Interview: Douglas Misquita

Do you like thrillers? Then you might like Haunted by Douglas Misquita, which I reviewed recently. Want to know more? Check out my review with the author himself! 

1. I'd like to begin this interview by asking you what kind of books are there on your bookshelf? What books are you reading right now? Which genre of books do you generally read? Which books do you re-read again and again?

Hi Sakhi. My bookshelf is full of techno-thrillers, adventure-thrillers, conspiracy-thrillers...THRILLERS, a few biographies, Tintin and Asterix comics, encyclopaedia (now redundant because of the Internet), Hans Christian Anderson fairy-tales,  abridged classics, Noddy! (I haven't given them away!) The 3 Investigators, Masters of the Universe mini comics, Nat Geo and now a Kindle!

Right now I'm reading I, Sniper by Stephen Hunter

Which genre do I read? See above (smiles)

I pick up any of my books and read the exciting parts again and again. I've read the Tintin comics almost to the near 3-digit numbers and Jurassic Park 9 times. And I'm not telling you how many times I've watched the movie!

    

2. Tell us something about your work before "Haunted"?

Before Haunted, there were short fiction that I wrote on single-ruled books and a lot of discarded and frustrated writings that stonewalled and some songs I composed.

3. Did you always want to be a writer? How did you get into writing? What inspired you to write "Haunted"?

I'm sure people might know this by-heart now. I wanted to be a writer from 1993. I got into writing when I tried to emulate the late Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park in my own El Dorado-themed adventure. Fast-action-movies with in-your-face visual effects combined with my interest (and almost everyone's) in a troubled/ traumatized psyche inspired me to write "Haunted"

4. What kind of people do you think this book will reach out to?

Anyone who loves movies, high-octane action, and want to escape their routine.  There's no age-limit: I guess you could read it to a newborn baby with all the sound effects and visuals and hold it enthralled (smiles); read it to your grandparents and they'd be itching for those stunts!

5. What is your favourite thing about books and reading? How have books made an impact on your life?

Books and the stories and information they hold transport me to places. How have books made an impact on my life? Given me an active imagination, produced "Haunted", taught me a lot about the world we live in and where we are headed, given me a lot of imitable idols.

6. Quick take. Answer the following with the first words/phrase that comes to your mind, in five words or less:

- Thrillers – Excitement ahoy!

- Life – Acceptance and courage

-  Kirk Ingram (the character) – Troubled

- Haunted (the book) – Raw adrenaline

- Books – Comfort


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And after that awesome interview, I have some good news. If you ever wondered about me, you can now check out an interview of me on Jidhu's blog.

Haunted by Douglas Misquita

Haunted by Douglas Misquita can keep you up at nights.

It is a really complex thriller about a terrorism outfit that will ultimately intersect with the lives of not just people like Kirk Ingram (the person I would call the protagonist) an FBI agent, but also many other people like a naval explorer looking for sunken ships, a group of scientists researching a nerve gas called Citex, a young lawyer, an ex-FBI agent now working for another side - and many, many more. I mentioned that the plot is complex, and the characters are also many and the different plot lines (till they converge) may confuse many readers. On the other hand, if you're the type of person who loves a good complex but extremely coherent and eventually very neatly tied up plot, then you're in for a treat. Haunted seems to be (and I admit I am uninitiated as far as crime thrillers of this type are concerned) a well-researched and well thought-out book, with enough twists and turns to keep you occupied, enough drama to keep you engaged, and enough different characters to make you want to keep a list. 

The characters are all introduced to you at various different, emotional or conflict-filled situations in their life, which I think really adds to the book because I found an immediate connect with most of the (I hesitate to use this word, but) good characters. The antagonists were a little harder to keep track off, especially because the story weaves in and out of many different plot lines and you might forget one when you're on another - especially if, like me, you read the book in whatever minutes you can snatch in a bus ride or in school breaks. I recommend you read this book at a stretch and not get disheartened if all the parts of the story do not make sense immediately - I know I had to re-read certain parts of the book before I understood what had happened, and I plan to re-read a few more parts immediately after I finish this review. Its definitely not the kind of book you can flip through without reading - you do have to pay attention to understand the story - but the story is quite interesting and does manage to hold your attention without much trouble. 

One of the problems that I faced with the story was its pacing. Somehow I felt that the beginning, that should have gripped me immediately (and I talk about chapter 1, not the prologue, which definitely chilled me) was slow and through me off balance. There was a lot of description of the weather and the nameless 'person' that I did not want and did not find relevant. I would recommend skimming through parts you can't get through and coming back at the end of the chapter - they are certainly interesting and even relevant later on. However, there were also a lot of positives about the author's writing - no spelling or grammatical errors, and great and interesting chapter headings. I particularly loved "The Haunting" chapters, and I would have loved some more of those, though I do understand why there weren't too many. 

Final thoughts: Interesting, complicated, well-written. Definitely a great read for people who like dark thrillers. 

Other thoughts: Author Douglas Misquita has gracefully agreed to appear on my blog for an interview! Keep checking back!

(Financial disclosure: Book source was the author.) 

Blue Moon Rising by Simon R. Green

Blue Moon Rising is an awesome, fun book.

The story begins with Rupert, the book's amazingly endearing hero, out on a quest to kill a dragon at the end of the darkwood. His noble steed is a unicorn. Hes out to be a hero. Until this point, most readers will think, 'Wow. Stupid cliche fantasy plot #901123'.' And then the world explodes. You get to know that the unicorn is an awesome guy with a biting sense of humor and without a smidge of respect for his owner. (In fact, the Rupert-Unicorn equation is quite similar to the Loiosh-Vlad relationship in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books, which are also some of my favourite fantasy books ever.) And the book goes on to kill another list of fantasy cliches. The dragon hoards butterflies instead of gold, the second son is sent on the quest to save the kingdom from financial trouble, and the finally rescued princess couldn't be more of a mess. And the fabulous fix-it-all magic swords: well, lets just put it this way, even the worst human in this book wouldn't hold on to them. If you're sick and tired of the regular fantasy mush that novelists seem to serve up - well, pick up Blue Moon Rising right now.

The good parts of this book don't require a lot of explanation. The plot is interesting and complex, the characters are really well-fleshed out (except for the main villians, the 'demons', and even among them the Demon Prince is someone I'd really like to read more about), the suspense is quite hard to guess, and honestly the inter-personal relations of the characters, especially with respect to the choices they all have to make under pressure in this book are beyond description. One has to read this book to accept the enormity of the decisions that these characters make. The kind of books and authors who manage to make this work are really rare, and this book definitely works.

Final thoughts: A fun, and yet at the same time really deep book on how heroes are sometimes made from the most unlikely situations. Definitely a must-read for anyone who has read a lot of fantasy (and its cliches) and almost anyone with a sense of humor.

Other thoughts: Unfortunately, I didn't have internet for nearly a week. In the meantime I've finished reading Julia Quinn's Brighter than the Sun, finished about a quarter of A Thousand Splendid Suns, and acquired some more books to read this diwali. Look forward for a lot of reviews.

The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer

The Prodigal Daughter is my favourite Archer book.

It is odd that of all the books I'm reading right now (I'm currently reading 4 at once, which explains the lack of book reviews here - and which also means I'm probably going to finish them all together and have a lot of reviews by the end of the month) the one I finished first was the one I'd already read. (I read it an awfully long time ago, though. It struck me while re-reading the book that there is a scene in the book where Florentyna, the main character, doesn't know what a virgin is - and when I read the book for the first time, I didn't really know what it meant either.) Anyway, I recently borrowed this book from the school library and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it even after so many years.

The Prodigal Daughter may be described as a sequel to Archer's wildly famous Kane and Abel, and is essentially the story of Florentyna Rosnovski - the daughter of Baron Abel Rosnovski of the original novel. Florentyna is an amazing character. She's intelligent, witty and kind - except when she rolls her fingers into a fist, which is when you have to watch out. And as it happens, she falls in love with one Richard Kane (son of William Kane in the original book) who just happens to be the son of her father's worst enemy. This book details everything that happens in her life - from her formative years to her years in college, to finally her affair with Richard and the subsequent drama that follows, and finally ends with her campaign to be the first female president of the united states of america.

The book, like every other Archer book, is extremely well-written. There is not a single dull moment, the dialogues are memorable, and the writing is very clean and masterful. The cast of characters is large (since this details the past and future of two families) but since each character is so unique (though not often very uniquely named) that is quite easy to keep them straight. Archer does not fall into the trap of having children with the exact characteristics of either parents and practically the same life, and therefore the book has a touch of realism that is really very useful. All in all, this book is masterfully plotted, the story is very interesting, and despite the large scale of the events the book is so delightfully human (and here the role of Florentyna as a character cannot be denied) that one cannot help but feel like the book is very human.

Final Thoughts: Excellently plotted, well-written, and with some of the most wonderful characters ever written - a book that no one should miss, though I recommend reading Archer's Kane and Abel first.

Other thoughts: Sorry for the long delay guys. But I'm almost through with New York, half-way through The Color of Magic, and also simultaneously reading some other books, so you can expect a lot of reviews in the near future. Until then, happy reading. :)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a nice book, just not perhaps as good as I expected it to be.

The first time I saw this book in the local Crossword (and it has been on the special shelf forever now) I thought that it seemed like a different book - specifically because of the cover art, which I like very much - though as far as tattoos go, this was probably better. But I didn't buy it at the time because I didn't find the back descriptions particularly interesting (except for the part of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo herself). Later on, however, I read this review, and I decided to read the book after all. But then, obviously, I forgot all about it. And then last Rakshabandhan, I decided that my brother was going to buy me some books, so I bought King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes (which I read and reviewed first, here) and this book.

I won't say I was disappointed. Maybe I just had very high expectations. But there were both positives and negatives in this one.

The first thing was the beginning, which is slow and full of pages and pages of characters telling their stories. I understand why this is important to move the story forward, but to tell the truth I skimmed through the whole long family histories and the exposition in the beginning just because it was plain boring. I do read a lot of description in many books, but the pace I expected from this book was sorely lacking in the beginning, though it picked up phenomenally towards the end.

But if the book began slowly then it certainly ended with a bang. There were loads of positives about the book, starting, of course, from the wonderful characters. I loved the characters - all of them - from the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander (the girl with the dragon tattoo), the honest and hard-hitting and charming journalist Blomkovist and even most of the dysfunctional family that these two unite to probe. None of the characters are totally good - there are shades of grey in all of them, and there are some that are positively black, and the best part is that its not so predictable that you know from the onset which character comes in which category. Larsson has really written many memorable characters in this one, and no matter what I'd felt about this book, I knew from the starting of the book that I would have to read the next one - if just for Lisbeth, who is one of my favourite characters at the moment. The inter-character relationships are also amazingly well done - they're beautiful, complex, and so very human that one can't help but admire Larsson as a writer when you read them.

The plot is quite engrossing, especially after the first thirty or forty pages. In fact, after that point the book is edgy, fast, and extremely interesting - so much so that I couldn't put down the book even though I really had to study for my term end exams because I was so afraid of what would happen to the characters ahead. Through most of the book, I was just hoping that the mystery at the centre of this book was solved in this book itself and not in one of the sequels (I think I would never even have touched the sequels if this had happened, though. I don't mind cliffhanger endings at the end of chapters, but I do hate unfinished books). I really thought the main plot was very interesting, and definitely not predictable (which would definitely have killed a book which is based so strongly on the suspense) - and the subplots (especially the one considering Erika, who is another great character) which weave in and out of the main story without ever drawing the attention away from it.

I also really like Larsson's way of writing from many different point-of-views, because it really helps you to sympathize with a wide variety of characters (though he cleverly avoids showing you a glimpse into the heads of anyone who might reveal more of plot than he wants to reveal at the time). This style of writing works very well with the structure of the book, because the story is quite vast and involves a large cast of characters, and the whole story only becomes clear when you see it with the different views. (I also enjoyed seeing Harriet and Lisbeth's different reactions to similar situations - and Lisbeth's judgement of Harriet for the same - very layered and very interesting. This was my favourite part of the book.)

Final thoughts: It begins slightly slowly, but overall its a good book - with a nice plot, fast pace, and highly interesting characters. Its quite graphic (definitely not for kids) but if you're okay with that and like action/suspense, I'm pretty sure you'll like this book.

Other thoughts: Well, after a long time the books I've read are going ahead of the reviews I've written. I'm going to write a review of Which Witch? pretty soon, and I've also read Adiga's White Tiger, a review of which will also be coming fast.