Title: Bonded by Darkness
Author: The Literary Yogi (Venugopal Balasubramanian)
Publisher: Leadstart publishing
Genre: Crime Thriller, Mystery
First Publication: 2021
Language: English
Book Summary: Bonded by Darkness by The Literary Yogi
Leonardo, a happy twenty-one-year old living in the Indian city of Cochin, is engulfed in darkness when hidden secrets from the past see light. He moves to Mumbai to get away from it all, where he befriends a young boy at an underground fight club and a beautiful woman living next door to him. When the boy is kidnapped by a Ukrainian mobster and the woman is attacked by a businessman, Leo decides to take it upon himself to hunt down these criminals.
In Leo’s attempt to fund his undercover operations, he recruits his friends—who, like him, are reborn in the fires of adversity—to rob the Royal Global Bank, Mumbai. As a result, he ends up even deeper in the dark world of criminals.
Is everything what it appears to be? Once bonded by darkness, are they destined to live forever in the shadows? Pick up this scintillating read and find out…
Book Review: Bonded by Darkness by The Literary Yogi
Bonded by Darkness by Venugopal Balasubramanian aka The Literary Yogi is an achingly beautiful tale of damaged people scrabbling about in a world of secrets, betrayals, and tough decisions. Behind it all are imperfect individuals who deal with these flaws in human behaviour as part of their baggage. Events drove them to despair and destruction of body, mind and soul. However, the human spirit still hangs onto the goodness of the heart. And author Venugopal writes the final sentence over their stories.
Twenty-one-year-old Leonardo, who lives in the Indian city of Cochin, finds himself in darkness when a secret from the past is disclosed. As a way of getting away from it all, he moves to Mumbai where he befriends a young boy at an underground fight club as well as a beautiful woman who lives next door. A Ukrainian mobster kidnaps the boy and a businessman attacks the woman. Leo decides to take it upon himself to hunt down the criminals. As Leo’s undercover operations require money, he recruits his friends to commit a robbery at the Royal Global Bank in Mumbai. Consequently, he dives even deeper into the world of criminals.
As the title suggests, this is a dark book. Everyone here has had odious deeds visited upon them or they have themselves perpetrated such actions. While the book details the lives of all these characters, Leonardo finds himself at the centre of this story, influencing the lives of other characters. The Literary Yogi’s writing expertise spins a mesmerising spell of tangled actions and people, and their history that explodes in this tale. His eloquence elevates the genre into the literary realm, and here he delivers tour de force of complicated characters and tangled emotions.
It is an intricate puzzle inhabited with variety of characters. There are so many terribly flawed damaged people in this book. I liked the way author created these multi-dimensional characters. His characters can be both strong and weak, soft and hard, good and bad, right and then just so wrong. They make mistakes, they use poor judgement, they do wrong things but for the right reasons. There are some really evil characters in this book but then there are some good ones as well. I liked how his main characters were incredibly human. Many of these characters are looking for redemption, revenge, or just to get on with their lives. They were created in such depth that they became real in my head. I could not stop myself from reading this twisted and exceedingly dark tale.
Bonded by Darkness is a gripping, page-turner of a crime story with an opening scene that will leave you breathless. It is a well-written thriller with engaging characters. The specificity of the crimes and reactions to them put you right smack in middle of truthful ambivalence, rendering you incapable of instantly allying with either a politically correct or incorrect reaction. Author combines mystery and drama, while mining the dark side of human nature and delivers an intricate plot that is more character-driven than thematic. He has put together an incredibly good multi-layered and complex crime story.
