The Chaos Curse: Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond, Book 3
Chaotic tale with solid message that diverse stories matter.
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this book.
What Parents Need to Know
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. This series will remind you a lot of Rick Riordan's work (Percy Jackson, Kane Chronicles). It thrusts modern kids into the world of mythology and infuses the story with humor. Here, the modern kid is 12-year-old Kiranmala, an Indian girl from another dimension growing up in New Jersey. 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. Expect more fantasy fighting with some demon creatures, but only a few injuries including a wing torn with a poisoned arrow. 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.
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What's the Story?
In THE CHAOS CURSE: KIRANMALA AND THE KINGDOM BEYOND, BOOK 3, Kiran is tasked with returning home to New Jersey to rescue Prince Lal, who's trapped in her neighbor's tree. She travels through the wormhole and lands in the right tree, but begins to suspect she's landed in the wrong version of her universe. Her Earth parents have given up their convenience store to become tax accountants and insist on calling her "Karen" because they think it's easier to say. And when she gets to school her frenemy acts like her best friend, her BFF is a jerk, and her principal turns out to be Medusa's sister. And wait -- what's a Greek Gorgon doing in Kiran's world? When Kiran rescues Lal from what turns out to be Yggdrasil, the world tree from Norse mythology, and heads home to the Kingdom Beyond, many more myth mixups are to come and Kiran figures out her villain dad may be behind it all.
Is It Any Good?
Myths and more get all mixed up in this overly chaotic story with a great message about the importance of preserving diverse tales. Kiran's task may seem simple at the beginning of The Chaos Curse -- rescue Prince Lal. But this simple trajectory gets wrapped up in so much complexity that it's overwhelming. 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. 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. The great message about preserving these unique stories almost gets lost.
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. They're in the way of other characters and causing trouble. 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. This jaunt to the past and its consequences in the present help The Chaos Curse end on a clever high note.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about all the stories squished into The Chaos Curse. Did you notice them all? What was being lost as all the stories started to meld together?
By this installment, Kiran realizes even more that the line between villain and hero can be a hard one to draw, especially when it comes to Neel's mother. What other stories have you read that show villains with heroic tendencies or people that look heroic not acting heroic at all by story's end?
Will you read more in this series? What do you think is next for Kiran, Neel, and friends?
Book Details
- Author: Sayantani DasGupta
- Genre: Fantasy
- Topics: STEM, Magic and Fantasy, Princesses, Fairies, Mermaids, and More, Adventures, Brothers and Sisters, Fairy Tales, Middle School, Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Scholastic Press
- Publication date: March 3, 2020
- Publisher's recommended age(s): 8 - 12
- Number of pages: 400
- Available on: Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
- Last updated: April 21, 2020
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