Friday, May 11, 2018

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

Cover image for Aru Shah and the end of timeAru Shah's mother is the curator of a museum of Indian antiquities.  She has always told Aru that the old lamp in one of the exhibit rooms was cursed, and if someone lit it a demon would appear.  Aru doesn't believe it, of course, until one day when "friends" dare her to light it.  When she does, a demon does appear, causing time to freeze all around him.  With her one bad choice, Aru is swept into a world of the Hindu gods, and discovers more about her family than she had ever imagined.

This is the first in a new imprint called Rick Riordan Presents.  Presumably it will include books like his Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles series where modern kids find out they are demi-gods.  This book is very much like the Percy Jackson books, and it was fun to learn more about Hindu mythology.  Some of the action sequences were so much like Riordan's that I wondered if he actually helped write them.  The difference between this book and his latest series, is that is contains no reference to BGLT relationships (one of Riordan's favorite topics as of late) which was refreshing.  It also doesn't quite have the snappy patter I have enjoyed in Riordan's writing, and so I didn't actually enjoy it as much as the first Percy Jackson books.  Still, it will be easy to sell this one to Riordan fans.  (355 p.  2018)

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