Aru Shah is an average twelve-year old, not particularly attentive at school, but keenly aware of the importance of fitting in, which sometimes leads her to lie to impress her classmates. So when she’s caught out at home in her Spider-man pyjamas, not Paris as she’d claimed, she does the only thing she can to reclaim credibility and lights the cursed lamp her mother has told her always to avoid. That awakens a demon who in turn aims to wake up the Lord of Destruction, and bring about the end of the world. Only Aru and another kid Mini can stop it. It helps that they’re both reincarnations of the Pandava brothers and descended from the gods, and that they have a pigeon-shaped divine sidekick, Boo. Their adventures are as thrilling as any of Percy Jackson’s as they face a terrifying set of monsters all out to kill them. It makes great reading, and Aru keeps up a running commentary that is very funny indeed.
Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. Whilst her classmates are jetting off to exotic locales, she'll be at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture where her mother works. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, traveling to Paris, and having a chauffeur? When Aru's schoolmates dare her to prove that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, she doesn't think there's any harm in lighting it. Little does Aru know that lighting the lamp has dire consequences. She unwittingly frees the Sleeper, an ancient demon whose duty it is to awaken the God of Destruction. Her classmates and beloved mother are frozen in time, and, accompanied by a wise-cracking pigeon and her long-lost half-sister, it's up to Aru to save them.
Has everything I like: humour, action, great characters and awesome mythology! Rick Riordan, bestselling author of Percy Jackson
A new star is born. Eoin Colfer, bestselling author of Artemis Fowl
Author
About Roshani Chokshi
Roshani Chokshi is the author of the instant New York Times best-selling novel The Star-Touched Queen and its companion, A Crown of Wishes. She studied fairy tales in college, and she has a pet luck dragon that looks suspiciously like a Great Pyrenees dog. Aru Shah and the End of Time, her middle-grade debut, was inspired by the stories her grandmother told her, as well as Roshani's all-consuming love for Sailor Moon. She lives in Georgia and says y'all, but she doesn't really have a Southern accent, alas. Follow her on Instagram.
