REVIEWS: Aru Shah and the End of Time and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Aru Shah and the End of Time:

Our main character is Aru Shah, a 12 year old girl who just like anybody else, wants to fit in and in order to do so she may have told some porky pies and stretched the truth a little bit. So when her school mates tell her to prove that the Lamb of Bharata is cursed, she goes a long with it. She lights up the lamp but that has disastrous consequences. The reason why it is cursed is because it holds the sleeper and by lighting it up, she has awakened it and to make matters worse, her mother and her classmates are frozen in time. She must fight the sleeper and stop him from awakening the God of Destruction, and along the way will find some friends that will help her in a mission. She finds out she has the soul of one of the Pandava brothers spoken about in legends and must find her sisters in arms to stop the sleeper.

I’m of no surprise that this was written by Roshani Chokshi under the banner of Rick Riordan presents. This story just screams the combination of the two and no wonder it was such anticipated read of 2018, I just didn’t get to it till the end of the year. Though this book is not targeted to me, I’m nonetheless excited by how much I enjoyed this book.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Lightning Thief:

I have always been a fan of the movie and when people said the book is better and that I should give it a read, I said maybe but it wasn’t until now that I started thinking maybe I should read it, and I’m so happy that I did.

We follow young Percy Jackson at 12 years old as he discovers that he is a demi god. That means he is half mortal half God. Before all that happened though, he lives with his Mom and Stepdad Gabe, during the summer after attending boarding school. He has been kicked out of many schools due to being a bad influence and being unruly. So during his last school year, his pre-algebra teacher turns into a monster and tries to kill him. Well that’s not a normal thing for a kid is it? After that he starts to realize that not everything is at it seems. His dyslexia and ADHD are all due to him being a demi god but he doesn’t find that out until later. Anyway, when he and his mom are away, he finds himself being hunted by monsters and that’s when his friend Grover shows up, turns out he is a cedar. On the way to Camp Halfblood, the camp for Demi Gods, his mom is killed by the minotaur and he finds out that he is wanted by Zeus for stealing the thunderbolt as his father is the greek god Poseidon who is Zeus’ brother. Basically chaos ensues all over this book and it’s just easier for you to read it than for me to carry on writing about it.

Overall 4 out of 5 stars.