Roshani Choski excites with her mythological juvenile debut “Aru Shah and the End of Time”
Roshani Choski’s “Aru Shah and the End of Time” tells us to be ourselves in this world of social media.
February 17, 2020
Mythology has been made into literature time and time again, but it hasn’t been since recent years that we got good books that modernized it. Rick Riordan has been leading the way for mythology books with his collaboration with Disney-Hyperion publishing. They publish underrepresented authors writing mythologies from underrepresented cultures.
Roshani Choski is one author that uses this program to publish the Hindu Mythology series “Aru Shah”. Her first book in the series “Aru Shah and the End of Time” tells of the story of Aru Shah, a middle schooler who works in a Hindu museum. This is Choski’s first book in middle-grade readers, but she uses her past writing style of YA literature to create a story for both middle schoolers and high schoolers.
The story is simple, Aru Shah goes to a rich private middle school, she has to make up stories to fit in, but one day those students find her in the museum, she is then pulled into a story that she could not make up. She and her Pandava sister have to stop the sleeper from waking up the God of Destruction.
I recommend researching more about Hindu Mythology before reading to catch some of the subtle references to their various gods, as well as the main talking points with the Pandavas and the sleeper. Primarily it takes from the Hindu Epic Mahabharata, a poem that tells of the legendary Pandava brothers and their journey to stop the sleeper an ancient demon whose duty is to awaken the god of destruction to begin the end of the universe.
A particularly good book has a way of opening new spaces in one’s mind. It even invited you to come back later and rummage through what you’d learn.
— Roshani Chokshi, Aru Shah and the End of Time
Its a story of overcoming fears and learning to be ourselves in a time heavily influenced by the pressure of social media. Its use of mythology spotlights what makes us human. “Aru Shah and the End of Time” is a book that I would recommend to people who were fans of the “Percy Jackson” series, as well as fans of mythology in general.
