Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of The United Nations Conspiracy by Sharath “Da Saint” Shivani

I opened The United Nations Conspiracy late at night with the casual confidence of someone who believes they control their reading habits. One chapter, maybe two, I told myself. Somewhere between the first disappearance and the first coded warning, I glanced at the clock. Ten minutes had passed. It felt like an hour. My cup of warm water went cold beside me, unnoticed, as New York City stopped being a setting and turned into a living countdown. This book doesn’t unfold gently. It tightens.

Sharath “Da Saint” Shivani places us alongside Bhaarath Ibhan, a young Indian Foreign Service officer posted to the United Nations, expecting a life of protocol, paperwork, and carefully rehearsed neutrality. That expectation fractures almost immediately when a biochemist from Xinjiang vanishes in Manhattan, leaving behind coded notes, Masonic symbols, and a warning that hums beneath every page. What follows is not just a conspiracy, but a compressed twenty-four-hour descent where every hour carries weight and every minute feels accounted for.

What stayed with me most was not the scale of the plot, but its intimacy. The prose is sharp and forward-moving, yet deeply attentive to atmosphere. Corridors feel narrow. Elevators seem to pause too long. Institutions breathe in ways they shouldn’t. Shivani’s narrative doesn’t merely describe urgency—it performs it. With 162 short chapters tracking events almost minute to minute, the pacing becomes part of the story’s psychology. Reading it felt less like consuming chapters and more like watching doors close behind me, one by one.

Bhaarath’s journey is anchored by an uneasy alliance with Zhou Zhìyuǎn, a brilliant Chinese translator whose understanding of the UN’s hidden networks runs far deeper than her official role suggests. Their dynamic is quietly compelling. Trust is provisional. Information arrives with edges. Conversations feel overheard even when spoken in private. Rather than leaning on overt emotional exposition, the book allows tension to accumulate through what is unsaid, creating a character-driven pressure that mirrors the external threat.

There is a particular rhythm to the narrative that I found both exhilarating and, at times, exhausting—and I mean that as an honest reflection rather than a flaw. The relentless attention to time, detail, and movement leaves very little room to breathe. Midway through, I noticed a faint mental fatigue creeping in, the same kind you feel after navigating a crowded airport under stress. But that resistance felt deliberate. The characters don’t get relief, so neither do we. The structure enforces empathy through endurance.

The thematic core of the novel feels unnervingly current. Bioterrorism, shadow diplomacy, secret societies, and the fragile triangulation between India, China, and the United States are not presented as abstract ideas, but as living systems capable of failure. The looming biological weapon—described as more insidious than COVID-19—lands with emotional impact not through sensationalism, but through plausibility. The book quietly asks how prepared we really are, and how much faith we place in institutions designed by fallible people.

Emotionally, my reading experience oscillated between fascination and unease. There were moments I paused not to rest, but to recalibrate, as if the narrative pressure needed a moment to dissipate. The literary strength here lies in sustained control. Shivani resists decorative prose in favour of narrative momentum, allowing the story’s architecture to do the heavy lifting. The impact is cumulative. By the final stretch, I felt keyed up, alert, and oddly protective of the fragile timeline the book constructs.

Readers who enjoy thrillers grounded in realism, tradecraft, and symbolic undercurrents will find familiar pleasure here. Comparisons to Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva, and Dan Brown make sense, but The United Nations Conspiracy carries its own identity, rooted in contemporary geopolitics and the claustrophobic interior of global institutions. It’s a book that rewards attention and asks for stamina.

I finished the novel with the distinct sensation of having spent a day locked inside a future that feels uncomfortably close. The narrative didn’t simply end; it released me. If you’re the kind of reader who enjoys feeling slightly unsettled, who doesn’t mind carrying a book’s tension with you even after you close it, this is one worth stepping into. Just don’t expect to glance at the clock the same way while you’re inside it.

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