Book Review of Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time

 Book Review of Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi, Book One of her Pandava Quintet series, is said to be the first imprinted Rick Riordan Presents book. Rick Riordan Presents is a small portion of the Disney-Hyperion Publishing family, led by Rick Riordan (an outstanding author well known for his Percy Jackson series) and Stephanie Lurie (Riordan’s editor), who aim to help publish middle-grade level stories, written by other authors, regarding mythologies/folklores from other cultures. This book is, specifically, based on the Hindu legend regarding the Pandavas!

The story opens with our twelve-year-old protagonist, Aru Shah, who is on autumn break, staying home, in the Museum of Indian Culture and Arts that her mother curates, yet again, which is unlike most of her other classmates at her private middle school. They always traveled to fancy vacation places during such long breaks. Three of Aru’s nosy classmates show up at her door to humiliate her for being a liar (and to be fair, Aru did exaggerate things with her very imaginative brain just to fit in at school). They peer pressure her into lighting the magic diya, an oil lamp made from clay that her mother told her not to light, which she had claimed to have. But the instant her flame had touched the wick, the Sleeper, the main antagonist, inside breaks free. He freezes time, so now no one besides Aru here can move a muscle.

Then, a pigeon called Subala, whom Aru renames Boo, appears before Aru. From him, Aru is told that she is one of the five legendary Pandava brothers’ reincarcerations. Boo then leads her to meet one of her soul Pandava siblings, Mini, and they visit the Council of Guardians together to seek leads to help them undo the situation. Upon their visit, the Council members, Hanuman and Urvashi, put them through a Pandava test; from that test, Aru is identified to be the reincarceration of Arjuna, the son of Indra (king of the Gods), and Mini to be the reincarceration of Yudhistira, the son of Dharma Raja (the Lord of Death and Justice). Additionally, they receive a quest to, within nine days, find the difficult-to-reach Pool of the Past, located in the Kingdom of Death, to get much-needed information and stop the Sleeper from waking the Lord of Destruction, all in order to prevent the world from coming to an end. With so much on their plates, will they be able to accomplish this quest?

Aru Shah and the End of Time definitely contains a lot of personality and humor; you won’t find a single dry page. Chokshi is clear when describing Hindu culture; the glossary was extremely helpful, too. However, I am not really into Aru as a character; she is a bit too judgy, kind of arrogant, and one of those characters who often makes unnecessary lies for petty reasons. Even though I did not like Aru much, I did enjoy Mini and Boo because their personalities are amazing. The ending was not as great as I hoped it would be, but it has an excuse since there are four more books following it that could make it up. Even so, the story leading up to the end flowed well. So, my rating for this book is 3.5/5.

-Kaylee Z