Blood & Brown Sugar: The Ride of His Life
Genre: Literary Fiction, Indian Fiction
Published: 2021
Swathi’s Rating: 4/5
About the Book:
Motorcycles, guns, heroin. These things were not a part of Alex Crossman’s life. He was a simple young man, leading a peaceful, mundane existence. Right up to the moment he accidentally injures a member of Montreal’s most nefarious motorcycle club, the Chevaux de Fer. As recompense, Alex is forced to travel to India and escort the Club’s latest drug shipment home.
While under the watchful eye of the Club’s Indian contingent and ensnared by the seductive charms of its president’s mistress, Ipsita Chaudhary, Alex begins his dark and agonizing metamorphosis from a law-abiding citizen to outlaw biker.
Now, inescapably leveraged into the gang’s sinister world and with the Narcotics Control Bureau in hot pursuit, he struggles to resist the incessant pull of this dark and unfamiliar lifestyle. A lifestyle fraught with tainted love and criminal behaviour. Long dead ghosts from his past whisper to his subconscious, luring him down a twisted and terrifying path of self-realization.
During a final showdown in the jungles of Goa, Alex’s conscience and ego clash in a culmination of good versus evil, love versus hate, and face off in a battle for dominance of his soul. With his moral compass skewed, he is left directionless and desperate.
Will Alex embrace the passionate call of his renegade self and make the impossible choices that will change his life forever? Or could there be another, less dangerous way out?
Thoughts:
It’s not often you read a full length story of someone whose profession is as unconventional as a biker in a motorcycle club, especially in India. Why? Because the country has less individuals of the sort and somehow their lives were never so important or interesting, until a bollywood actor plays it and suddenly it’s a hit and everyone knows about them now. Well, I’m so glad someone chose to write about bikers and clubs and their thug lives in such an evocative prose that keeps the audience hooked.
Apart from Alex, the main character who is a very challenging individual, there are other well developed female characters whose lifestyles were interesting to read. There are so many sub plots going on and you’ll have to be patient until about 50 pages into the book. But from there, it’s a rollercoaster ride and the pace just rises up several times higher as the story progresses.
Overall, a good entertaining read.
