I don't know anything about the background of this story, so I approached it as a normal novel. I was given this as a gift as a child and it sat untouched on my shelf for about 15 years before I finally picked it up with the intention of just trying it before giving it away. I was put off by the cover and expected a shallow, manly, Indian action fantasy that would be difficult for me to make sense of as an Australian girl.
But I was surprised at every turn - again and again I encountered the sexism, the ableism, the glorification of war, the nationalism that I had expected, but each and every one was challenged by the protagonist and the narrative, and even as I neared the end of the book I was still being surprised by the philosophy being presented. This is a simple story of a man saving the world through the power of being just a really good guy, contrasted against complex and well-thought-out world-building, realistic politics and characters with genuine depth.
What flaws the book does have lie in (other than its ugly cover) the author's fluent but not native grasp of English. There are grammatical issues and a bizarre mix of formal English and very casual modern English, mostly in dialogue. But I actually found myself warming to this, and in a way it made the characters more relatable. The book overall is very easy to read. It could be seen as overly simple but I prefer to call it accessible. Certainly, there are a lot of non-English words that I had never seen in my life and I was worried that this would make the plot too difficult to follow, but the rest of the writing being so smooth made things so much easier. There is a glossary in the back but whenever I wanted to look a word up it wasn't there... but most terms are defined within the text. It's just a lot to keep track of after a while, so a full glossary could have helped.
Overall, this isn't to my usual tastes but I'm really glad I finally picked it up, and I think I will read the sequel, which I was also gifted. Very pleasantly surprised by this book.