On the day he was to be crowned, young Prince Elvis watched his kingdom of Fairyland fall into chaos — for from the depths of the dungeons, the demon king had broken free. Armed with nothing but courage, a curious mind, and a tiny dragon with a fiery heart, he must journey beyond everything he knows, into lands born of a child’s dreams and nightmares.
Elvis’s path twists through a world where seven-headed dragons roar across crimson skies, a magician commands deserts to devour the living, a colossal winged giant who blots out the sun, and a forest that can poison them. Each step demands impossible choices, and each encounter forges new allies to destroy the demon king, an ancient enemy.
Behind this tale titled ‘Elvis: Shadows and the Sword’ lies a child’s boundless imagination. Armed with a laptop and a mind seasoned by adventure and imagination — from the timeless classics including ‘King Solomon’s Mines’, ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’, ‘Captains Courageous’, and ‘Oliver Twist’, to modern fiction such as ‘Harry Potter’, ‘Percy Jackson’, and ‘Alex Rider’ — he began to write, spurred on by his father’s encouragement.
“It took me three months to conceive and to complete the book,” says Yuvan Krishna, the author. At an age when most children are lost to screens, how did he find the patience — and persistence — to stay with his manuscript through endless edits, rewrites, and publisher notes? He answers, “My mother only allows me to watch TV on the weekends. Or if there is a specifically good show or film, she lets me watch it.” He therefore confesses to finding himself drowning in tales of fantasy and fiction, so much so that he is called a “book addict” by his friends at school.
Barring the fictitious encounters in the book, Yuvan has also flexed his funny bone, weaving in moments meant purely to make his readers laugh. In one such scene, while on the adventure, a giant offers to help, but only in exchange for a good back scratch to soothe an unbearably itchy mosquito bite.
And will his boundless imagination and his flair for weaving in humour find their way into another book? “Yes, I am planning to write a second book. I have some ideas. I might even make this a trilogy,” says Yuvan, concluding with how the ideas seem endless, especially since they are now fuelled by friends at school who keep dreaming up what might fill his next book or the one after that.
‘Elvis: Shadows and the Sword’, priced Rs 245, is published by Notion Press.
