Kiranmala must leave the Kingdom Beyond and travel to her hometown of Parsippany to save Prince Lal, who has been spirited to the unlikeliest of places - a tree in the yard of her best-enemy-for-life. This jaunt to the past and its consequences in the present help The Chaos Curse end on a clever high note.Creating order out of chaos has frightening consequences in this New York Times bestselling series! This doesn't get resolved until near the end in a time travel adventure that will remind readers of Back to the Future - oddly the parallel is never mentioned, when there are so many references rolling about. They're in the way of other characters and causing trouble. When Kiran, Lal, and her strange animal sidekicks get back to the Kingdom Beyond, there's another story structure challenge: For pages, Kiran and Prince Neel have lost their heroic roles. The great message about preserving these unique stories almost gets lost. There's a certain delight in all this chaos on top of more chaos that gets in the way of telling a clear quest tale. There's a talking bird who loves dumb jokes, a nonbinary intellectual tiger, a gecko communication device, a flighty moon mother, the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, Einstein in a wormhole explaining about string theory (wait, no, that's on the way back), these blue butterflies everywhere, and a scene straight out of Alice in Wonderland with keys and doors and a riddle. But this simple trajectory gets wrapped up in so much complexity that it's overwhelming.

Kiran's task may seem simple at the beginning of The Chaos Curse - rescue Prince Lal. Myths and more get all mixed up in this overly chaotic story with a great message about the importance of preserving diverse tales.

The Chaos Curse explores why diverse stories matter and references many books and movies kids growing up in the United States will know well, like The Princess Bride and Alice in Wonderland. Expect more fantasy fighting with some demon creatures, but only a few injuries including a wing torn with a poisoned arrow. In this installment she must save a prince trapped in a tree and save the world from her god/villain father who wants to combine all the world's stories into one and destroy the multiverse. Here, the modern kid is 12-year-old Kiranmala, an Indian girl from another dimension growing up in New Jersey. It thrusts modern kids into the world of mythology and infuses the story with humor. This series will remind you a lot of Rick Riordan's work ( Percy Jackson, Kane Chronicles). Parents need to know that The Chaos Curse: Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond is the third book in a fantasy series featuring a melding of folk tales and folklore from West Bengal, India. Many mentions of familiar books and movies, especially The Princess Bride and Alice in Wonderland.

The Chaos Curse by Sayantani DasGupta