Aru Shah
Aru Shan is the protagonist of the story “Beware the Grove of True Love” by Roshani Chokshi. Aru is mythic hero of the author’s Pandava Quintet, a fifteen-year-old girl who calls the Museum of Ancient Indian Art in Atlanta her home. The opening line of this story pretty much informs the reader as to the adventure taking place in this story by conveying how she knew it was going to be a bad day the very minute she “stepped out of the portal and into the Night Bazaar of the Otherworld.” The Otherworld is quickly identified as being a quilt comprised of various locations nestled throughout the multiverse.
Kim Min
Kim Min is the narrator of Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Initiation.” The same applies to Lee’s novel Dragon Pearl. Like the other characters in this collection, Kim is a teenager, but she is not of this earth. She was raised on the poorest planets in the galaxy, Jinju, and this science fiction aspect of her character is made apparently in the opening line to her story in which she admits that the preceding few months have been spent fighting space pirates (and ghosts bent on revenge) alongside her brother, Jun.
Nizhoni Begay
“The Demon Drum” by Rebecca Roanhorse begins with a breathlessly exciting narration-within-the-narration by the protagonist of the story, Nizhoni Begay. Using all the powers of a gift storyteller, the thirteen-year-old Monsterslayer ratchets up the tension as she tells members of the Ancestor Club gathered around a story leading to the revelation of the titular powwow drum only to be suddenly interrupted by a listener insisting that the way the story is being told isn’t how it happened because, as it turns out, the listener was there as well. Begay’s life with the other club members and her adventures as a slayer are introduced in the novel Race to the Sun.
Riley and Hattie Oh
Riley and Hattie Oh are the two sisters who comprise the co-protagonists of “My Night at the Gifted Carnival” by Graci Kim. Riley is the first-person narrator of this tale which by the second page has already introduced a Ferris wheel, unicorns and a type of flying horse called a cheollima. Riley is also the narrator/protagonist of Kim’s series of novels within the Riordan multiverse known as The Gifted Clans. While Riley is adopted, Hattie is the biological offspring of James and Eunha Oh, both of whom are healing witches. Their story is the entry in the collection which gives the piece its title.
Finn
Finn is the narrator and protagonist of the only story in the collection actually written by Rick Riordan, “My Life as a Child Outlaw.” Finn learns he is the son of Cumall, a great chieftain of Irish hunter-warriors who fell in love with Muirne Fair-Neck after which, as Finn tells it, “everything went to pig manure.” This story—and this story alone—features an appendix which is titled “Finn’s Guide to Irish Names.” Finn describes how the story he has just told occurred before the British arrived and everything really went to pig manure. This appendix is not only useful for learning how to tell who from who else, but how to pronounce the sometimes-difficult Irish names that pop up in the story.
