There is a magic school that pops up for a brief while and a secret agent who is flitting around doing Mysterious Things. We start with a handful of scenes from disparate POVs that are just vague enough to create some suspense. Otherwise the narrative is uneven and not particularly coherent. It is this palpable sense of playfulness that gives the book its charm. And because there are no rules, you can change things around as you please, create unlikely groupings and have fun toppling the worst of clichés. A three-headed ogre type thing that manages a rowdy bar? Done.

So if you want an island where imps, squids and men come together to shoot Bollywood style movies, guess what, you can have it! If you want a monkey kingdom out of Ramayana and a Mahabharata-style swayamwara, you can have those too. The best part is that there are no rules to the world-building. This is my main quibble: by the time you reach the next chapter, you’ve already forgotten the race introduced in the previous one. I really wish Basu had made a tongue-in-cheek litany of all the races at the beginning or end. All the fantasy races you are familiar with are present, from both Eastern and Western myths: elves, dwarves, knights, warriors, magicians, golems, djinns, dragons, monkeys, danavs, asurs, and so on. The main city in the story is called Kol. The story is set against a sprawling backdrop with regions representing everything from East Asia to Scandinavia to the Middle East. What it does do is embody that urge we’ve all had to create our own fantasy world with dragons, elves and wizards, or their desi counterparts, and play around in it. This book doesn’t quite meet that criteria seeing as it places the task of parody over plot, characters or themes. For those of us who grew up on Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, there is a natural desire to be serviced with similar stories but in familiar settings. I came across this series the way I assume most people come across it – looking for Indian takes on fantasy.

The way I see it, it’s crossover fanfiction of the crack! variety that manages to mould itself into a decent story. The Simoqin Prophecies, first in the Gameworld trilogy, is a parody of the fantasy genre – a style supposedly inspired from Terry Pratchett, whose works I’m yet to read. The one emotion I consistently felt while reading this book was surprise because there’s no obvious reason a book like this should be readable in its entirety, and yet, it is.

The simoqin prophecies