Fury of the Dragon Goddess

Starred review from May 15, 2023
In this follow-up to City of the Plague God (2021), 14-year-old Iraqi American Sikander Aziz and friends find the tablet of destinies and encounter a god who intends to use it to destroy the world. Visiting London accompanied by Rabisu, a demon and social media influencer with an appetite for the unsavory, Sik meets up with his late brother Mo's friend Daoud, a former deli employee-turned-international supermodel. He's also reunited with warrior Belet, daughter of the goddess Ishtar, who uses Daoud's fame to access an auction of priceless looted antiquities in search of the tablet of destinies once owned by Cleopatra and Saladin. Malevolent deity Lugal, seeking the same treasure, disrupts the auction--but not before Sik manages to inadvertently use it to bring Mo back to life, reshaping the timeline of events at devastating cost. Lugal's later theft of the tablet results in continued alterations of time, with the ultimate goal of resurrecting Tiamat, the primordial dragon goddess of chaos, with world-ending consequences. Chadda excels in this action-packed adventure peppered with scenes examining Western theft of cultural artifacts, xenophobia, and Islamophobia and grounded in emotional depth and tenderness for humanity. Arabic words and Islamic concepts, terminology, phrases, and practices are effortlessly included throughout. In this novel centering Muslim characters--the Aziz family and Daoud--Chadda delicately reconciles the fundamental Muslim belief in one God with the presence of Mesopotamian deities. An epic tale that contains multitudes. (glossary) (Fantasy. 10-14)

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