Aru Shah and the City of Gold

Aru Shah and the City of Gold is the fourth book of the Pandava Quintet by the American writer Roshani Chokshi, published in April 2021 under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint.

The series takes the heroes of the Mahabharata and reincarnates them as contemporary American children, and this volume spends most of its energy on the question of what a family is: Kara's arrival implies that Aru's father, the Sleeper, betrayed her mother, or that her mother kept something from her, and neither explanation turns out to be the whole truth. Aru has also just made a wish on a tree of wishes and cannot remember what she asked for, which is a problem she recognises as a problem without being able to say why. The quest is a search for two mentors in a city of gold before a war between the devas and the asuras begins, and it is told with the irreverence that the series has used from the start, including a running commentary on what the old stories leave out. A fifth and final book, Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality, was announced in April 2021, and the series is one of the first titles published under Riordan's imprint for authors drawing on mythologies outside the Greek tradition.