The Influencer By Mayank Chandna (Abhaidev) | Book Review

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We found ourselves fortunate for many reasons. One of the same is, the gift of love for reading instilled in all our team members. And, that is not all. We are fortunate to get introduced to some fantastic talents in the field, popular and yet to be popular. Mayank Chandna aka Abhaidev is one such talent.

A while ago, we got a chance to read his book That Thing About You and we liked the way many aspects are explored in the same. You can read our book review for the same at the link below.

• That Thing About You | Book Review

We, then, got a chance to have an author interview with him as well.

• An Interesting Author Interview With Mayank Chandna (Abhaidev)

Recently, from team ThinkerViews, I got a chance to read his latest book, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit, and I am delighted with the experience.

Cover Page:

We know the impact of first impression. It makes us to create an assumption about the person/thing we are looking at. Book cover thus plays a very important role in a large number of book reading and/or purchase decisions. When browsing through a stock of books in display, crawlers often stop at an attractive cover page to look again and may be to read excerpt also.

Let us take a look at the cover page of the book.

Here is more elegant updated cover page.

Previous version – cover page.

As you can see, the cover page looks detailed yet a little amateurish. While the top part of the cover page is appealing, even the side face of the person in center-right looks impactful. The left part of the same, however, makes it look lull. The designer has tried to fog and other stuff, but the design could have been better. Also, the fonts used for tagline and subtitle could have been different.

As per my opinion, it is a moderate cover page.

The Plot:

Let us take a bird’s eye view of the book plot.

Spread over in 26 chapters this book explores the story of an influencer, his family, his friends, his colleagues, his client(s), his enemies and people he comes in touch with.

Aditya Gupta was living happily with his wife. Today is going to be the most important day of his life. His wife Shreya was going to inform him that they were expecting their first baby. As they both were orphan, this news matter even more for them.

Shreya, when browsing through Aditya’s laptop as she woke up early, landed on a password protected folder! And, curiosity caught the best of her. As the author says in the book:

Humans are incredibly curious creatures, after all. The more you deny a man a thing, the more he wants it.

She tried a couple of passwords, and bingo! she was able to explore the folder.

The folder contained a few videos.

Shreya couldn’t resist her urge to watch the first video (as she wore headphones, she need not to worry about Aditya going to know about it.).

The video was recorded by Aditya himself and is intended for their future child! In this video he revealed a secret! A well-kept secret. Even, Shreya, the love of his life, the apple of his eyes, was also unknown to that secret.

Aditya was an influencer!

Well, as we know, influencer mean someone who can influence, right? In the era of social media where our virtual relations are “taking over” over our actual ones, the term “Social Media Influencer” is widely popular. An entire new “lot” of celebrities emerged and even movie stars started taking help of these influencers to promote their movies!

So, was Aditya a social media influencer? If so, he must have been so popular that his wife already knew the fact!

In that case, there is no need to record videos for his future child or keep it as a secret from his wife, right? Actually, he can’t keep it so.

So, what does it mean being him an “influencer”? And, keeping it a secret? Will Shreya feel cheated as he hid the fact from her? What are consequences of Shreya knowing this fact? Why the book tagline says that “Speed Must Have a Limit”? Well, to get the answers, you need to read this gripping thriller :). In your journey, you meet, Aditya, Shreya, Kavya, Rishabh Sharma, Rajveer, Sunil, Sooraj Chopra, Sonali, Nimesh, Faraz, Sachin, Siddharth, Shiv Pratap Sisodia, Guruprasad, and many other characters.

View And Reviews:

While this book is a fantasy fiction, it tries blending the boundaries between several genres. It is a thriller that explores politics, human psyche, philosophy, college life, social canvas and other aspects. It is obvious that the author took a lot of inspiration from surroundings, current scenario, political canvas and some living and dead characters. To avoid any controversies, he changed name of places and people, but smart reader will be able to establish links. Be it Shiv Pratap Sisodia’s character or countries like Swedenanka, Tveveru or state named Swarnim Pradesh, or places like Kedamba, Himtaal, Scenika and others, you will enjoy connecting dots while reading the book.

I also like the way the author has named the organization WIS and it’s front WISe. In addition to Influencers, the author also has talked about “Erasers”. Also, he declared a fine boundaries to the capabilities of these characters. By making them not to be superlative, he made the characters more real. And, thus, readers will be able to connect with them, quite easily. No character in the book is perfect. Everyone has his/her limitations. These shades of grey makes them believable.

Abhaidev is grown up a lot as an author. When comparing this book with his earlier adventure “That Thing About You”, we found a better vocabulary and more smoothness in writing. It is a positive sign, of course. The way he introduced readers to Nihilism, teleological ethics, absolutism, relativism makes it interesting.

The author also talks about adolescent years. How, young fellows in the college has sex in their mind, taking over other emotions. How the urge to try smoking, drinking and other stuff attract them. And, more importantly why one needs to avoid them, is nicely mentioned in the book. It was quite possible that these explanations could have been converted into boring lectures, but the author has complete control over it. He rightly mentioned that:

It’s okay to make mistakes in order to learn, but some mistakes are not worth committing.

The book also mentions the biggest (or one of the biggest) dilemmas we face. Remembering passwords and PINs! And, how we end up using same password for various accounts. The author says (via Shreya’s character):

How many passwords can a person afford to remember, after all.

And continuing, he also refers one more such habit. Checking the mandatory checkbox and accepting terms in order to open an account/get a free gift or install an app. The author advise:

My advice? One must always read the terms and conditions before checking that box and clicking next.

The author also talks about religion and he brilliantly adds sarcasm to the same, to make a light conversation:

“You know, I am too sensitive to noise. God, I hate it when religious activities involve loudspeakers. can’t people pray in silence? Can’t people keep their faith to themselves?”
“Yeah. Your ers are far too sensitive. Come to think of it; every woman in this world has sensitive ears.” Aditya crowed with laughter…

Here is a similar example, of course, in a totally different context:

Moreover, one must be prepared for one’s death.

Death is liberating only if one has planned for it. But I think no one truly does, except for a few people with suicidal inclinations, or perhaps, deeply content wandering ascetics. For most of us mortals, life insurance is the one thing that gives us the reassurance of planning well for the event of our death.

You know, nothing is stronger than blood bonds. What else is the reason for the success of life insurance policies? Why bother with what happens to your blood relatives after your death?…

Also, we witness the loaded arguments from both the sides, when talking about a topic and the characters have different points of view:

“Too much thinking is an ailment” the influencer said. “One must live in a moment.”
“Yeah,” Shreya said, producing a chuckle. “You are right. But we don’t have control over our thoughts, do we?”
“Yeah, but we can certainly train our minds to be more resilient,” he assured her.

The book also refers to the fact that not everything is worth learning.

Knowing nothing about this world, these children enjoy each and every moment. Not everything in this world is worth learning about.

The author, while talking about idealism and philosophy, has guts to bluntly say:

“Borderless world,” he went on, “is a good idea. But unless all countries of the world agree on that, it is mere idealism. A fancy idea which looks good only on paper.”

The book rightly puts an argument that:

Extreme is never right.

In order to strengthen his argument, the author articulates various theories and refers

For Marx, the only thing that motivates humans is money. For Freud, it’s libido. And for Schopenhauer, it is the blind metaphysical will. All are horribly wrong. More than anything, man seeks …

The book has some impactful one-liners. Here are some of them:

Every person has willpower, which differs in strength.

Habit, after all, is the most difficult to break.

One doesn’t need to sit in a yogic pose to meditate.

The best life is the one that goes unnoticed.

In the real world people don’t behave ideally.

I also like the way the author has mentioned:

Power is not a good thing. And the ones who weild it can never please all the people no matter how good their intensions are. Only a candy seller can please everyone.

No Shiv Prataps can change this world unless the basic character, the fabric that makes up the mind of the people, is altogether altered. And it’s the character of people that is the cause of all the miseries in this nation.

There are many aspects of the book that I love to talk about, but, it would include spoilers, so, I have to restrain myself from the same. However, these quotes must have given you a fair idea about what to expect from the book and whether you like this type of reading. Reading this book reminded me the work of Manoj Jain. While Manoj’s books are more about self-realization and spirituality, this one is a cocktail of thrills, self-discovery and a bit of philosophy mixed with spirituality.

If the book had a chapter index it would have been even better.

I wonder that why in the most of books and movies, we found a couple enjoying physical intimacy. In most of the cases, during the first trimester, the gynaecologist advice to take care and avoid it and even avoid heavy works. Once the first trimester is over, mostly the situation is under control and the chances of mis-carriage are lower.

Summary:

A nice thriller where various genres mixed up together. It is a fresh concept blend with romance, thrills, a little bit of Sci-Fi and wisdom lessons. I enjoyed reading the book.

ThinkerViews Rating:

Around 8 to 8.5 stars out of 10

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy – The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit By Abhaidev – Kindle Ebook – Amazon India
• Buy – The The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit By Abhaidev – Paperback – Amazon US
• Buy – The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit By Abhaidev – Kindle Ebook – Amazon US

Over To You:

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