.e. Ranga, Vindhya, and Vashist try to overpower each other for the sake of controlling this device. Also the device keeps them in a loop of solving puzzles by showing them random sets of numbers. Right since the beginning it is clear that the novel is about puzzles as these characters are from engineering background and once the device shuts down they had to do a lot calculation to bring it back alive with its password. Author’s technical background is evident in the story.

You can consider that the first part of the novel is about these characters palaver on the device. Well, these guys are from 2019. But soon they are transported back to 1912 to some Thirukostiyur. They get cultural shock and vice versa to the locals. For sure, this is time travel. Vindhya gets to see her aunt Pitchamma. A relationship equation is sure to confound readers here. But more than relationship, they have to solve the puzzle before they are transported to some other place or to their origin. The puzzle is about Raghavasimhan. Was he a mathematician genius? Was he fool to reject a job offer and why?

From time and again, the novel hops from small to intriguing puzzles. Despite this difficulty, the story keeps chugging ahead with chirpy characters. The novel has a good storyline with wit and sarcasm. However, puzzles may not go well with all readers. These puzzles increase the difficulty level for reading. Otherwise it’s a good novel. The author’s narration is simple, rather free flowing. The story is fast-paced. If you enjoy intriguing time travel stories, well then this novel is a must pick up for you.

Buy from Amazon/Kindle.

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