Roshani Chokshi has been kind enough to give us another Aru Shah adventure! It’s less than a month until book four in the Pandava series, Aru Shah and the City of Gold, hits bookshelves. After reading this opening passage, we want to fast-forward to the April 6 on-sale date to get our hands on a copy. Check it out.

Aru Shah felt like she’d been struck by lightning.

Seriously.

And she knew all about that feeling, thanks to a terrible experiment. Once, when she was extremely bored, Aru had decided to find out what being struck by lightning would feel like by using Vajra, her lightning bolt and sometime Ping-Pong ball.

“Dude, are you serious?” Brynne had said.

“I can’t watch this,” Mini said. “You could—”

“I’m not going to die!” said Aru, rolling her eyes. “I’m a demigod!”

“That doesn’t mean Indra is going to protect you,” said Mini, crossing her arms.

Aru tossed up the Ping-Pong ball (“Trust me, nothing’s going to happen.”), then knocked it higher with her forehead.

Six hours later, Aru had woken up with a splitting headache, a twitch in her left eye, and a serious case of frizzy hair.

For a week straight, it had felt like someone had played soccer with her brain. Although this could also have been because Mini kept quizzing her about geography trivia to check her “neurological state.”

Aru had never wanted to feel that way again.

And yet here she was, chained to a rock in the Sleeper’s cave lair, feeling like she’d been electrocuted.

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