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MY ⭐️ RATING: 4/5
Format: Graphic Audio
BOOK DESCRIPTION
In 1766 an insatiable vampire sails from London to the Malabar Coast, aboard an East India Company ship. But along the shores of the Indus lurk darker and more ancient powers, and a war is brewing in the night. ALONG THESE SAVAGE SHORES, WHERE THE DAYS ARE SCORCHED AND THE NIGHTS ARE FULL OF TEETH. Two centuries after the first European ship sailed to the Malabar Coast and made landfall at Calicut, The East India Company seeks to secure its future along the lucrative Silk Route, in the year 1766. An old evil now sails aboard a company ship, hoping to make a home in this new found land. But he will soon find that the ground along the Indus is an ancient one with daemons and legends far older than himself.
MY REVIEW
I originally read this in 2022 and had it lined up as one of my favorite reads of the year early on, but it actually fell short of that expectation. I also felt that it was an absolute masterful historical fiction story. It weaves Hindu mythology and historical events of 1770’s London and India with the East India Trade Company and the Anglo-Mysore War. After doing a re-read with the graphic audio, I’ve noticed that I missed quite a bit, like how These Savage Shores is essentially, Bram Stokers Dracula meets East Indian folklore.
What I liked about the story then and now the most, was that it somewhat gave a history lesson on events that are rarely told, and made me dig more into these events. Mixing in a bone-chilling horror fantasy story with an incredible cast of complex characters and creatures, like vampires & a shape-shifting demon known as a raakshas made it even better. With the story drawling clear parallels with the vampire being a metaphor for colonialism and the raakshas represented the fury of being colonized.
“As ever, the Devil gathers his blind and fearful through deception and trickery.”
The graphic audio however, was a different beast of its own. While I felt like a majority of it was fantastic, the graphic novel uses a epistolary style that works well. But the graphic audio uses a third-person omniscient narrator to tell specifics about a scene while rest of the cast is acting the scenes out, and that part of it became annoying. It caused me to drop this from a 4.5 to a 4.0. The cast, the eerie feeling, and everything else about the graphic audio was fantastic.
The artwork by Sumit Kumar is absolutely amazing, the contrast of colors used to show a bright India and a dark brooding London helped set the tone. I couldn’t get enough and seeing the details the artist took in each scene. The towns, the people, fight scenes, it was all incredible. I would honestly recommend reading the story without the graphic audio, I think it would hit much better physically.
Wolfmantula.com 