The Death Story - Book Review

The Death Story
By Amay Saxena
Review By Ila Garg

The Death Story, a novel by Amay Saxena, is published by Partridge India. The cover uses a black backdrop with a ghostly looking man peeping from behind a pillar. The addition of the red colour gives it that spooky effect.

Amay Saxena was born and brought up in Mumbai. Amay’s father was in Bank of India legal department (now retired). His mother works as an English teacher. His writing career started during his schooling days when he began to circulate his short stories among his friends and later on, it went for private circulation. As he was fancied by the recent past writings on supernatural, he started exploring the subject in deep. Deeper he explored, deeper ran the roots of his imagination which eventually led him to build up a story on the supernatural power.

The blurb reads as, “One misty night, a young writer was travelling from Kalka to Mumbai in train. He was enjoying his cold journey when a young beautiful woman entered his compartment. To pass time, she offered to tell him a story. He hesitated firstly but agreed later.
The rest of the night, she told him a story about a woman who never wanted to kill her husband but ended up murdering him.
So, what was the reason behind murdering him? Let's find out...”

As I could perceive from the cover and the blurb, it’s a thriller novel. The idea of horror has always given me goosebumps. Yet I somehow began to read this novel. The description of a late night journey turning into a storytelling session is quite fascinating as I myself am a storyteller if I find the right audience.

Anyway, so during one such late night journeys, a lady bumps into a young writer. It was then that the lady becomes a storyteller for the young writer and starts to narrate a story about a troubled woman, Neha.

You must be wondering why this woman was troubled or who was troubling her? So the storyteller tells that the woman was troubled by someone (spooky element) because of her family’s past. (Yes, it’s always something done in the past that comes to haunt you in present!!)

Further, just like in all those horror movies that you watch, this woman is possessed by some evil spirit. As a result of being under the influence of evil, she murders her husband. Soon she feels traumatized and frightened. So, she sets on a quest to find the reason for her sorry state. This evil spirit wants to kill her too. Neha desperately wants to get rid of it and seeks solution.

The story sounds too familiar, therefore the whole element of suspense goes for a toss. The language put me off. It was atrocious. I am no Grammar Nazi, but still I believe to be an author, you must at least write readable sentences. However, it was a huge disappointment.

How Neha was possessed by the evil spirits, how she ended up murdering her husband, how she sought solution to her misfortunes, how she realised that the evil spirit wanted to kill her, will the evil spirit succeed, will Neha die in the end are some of the many reasons why you will keep turning the pages to find out what happens in The Death Story.

Further, this 200 page book is good enough to keep you awake for the night. Yes, it’s spooky, however, the narration could have been way better! The language and presentation was a huge turn off for me. Overall, it’s an okay read to pass time.

Ratings: 2/5

Buying Link: Amazon