Aru Shah and the End of Time, Reviewed by Nina Vigil, 11

Are you looking for a book you can read for hours without noticing time passing? One that is funny and imaginative and has an adventurous heroine? Well, you can’t do much better than Aru Shah and the End of Time. This is a captivating story about Hindu mythology that is a must-read.

In the story, the heroine is Aru Shah, a girl who lies very frequently to fit in with her friends. But soon, some classmates call her bluff and ask her to prove that a lamp in her mom’s museum is cursed. Aru lights the lamp, and accidentally unleashes a demon determined to wake Shiva, the God of Destruction, in nine days. And to make matters worse, he’s freezing everything in time wherever he goes. In order to stop him, Aru has to find the Three Keys and journey to the Kingdom of Death with her backpack-toting soul sister and a talking pigeon named Boo. But...how?

The thing I liked most about the book was, besides the Rick Riordan-style humor, the way it wove Hindu mythology into the plot. This book taught me some really fascinating things about the Hindu myths, and made me want to read other mythology books.

The central theme of the book is the meaning of family. For instance, Aru’s “soul sister” Mini isn’t directly related to Aru, but they are much closer than Aru and her father (you’ll find out who he is later...) ever could be. Mini and Aru quest together, save each other’s lives several times, and work together to solve problems. In this way, the author challenges the idea that family is just your blood relations. Family can also be chosen.

I highly recommend this book to anyone, but especially for Percy Jackson and mythology fans.