[Long post alert. This is my latest short-form review.]

Yesterday, I’ve just read through all of the available chapters of Project Fable by

. What’s that? It’s a web novel on Substack. You can see for yourself by clicking on the link containing the author’s name.

At the moment of this writing, there are fifteen chapters released in addition to some “lore posts”. I’m going to give you all my first take on this web novel.

I’ve been singing this web novel praises in Notes. I stand by it, though I’d like to go into detail about it.

Project Fable is the story of a soul named Anamaka (or Ripunjaya) who doesn’t accrue karma. Which means that his actions do not have spiritual consequences for him.

 

What really hooked me was the second chapter. This is the chapter in which the main character finally learned what was at stake. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyways, I don’t think I’ve seen any fantasy setting that’s based on Ancient India. So points for originality.

Strange as it sounds, this web novel is serving as an introduction to Hindu mythology for me. As a Catholic and a lifelong Christian, I only have cursory knowledge of Hinduism. Though one time I did some research on the Internet (lol), I’ve heard theories of how the Mahabharata described a nuclear war. I am curious how deep the author will go into these rabbit holes.

Moving on, Mr. Sundareswaran himself stated that the complete story took place over a period of 12,000 years. I’m a sucker for long stories that encompassed generations. So I do like the idea of an epic that spanned thousands of years. As you might expect, fifteen chapters is nowhere near enough to cover that. I don’t speak for the author, but so far I’d say that it’ll be quite a ways before this story is finished.

Readers should be aware though, that they will find some grammatical errors and awkward syntax in the prose. Since the author is Indian, I assume that English is not his first language.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are a lot of Indian/Hindu terms used throughout the novel. I ended up using Google, er I mean, Brave Search to find out what they mean. As someone who does a lot of Internet reading, I’m fine with it. However, I understand if readers might feel a little confused and annoyed at having to do some homework. Thankfully, the later chapters have done a better job in explaining what these terms mean.

Thus was Project Fable. I look forward to see how the story continues to unfold. But for now, I’m loving it.