Twenty years ago, amid the swirl of controversy surrounding the publication of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was inspired to write the children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his 11-year-old son Zafar. The modern fable follows Haroun, the son of a a great storyteller, on his quest into the World of Magic to find a way to restore his father’s creative talents. When Rushdie’s younger son, Milan, read the book years later, he requested a book of his own from his father. This request coincided with the author’s plan to revisit Haroun’s world. “It had always been in my mind to try to do a second one, and this kind of prompted me to do it,” Rushdie explains to The Boston Globe. The new book Luka and the Fire of Life, finished just in time for Milan’s 12th birthday, is a sequel to Haroun, but the story features a new hero and stands on its own. “I wanted to create a new, imaginative world and a new reason for going there,” states the writer.

The second installment centers on 12-year-old Luka, Haroun’s younger brother, who must travel into the World of Magic and retrieve the Fire of Life in order to save his father’s life. In telling the story, Rushdie draws on myths from diverse cultures, and even from modern technology, weaving video game elements like pressing buttons to save accomplishments, into the adventure. Old and new story devices blend together to build excitement in young readers and teach valuable life lessons. “For all the whizzing and zooming going on, Luka’s battles are ultimately moral ones, and some of the novel’s best moments come as he ponders how his actions will change others’ lives…Forced to choose between inhabiting a child’s moral decision-making process and adding more slapstick and dazzle, Rushdie knows he’s got some easily distracted readers to please. This in itself is no flaw: his exuberant wordplay is evident on every page, and the book closes with an entertaining defense of storytelling, even in video game form,” writes Mark Athitakis in a review for The New York Times.