Lomba: A Book Review.

Maybe it's because I haven't read most of the books out there written by our own Bhutanese writers, but Pema Euden's "Lomba" came as a pleasant surprise for me as a reader. Having been trying to read as many books by Bhutanese authors in the last couple of years (mainly fictions), I have come across some good reads. Most stories talked about things that the readers could relate to in settings we were familiar with and a few of them made us look at things differently and touched our hearts. But like I said, maybe it's because of the small number of books I have read, I never thought someone would actually push the envelope and create a whole world of it's own in a Bhutanese book. 

Since all I know about Lomba, the festival, is only as much as is written in the book, I don't know if there is any mention of the lu world in the stories told in this part of the country and if there are any, how much of it is actually described. Having finished the book just the previous night and for the lack of research done by my lazy self, I want to say the whole lu world is made up from scratch. It was not the hidden world of witches and wizards or hobbits and ogres but for me it did stand out for being a fantasy world that had some sort of connection with our own culture and believes. Of course, I do think that elders tell the children how the lus take away our suffering and how they take away children to their world if they don't behave in certain ways or do certain things. 

Anyways, coming back to the book, the story was unique in a way as it dealt with both our reality and a fantasy and mashed them into a fun reading experience. The plot was interesting as well being probably the first Bhutanese book with a plot to eradicate the human species. Like the characters in the story, I also found myself in a confusion and asking myself who the culprit was until the very end and shocked at the revelation as well. I do feel like towards the end of the book, the seemed kind of rushed,(also like my review) which to be honest is something I came across other Bhutanese books as well (the first half or three quarters are usually slow paced and give a lot of details about almost everything and the last quarter usually happens like snap, snap, snap, and we are done). 

The story deals with the usual themes of family, friendship, trust, identity, belonging and the sorts. One does learn about a culture unique to Haa and Paro and also some "sciency" stuff that was sprinkled over the pages teaching the reader about how certain things work in the lu world that can be paralleled to how similar things work in our own world. 

There were a few misprints here and there like the old queen was referred to as the father of the current king and it felt like a few verbs were missing as well in some lines. But I don't think that hampers the story in any way because being so engrossed in a story that is different from what we are used to as readers of Bhutanese books I don't think many will pick up on that.