1 out of 4 stars
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Cross Drains by Gunalan Suppiah personifies six interconnected drainages and recounts their experiences as they observe humans and spend time with their animal friends. The book starts off with a cheerful tone as the drainages discuss why they hate and love humans at the same time. Humans tend to dump trash into drainages, and the drainages have no choice but to taste every piece of the trash, like spoiled cheese and cigarette butts. Nonetheless, there are also some good humans who take care of the drainages, always cleaning them to avoid clogging. The story takes a sudden dark turn when one of the drainages discovers a bloody knife floating inside him. The drainages, with the help of the stray dog Rosie, then aid in solving the murder of one of the humans they actually loved.
The book’s plot is unique, and this is the very first time I have encountered a story personifying drainages. I also commend the author’s advocacy to promote the cleanliness of drainages. Moreover, the discussions regarding God and the Devil, and the concepts of karma and reincarnation that appeared in the latter parts of the book also picked my interest.
However, no matter how promising the book’s premise was, the evident grammatical errors were very disturbing. Just on the first page alone, I already observed more than ten errors. For instance, the author wrote u instead of you and wrote steeped on instead of stepped on. The author even misspelled his own title, using crossdrains instead of cross drains on certain occasions. I also noticed that even in the Amazon listing of the book, the author used the incorrect spelling of the title. In addition, the author also did not use any statement signifier, no quotation marks and no word indicators like said and shouted. I was left guessing who was speaking to whom.
The narrative of the book is rather simplistic which makes it unfit for adults. The constant swearing and the inclusion of murder and harassment in the plot make it unsuitable for children as well. With these in consideration, perhaps the book is more geared towards an adolescent audience. But before I can recommend this to anyone, I think the book should go through the editing block first.
I understand that English is not the author’s native language, but as an ESL learner myself, I don’t think this is enough excuse. The author should require the assistance of an editor for I honestly believe that with proper editing, the beautiful meanings of the book will shine.
Although I find its plot intriguing and unique, the numerous errors greatly diminished my enjoyment of the book. Thus, I’ll have to give Cross Drains 1 out of 4 stars.
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Cross Drains
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I'm honestly still not sure what age bracket this book should be for. The narrative sometimes makes it look like it's a children's book, but the topic is not. So it was just weird. And yes the concept, especially the discussions about karma and reincarnations, was unique. Just too bad about the writing altogether, though I probably am not the right person to point that out seeing as I even wrote 'picked my interest' in the review haha. Anyway, thanks again for reading this review.
Anyway, thanks for reading my review 
