Highlights from The Rozabal Line by Ashwin Sanghi, Shawn Haigins

It was an exciting read for me. I must say the amount of research done by the author is really commendable. Given the topic of this work, the author comes very close to getting everything right, but eventually, he misses the mark.

I have a bit of interest in Hindu mythology, so I had a bias before going for this book. I would not hesitate to say that this bias gave me the patience to read this book throughout given its confusing and complicated narrative and the heaviness of the content. While there are multiple context switches at regular intervals, not just between locations, but between times also. This made it very difficult for me to keep track of the story. But the author has provided the relevant excerpts from the earlier chapter as and when needed. The plot has everything - Al Qaeda, Osama, USA, Pakistan, Israel, Kashmir, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, the Mujahideen and the church and at least three secret societies fighting each other. The author has put a lot of focus on the use of anagrams when drawing connections between cultures across multiple timelines.

The ending could have been better though. The basic idea of the book is what will happen if the ancient secret of Jesus is revealed to the world. But the author leaves the story in the middle and finishes the story with a philosophical point of view. Also, the author seems to have changed his mind in the middle of the book. He started with the idea of Jesus's bloodline and his connection with India but finishes the book with the bloodline of Mary Magdalene.

This book demands a fast pace of reading as there are so many characters and subplots that the reader is definitely going to get confused. So I recommend reading this book in the minimum time possible.