India has seen various lore in its fictional realms, penned by authors with varied passages of imagination and many titles remain highly anticipated. Armed with the right arsenal to undertake this genre, Anuja has five successful titles under her belt, all penned in fair succession and put out into a world that continues to fall in love with the mythological realm.
“There are so many mythological titles being brought about at the moment, that the genre is saturating the market,” Anuja says. “To be frank, I’d actually intended to write something else but my publisher said, ‘No, no, let’s stick to the genre, you’ve already nested yourself.’ I wanted to do something different and, given I love horror and fantasy, I was thinking of something there. I was suggested to dedicate a book to Yama, the God of Death. And I agreed, I found it fun and very intriguing. So I decided to incorporate something different into the book and play around with it.” Anuja found the whole process creatively satisfying and unique in its own right. Yama’s Lieutenant was published in 2016, and lured in mythological fantasists and newbies with its plot of other-worldly-chaos and character struggles.
Having studied Psychology, Anuja has a lucid idea of human behaviour, and has melded this into the Yama books. “The core of the books’ journey is loss. The protagonist Agni Prakash deals with the death of his twin sister, and this is such a big part of his struggle and life journey. And we all deal with the day-to-day fear of losing someone that close to us, and this steers a lot of our actions. The story follows Agni’s attempt to balance between living with death on a constant basis and also trying to maintain faith in the possibilities of some good coming out of everything. There’s also the fact that people who are lost to you aren’t necessarily gone forever. In some shape or form, there’s a bridge. So the book explores the connection between the living and the dead.”
On this note, Agni, who is Yama’s Lieutenant, is faced with a dark sorcery in Yama’s Lieutenant and the Stone Witch . The apocalyptic theme recurrent in the series so far resonates with much of what interests audiences these days. Also explored are misuse of power, punishment and family dynamics. The book seems a lot more intense and a lot more raw than Yama’s Lieutenant, and Anuja hopes readers finish the book and continue pondering its subliminal message.
Focussed on her own journey, Anuja shares she doesn’t check out her competition, nor does she read the works of authors in similar fields. “I don’t want or need comparisons getting into my head; I like to widen the field a bit. As a frequent reader for as long as I can remember, I’ve always liked this genre, especially the Harry Potter collection. It’s a challenging and difficult genre because it requires so much detailing when you’re creating a world from scratch.”
Expect riveting storylines and subplots from Yama’s Lieutenant and the Stone Witch . It is Anuja’s mastery of vocabulary and of the celestial language that keeps audiences enraptured. Detailed descriptions of battle and violence, while a natural aspect of this horror-oriented tale, are not for the faint of heart though.
‘Yama’s Lieutenant and the Stone Witch’ by Anuja Chandramouli is available in bookstores across India at ₹299 via Penguin House.
