The Tonic by Mayur Sarfare

I have mixed feelings about this book; not because it was lacking anything but just because it was predictable from the very beginning! It was a story about two individuals, Raem and Masher, who get some kind of pills that change their entire lives. For some reason, after reading its synopsis I had very high hopes from this book but it turned out to be just an average read. This book has many things to offer but unfortunately, even with good narration I found its pace quite slow and dragging! The story was processing in the past and the future as well, the author has done excellent work with collecting all dots.

Even if it was an average read, there were some aspects I liked the most. I remember reading this book and getting thrilled by one of its major characters, Reyberg’s ideologies about God and religion. Being an atheist myself, I was thrilled by all those discussions about the relevance of Religion and Reyberg’s opinions about it. Another commendable aspect about this book is the author’s choice of words; I don’t usually use a dictionary as much as I needed it when I read this book and I am soon going to go through this book once again to learn all those amazing words.

I have read enough Indian authors to make this comment but I mean when I say author Mayur Sarfare has exceptional command over his vocabulary and language, and I haven’t read any Indian intelligent work yet with such fine awareness for using the right words at the right times. I believe that Avantika and Rakesh deserved more of their shares in the story because as a pair of incidental investigators to expose Reyberg; they didn’t get the significance they deserved and compared to them the author brilliantly put all possible efforts to make Raem and Masher delights of this book.

There are only two reasons why I will recommend reading this book: first, if you are an atheist, and second, if you want to explore the skillful execution of the language.