Four years ago, Aru Shah and the End of Time broke new ground by reimagining the tale of the Pandava brothers from the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Aru and her sisters navigate their awkward tween years while questing through the celestial Otherworld. It’s a journey that explores family bonds, friendship, and, most of all, belief in one’s self. This richly layered story enthralled readers with its humor, adventure, and window into Hindu cosmology. As the first book published in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, its instant success not only established it as a modern fantasy classic but emphasized the demand for stories that championed female empowerment and multicultural representation.

This beloved series is now concluding with the fifth book, Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality (Rick Riordan Presents/Disney, April 22). The final adventure begins with the group dealing with loss and heartbreaking betrayal. The heroines are extremely vulnerable and racing against a clock that is ticking ever closer to world destruction. Author Roshani Chokshi spoke with us about the series finale via Zoom from her home in Georgia. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How does it feel to say goodbye to these characters?

It is very bittersweet. They’ve lived in my head and my heart for so long. Their character attributes are taken from my own experiences as a monstrous adolescent, adventures with my friends, and conversations with friends and family. It’s strange knowing that I’m not going to have to sit down and spend six months wrestling with them to stop bantering so we can kindly return to the plot. There’s a certain alchemy to being able to write a series as opposed to a duology or a stand-alone, and readers and writers really get the chance to watch a character change over the course of multiple books. Those changes are small and gradual and a lot more reflective of the changes that we go through at that age. 

How fun was it to reimagine the Pandavas as tween girls?

I had a blast. I learned a lot of those stories from my grandmother, who told me tons of Hindu myths. My mother would fill my head with Filipino folklore and ghost stories. The most rewarding thing about playing with retellings and mythology is that you get to ask why and what if constantly. Hindu myths absolutely celebrate that you could be a girl in one life, a dude in the next; it does not matter. A soul has no gender. I didn’t really feel like it was super revolutionary to reimagine the Pandavas into women. I felt that I had been allowed to do that based on all the stories that I had read. 

The Pandavas are powerful heroines but also relatable to many readers.

When we think about writing characters, we often start with what does someone want? But for me the things that stick the most are what makes me feel guilty. It is sometimes that feeling of shame that sculpts us the most when we are that young. We don’t want to do something embarrassing, we don’t want to be ostracized, we despair at being rejected. That sense of shame is something that really makes the girls relatable to readers. We know exactly the thing that eats away at them. I gave them all the things that I’ve also felt or that my closest friends and family have felt when they were 13 [and] 14. Every emotion is the size of the horizon, and it feels infinite because we have nothing to compare it to at that age. It awakens all these emotions that are conflicting. I hope readers feel they can relate to the bond of [the] sisters, that it also gives them permission to feel whatever it is that they’re feeling and to know, most importantly, that they’re not alone.

Parent-child relationships really shaped each character’s motivations and personality. 

Family dynamics are the heart and soul of the series. Sometimes the people we love the most do the most hurt and damage, subconsciously. These parent-child relationships, they’re complex, and hurt can come even when there’s not a drop of malice intended. That’s one of the heartbreaking things about growing up, especially with immigrant communities. Our families have fought so hard to give us a better life—the sacrifices that they have made, the way that they so desperately want for us to be happy, can end up feeling like walking with a thousand paper cuts. There’s a lot of beautiful healing that comes from growing older and seeing their perspective and having open conversations and good communication. Sometimes, the ability to feel safe with ourselves and to feel safe asking for love can come from our friends before it comes from our closest relatives. They can model that for us and give us the strength to say it’s OK to reach out. It’s good to move on and forgive. And you are perfect, just the way you are.

Untold narratives from female characters and how they are remembered are an important thread throughout the series. Was this a result of your own curiosities from childhood?

It was certainly a response to stories that I heard as a child. Stories that, at a fundamental level, disappointed me. You can have this incredibly powerful person get turned into a rock for 10,000 years. Or it’s like, she was so in love with him that she perished on the spot. Why did it end like that? There has to be a better explanation. Give me more depth, give me reasons why people make the worst choice. One thing that I’ve always found so rewarding about Hindu mythology is its presentation that individuals are so very complex. Even in those stories or myths, the people who are considered to be the villains are capable of great acts of kindness. Sometimes [they] are even the foils of heroes themselves, whom we see make mistakes repeatedly. I wanted to be able to share that complexity and nuance with the women in the stories as well.

This series exposed many readers to Hindu cosmology. How did you approach writing for an audience that may be unfamiliar with these stories?

There are quite a lot of counterparts when we consider Zeus, the [Greek] god of thunder. Indra is also the god of thunder. Not necessarily thinking about it in terms of parallels, but reminding myself that what most interested me was the stories related around these deities. It will probably not satisfy everyone, and people have many, many opinions about it. You’re playing with an active religion; both my husband and I practice Hinduism. For me, that negotiation came down to where do I, as someone who practices this faith, feel comfortable? Also the reminder that what’s comfortable for me doesn’t have to be comfortable for everybody else. Maybe the best thing that can come out of it is that hopefully Aru has helped make room at the table for more stories like this. 

What do you hope readers take away from Aru’s story?

My greatest hope is that they take away a sense of curiosity, that they remember to question what is being told to them. It’s OK to interrogate and important to also recognize that there is nuance everywhere. It’s something that feels like it’s lost these days. Myths and folklore remind us that these things are mutable, that everything depends on who’s telling the story.

Sophie Kenney is a youth services librarian in Illinois.