-
REVIEW; Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes / the City of Gold / the Nectar of Immortality
Title: Aru Shah and the Tree of Wishes / Aru Shah and the City of Gold / Aru Shah and the Nectar of ImmortalitySeries: The Pandeva QuintetAuthor: Roshani ChokshiGenre: Middle Grade, fantasy, mythological reimaginingsType: PaperbackPublisher: Rick Riordan Presents War between the devas and the demons is imminent, and the Otherworld is on high alert. When intelligence from the human world reveals that the Sleeper is holding a powerful clairvoyant and her sister captive, 14-year-old Aru and her friends launch a search-and-rescue mission. The captives, a pair of twins, turn out to be the newest Pandava sisters, though, according to a prophecy, one sister is not true. During the celebration of Holi, the heavenly attendants stage…
-
AUTHOR AVENGERS; May Round Up
It’s May – or Star Wars month as Josh and L’poni and Morris reminded us in the Author Avengers server – so having a Star Wars-esque prompt seemed like the thing to do. I am a self-proclaimed no.1 Jedi fan, so I took it upon myself to find a quote from Buddha themself (the inspiration behind Jedi philosophies) for this month’s prompt: I leaned heavily into the similarities between the Jedi and Sikhism for this story, and I hope you enjoy it! The underlying message of the prompt for me and for Morris seems to be about hope for the future, even if the now looks bleak, and I think we did it pretty well. INDEX:Morris…
-
REVIEW; The Very Secret Society Of Irregular Witches
(Yes, I do see the irony of this going up as the post immediately after the last one. I’ve had it in drafts for ages though.) I have a new favourite book and this is it. It is cozy, emotional, romantic, warm, the vibes are immaculate, characters are distinct, the hurt/comfort is real. I love it. living for the slow burn and pining and just – ahhhh! The whole time I was reading this book – which was a very short time because I did not want to put it down – I was liveposting on Bluesky. It was just so well done, the angst so heartwrenching. The premise that…
-
Why I’ll Be Reviewing Less Books On The Blog
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a book review on here. A number of months, really, and that’s not been because I haven’t been reading. I have! More than I have in a long while, even. I’ve hit 10 books this year already, and 10 was my aim when I set up my GR Challenge. But the thing is, I set out a few years ago to have my blog posts on a schedule. A slow one – once every two weeks – and the initial plan was for reviews to go up whenever. Plans have a way of not working out, and now I’ve switched things up on…
-
AUTHOR AVENGERS; April Round Up
This month’s prompt – or more accurately prompts – was given to us by L’poni Baldwin. The plethora of choices could have been overwhelming, but honestly just made me excited. I’ve saved a few to come back to later. The one I did wind up choosing was, of course, emotional. I do love some good quality angst. Let me know if I did it justice! INDEX:Aradhna Kaur (me!) – All Things End As always, any prompt fills going up after today will be added in to the post later! If you like my content, consider leaving me a tip on Ko-fi!
-
NEWSLETTER SNIPPETS; Issue #3
The 31st of March saw the third issue of the newsletter – and the first issue of this year – go out. I’ll let the snippets speak for themselves. You can sign up here! These few months have been filled with very high highs – some weddings, a trip we decided to go on last minute with extended family to Cairo and Dubai – and a couple of very low lows – my mother’s oldest brother passed away pretty unexpectedly in early March and barely a week later, our community’s spiritual godmother also unexpectedly passed. The grief comes in ebbs and flows, and it hasn’t really hit, you know? My emotions have therefore…
-
AUTHOR AVENGERS; March Round Up
This month’s prompt was given to us by Josh – it’s his birthday month! – and it was definitely a fun one though I didn’t end up going the direction I originally planned to. (If you’ve been reading along, you know we’ve had losses in the family, and this month’s prompt turned from an exploration of monsters to an exploration of grief. Writing has been helping me process and handle things to some extent and I hope that resonates.) INDEX:Aradhna Kaur (me!) – A Fate InevitableMorris Wayts – Those Who Fight Monsters As always, any prompt fills going up after today will be added in to the post later!
-
AUTHOR AVENGERS; February Round Up
(Prefacing this with: I’m writing this round up post very early because I will be out of town for a couple of weeks up until this needs to go up and I won’t have my laptop.) This prompt was given by Morris, and I immediately had ideas on what I wanted to write. I spent the end of January around the larger part of my community and we were listening to a lot of old religious and historical tales. It seemed apt then to use one of those mentioned in a short story! Of course, this ended up only looking at the first half of the prompt, grabbing the vibe and running with…
-
NEWSLETTER SNIPPETS; Issue #2
The second issue of the newsletter went out on New Year’s Eve – yes, over a month ago! – and, well, looking back at not just the last quarter of 2024 but the whole of it makes me pretty happy, really. On a creative level, I think I was pretty consistently productive. 208,081 new words last year, not counting blog posts, reviews and newsletters, which as a whole? Pretty good, if I say so myself. You can sign up here! I read more in November and December than I have in the rest of the year combined! I fell deeply into the cozy fantasy side of things in November after…
-
AUTHOR AVENGERS; January Round Up
It is 2025 – Happy Lunar New Year, guys! – and we’re continuing with the prompts! This first one was provided by L’poni Baldwin and we spent a bit spitballing ideas in the Discord, which was a lot of fun. I mean, dragons, right? You can’t really go wrong with dragons. (Okay, I mean you can, but you can always have fun with it.) Coming up with this concept took a bit, but in the end, I loved working on this story. Though I will say formatting it was a PAIN. I think it was worth it, but you tell me! INDEX:Aradhna Kaur (me!) – Science, Scales And Smoke As per…