Aru Shah, a 12 year old girl, finds that she is a Pandava, destined to save the world, when she was dared to lit the cursed lamp and frees an ancient demon, the Sleeper. She and her soul sister must find the three keys, cross into the Kingdom of Death, and save everyone from being frozen from the Sleeper. The task seems grave as many lives relied on them, and they only had 8 days to complete their task. As the future of humanity and heaven wavered on the two girls, but how are two girls going to save us all?

This book is amazing. There are many twists and turns. Aru is a very fun character and I love her sarcastic personality. If you are an Indian kid you can sort-of relate to different parts of the story, but it usually relatable to everyone. If you loved Percy Jackson and want to learn about Hindu mythology you should dive right in.

this book is amazing im addicted to this series now :D (also this is totally random but i LOVE how summer is non-binary :P)

Aru Shah and the End of Time, by Roshani Chokshi, is a thrilling and exciting story about a 12 year old girl named Aru Shah. The story starts in Atlanta Georgia in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, where Aru and her mom live. Aru loves the museum, and she knows stories about all the artifacts there. However, there is one artifact that her mother refuses to allow Aru to touch- the cursed lamp. Even with her mother’s rule about the lamp, in order to impress her classmates, Aru lit up the lamp, which ended up releasing an entity that threatened the safety of the entire world. This launches Aru into a quest to save the world and her mother. Along the way, stories and concepts from Hinduism and India are seen, from the appearance of the Monkey God Hanuman to the story of the Pandava brothers.
As I read this book, I feel very connected to the stories and characters that Chokshi uses. As a Hindu and an Indian-American, I always found it difficult to find figures in literature and media that represented my religion and cultural values. While reading the story, I was amazed every time I saw a story I was taught come to life and interact with the main characters. This book even gave me new facts and questions about my own religion, which is not something that can be said about most books.
Chokshi creates an incredible balance between references to American culture and Indian culture, something that is rare in American literature. From the cultural references to the amazing facts about hinduism, I would highly recommend this book to everyone! It can teach you many things about hinduism- from the idea of incarnation to customs and values.

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi is the first book in the Pandava series and one of the first books published under Rick Riordan Presents. Drawing upon the culture and mythology of India, Aru Shah explores many interesting and deep concepts like the afterlife, redemption, self-actualization, destiny/fate, and friendship/familial relationships. The worldbuilding that Chokshi does within this book is incredible and fun to watch unfold, and many of the characters we come across are interesting and quirky. The secrets we gradually uncover as we go through the story are interesting and add great bits of tension into the story and Aru’s quest.

However, I found that as I was reading Aru Shah, I was coming across too many similarities between it and Rick Riordan’s works. What I mean is that there were many attempts at humor and witty banter that fell flat with me because they reminded me too much of Riordan’s style of humorous writing. I love how Riordan can interweave humor and seriousness throughout his stories and make it work; Chokshi did not quite achieve the same success, in my opinion. Perhaps if I had not been such an avid reader of Riordan’s works for the last several years, I would not have noticed or made the comparison. Maybe it was not Chokshi’s intention to emulate Riordan’s writing style and I just feel that way knowing that this book is published under Riordan’s imprint, but I felt like she was trying too hard to write like Rick Riordan instead of finding her own unique voice. Maybe it will get better in the sequel books; I can only hope. As well, I could not really sympathize a lot with Aru because she came off as insincere a lot of the time and didn’t really seem to develop much as a character. Yes, she’s an eleven/twelve-year old girl and so has not yet come into herself nor is able to make decisions in the same way I can as an adult, but maybe it will take more time and the sequel books to really show her growth.

Reviewed by Miss Caitlin

Has a bunch of strong female role models who will surely inspire you. It has elements of adventure and humor with the twist of Hindu mythology to tie it all together. You will love this book and all of the others in this series.

AR bookfind level 4.7

This has strong female characters and will appeal to readers who enjoyed Rick Riordan's series.

Beautiful, lovely book. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to reading the rest of the series.

This lively, funny, sweet, and surprisingly deep romp through Hindu mythology made me very happy. Insecure but impulsive Aru and anxious but brilliant Mini, sisters in spirit, make a great adventure duo on a magical road trip stuffed full of classic myths and modern pop culture references. And now I want to read the Mahabharata!