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When I found out that Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson series, was doing a similar series using Egyptian gods, I was completely psyched, and this book didn't disappoint. Yes, there are a lot of similarities to Percy - protagonists discovering their godlike powers for the first time and finding out secrets about their parents, the clever use of mythological tropes to tell the story, plus action, adventures, and battles - but Riordan does it really well.
Two negative points. First, probably because Egyptian mythology is more obscure and less taught than Greek mythology, Riordan makes some of his plot points more overt than he did in the Percy series. With Percy, I loved finding those little moments where Riordan snuck in an awesome little mythical detail, but those moments are fewer here. Secondly, and more importantly, Riordan has two first-person protagonists in this book, but their individual voices aren't well enough established to distinguish them. This is frustrating because Sadie and Carter are very different kids, even with different accents, but I'd still go from reading a Carter-perspective chapter right into a Sadie-perspective chapter without noticing. I hope Riordan is able to improve on this in later books. Also, he does his best to make Sadie pretty kickass for a twelve-year-old, but Carter still got all the best powers, which annoyed me a bit. Hopefully Sadie will find her niche in future books.
One other thing I want to comment on is Riordan's use of race. Sadie and Carter are siblings in a mixed-race family: she has fair skin and he has dark skin, so they don't look like they're related, and Riordan takes the opportunity to comment on this a few different times when other characters they meet are obnoxious about recognizing the relationship. I found this to be excellent. I also appreciated that Carter is acknowledged to be negotiating his adolescence not just as a young man, but as a young black man, and his father's and his own ideas about what that means are discussed. Riordan doesn't make race any kind of major plot point, but it's there and I think that's awesome.
Two negative points. First, probably because Egyptian mythology is more obscure and less taught than Greek mythology, Riordan makes some of his plot points more overt than he did in the Percy series. With Percy, I loved finding those little moments where Riordan snuck in an awesome little mythical detail, but those moments are fewer here. Secondly, and more importantly, Riordan has two first-person protagonists in this book, but their individual voices aren't well enough established to distinguish them. This is frustrating because Sadie and Carter are very different kids, even with different accents, but I'd still go from reading a Carter-perspective chapter right into a Sadie-perspective chapter without noticing. I hope Riordan is able to improve on this in later books. Also, he does his best to make Sadie pretty kickass for a twelve-year-old, but Carter still got all the best powers, which annoyed me a bit. Hopefully Sadie will find her niche in future books.
One other thing I want to comment on is Riordan's use of race. Sadie and Carter are siblings in a mixed-race family: she has fair skin and he has dark skin, so they don't look like they're related, and Riordan takes the opportunity to comment on this a few different times when other characters they meet are obnoxious about recognizing the relationship. I found this to be excellent. I also appreciated that Carter is acknowledged to be negotiating his adolescence not just as a young man, but as a young black man, and his father's and his own ideas about what that means are discussed. Riordan doesn't make race any kind of major plot point, but it's there and I think that's awesome.
