Demon on Fire and Other Stories - Madhavi Johnson

Author: Madhavi Johnson

Genre: Short Story Anthology
Rating: 1.8 stars.

An anthology of fifteen stories set on various continents, but a majority of the tales are set in India.

If I sound deflated in this review, it is because I am. The blurb sounded very ambitious and I was hoping the book would live up to at least a part of the promise. Sadly, it falls short on almost all counts.

The author’s note declares the theme of this collection as "A salute to ordinary heroes who jump hoops and loops every day to survive and progress in their worlds." The stories work exactly as per this idea, with the protagonists being ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances. The author is clearly imaginative as the stories cover a variety of scenarios and places. The diverse locations were welcome but the locations weren’t put to good use in most of the stories.

That’s the end of the positives.

Where the book needs a ton of work is in its writing department – it would have benefitted vastly under the hands of an experienced editor. (As this is a self-published collection, I am not even sure if it has been edited at all. It certainly looked as if it hasn’t gone through any fine-tuning.) Here’s the feedback on the writing.

👉 The dialogues ring artificial at times. Characters speak like no one would in real life.

👉 There are a lot of continuity issues. For instance, one para could be set in a college and the very next para has shifted venue to a village without any intimation of the transition.

👉 There is a great deal of info dumping in some of the stories.

👉 The narration changes from first person to third person to first person like nobody’s business. One story even has a first person omniscient pov! This technique is handy only when the narrator is someone omniscient. (Markus Zusak’s ‘The Book Thief’ makes wonderful use of the first person omniscient using Death as the personified narrator.) A human can’t be omniscient.

👉 The narration also jumps from character to character like a relay race is going on. It was so difficult to keep track of the jumps because so many people appear to be narrating at the same time, albeit in third person.

👉 There are also a lot of back and forth in the timeline without any clue. Many stories also have time jumps of years, sometimes even decades. It is too much for a short story set-up.

You see the issue? Jump in characters, narrative voice, timeline AND scene settings! How is a reader supposed to enjoy the story when most of the time is spent on figuring out what the heck was going on!

Of the fifteen stories, only one story touched the three star mark: Welcome, a story set in Namibia, with 3.5 stars.

I have been trying to read more books by Indian indie authors to support them, but it is such experiences that make me wary of picking up self-published works. This might just be the last straw and I don’t think I will try a vanity press work anytime soon, not unless it comes recommended by a trusted reviewer. I hate taking this extreme decision, but there are too many books to read and only one life to live. I might as well spend it on potentially enjoyable stories.

1.8 stars based on the average of my rating for each of the stories, rounding up to 2.

A humble request to the author to invest in a good editor because she has the imagination for sure, but the adaptation of the tale from her mind to paper needs a lot of work.

My thanks to the Himalayan Book Club for a complimentary copy of “Demon on Fire and Other Stories”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Very sorry this worked out so disastrously.