It’s a high-tech game called The Battle of Blood and Iron, a cross between a video game and board game, complete with virtual reality goggles. At home while they’re hard at work, a gift from big sister Farah-who is away at her first year in college-arrives. Twelve-year-old Ahmad Mirza struggles to make friends at his new middle school, but when he’s paired with his classmate Winnie for a project, he is determined to impress her and make his very first friend. Together, they’ve rebuilt Paheli into a slick, mind-bending world with floating skyscrapers, flying rickshaws run by robots, and a digital funicular rail that doesn’t always take you exactly where you want to go.

And it takes players as prisoners.The game begins again in this gripping follow-up to The Gauntlet that’s a futuristic middle eastern Zathura meets Ready Player One!įour years after the events of The Gauntlet, the evil game Architect is back with a new partner-in-crime-The MasterMind-and the pair aim to get revenge on the Mirza clan. It is the most ancient, the most dangerous kind of magic. The Gauntlet is more than a game, though. It is made of wood, etched with exquisite images-a palace with domes and turrets, lattice-work windows that cast eerie shadows, a large spider-and at the very center of its cover, in broad letters, is written: The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand. When twelve-year-old Farah first laid eyes on the old-fashioned board game, she thought it looked…elegant. Nothing can prepare you for The Gauntlet… She is the author of The Gauntlet and The Battle.Ī trio of friends from New York City find themselves trapped inside a mechanical board game that they must dismantle in order to save themselves and generations of other children in this action-packed debut that’s a steampunk Jumanji with a Middle Eastern flair. Karuna is fond of tea, baking new delectable treats for friends and family to relish, Korean dramas, and writing about tough girls forging their own paths toward their destinies. Besides pursuing a BA in English literature from Hofstra University, she is an online diversity advocate, blogger, and publishing intern. Karuna Riazi is a born and raised New Yorker, with a loving, large extended family and the rather trying experience of being the eldest sibling in her particular clan. Karuna will discuss her novel “The Gauntlet.”

The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi