Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series is the thing that got me to start reading long-form fiction for the first time. I vividly remember being in the fifth grade, watching the Lightning Thief movie, and being so excited that the movie was based on the first book in a five-book series. ((Imagine the growing pain that I experienced the deeper I got and realized how violently the movie butchered the book.)
With Riordan’s work being the biggest influence on my reading tastes, it only makes sense that one of the books that helped get me back onto the reading horse, so to speak, was from Rick Riordan Presents, an imprint he started that focuses on the mythologies of cultures that he, a white man, should probably (definitely) not be writing about.
Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time was the first book I bought to get back into reading, and I’m glad I did, and have been even happier to revisit now. It follows Aru Shah, shocker, a twelve-year-old who lives in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture with her archeologist mother. You know, when her mother is home. More often than not, she off gods know where on archeological digs. But when some girls from Aru’s school show up at the museum—putting a hole in her lies that she is rich, with a fancy house, chauffeur, the works—Aru winds up unleashing a demon and has to save the world. You know, standard middle school issues.
The kicker here, the big thing that Aru deals with, is her lies. She has so much shame bottled up for her situation, resentment for her mother, no father, that lying is so much easier for her than the truth.
The journey she goes through is very much about teaching her, and, by extension the reader, not to be afraid or ashamed of your circumstances. It doesn’t exactly say “don’t lie” so much as “don’t lie about who you are.” A nuanced take on a lesson for Middle-Grade readers. Aru’s ability to think on her feet and concoct stories is her greatest asset. The lesson she has to learn is to stop using as a shield with which to protect herself from everyone, else release something bigger than she could ever hope to contain. For many, that is just the consequence of the lie, the inability to hold it up. In Aru’s case, it is a demon destroying time itself.
Interestingly, Aru does go through a spurt of believing her lies to be abhorrent, a harbinger of destruction in more ways than one. But inn the end, it is always her ability to spin a tale that gets she and her Pandava sister Mini out of their most dire situations.
I think that is what Aru Shah and the End of Time does that regained my attention for fiction. It doesn’t present a question followed by a simple answer. Rather it posits “how bad is lying? And when is it bad?” and, while very clearly landing on “being ashamed of who you are is bad,” it doesn’t seem to give a very clear answer.
That is what moral journeys need, I think. To ask a question, interrogate it, but let the reader answer it.
Of course, this is the first book in a series, so we will see how that open endedness pans out as Aru Shah grows and changes over her next four books.
The journey she goes through is very much about teaching her, and, by extension the reader, not to be afraid or ashamed of your circumstances. It doesn’t exactly say “don’t lie” so much as “don’t lie about who you are.” A nuanced take on a lesson for Middle-Grade readers. Aru’s ability to think on her feet and concoct stories is her greatest asset. The lesson she has to learn is to stop using as a shield with which to protect herself from everyone, else release something bigger than she could ever hope to contain. For many, that is just the consequence of the lie, the inability to hold it up. In Aru’s case, it is a demon destroying time itself.
Interestingly, Aru does go through a spurt of believing her lies to be abhorrent, a harbinger of destruction in more ways than one. But inn the end, it is always her ability to spin a tale that gets she and her Pandava sister Mini out of their most dire situations.
I think that is what Aru Shah and the End of Time does that regained my attention for fiction. It doesn’t present a question followed by a simple answer. Rather it posits “how bad is lying? And when is it bad?” and, while very clearly landing on “being ashamed of who you are is bad,” it doesn’t seem to give a very clear answer.
That is what moral journeys need, I think. To ask a question, interrogate it, but let the reader answer it.
Of course, this is the first book in a series, so we will see how that open endedness pans out as Aru Shah grows and changes over her next four books.
Comments
Post a Comment