“The Red Pyramid” by Rick Riordan

I am continuing my journey through Riordan’s works with his series the Kane Chronicles about the Egyptian gods. I read this book back in high school, but I don’t remember the rest of the series so I am excited to read it all the way through. It is similar to the Percy Jackson series in that it is inventive, hilarious, and fun to read.

The story follows two siblings: Carter and Sadie Kane. Their mother died when they were little so Sadie has been staying with their grandparents in England and Carter has been traveling the world with their Egyptologist dad. They meet up one day a year, this year they head to the British Museum where their dad blows up the Rosetta Stone and releases the spirits of a bunch of Egyptian gods into the world. Whee! Sadie now is hosting Isis, Carter gets Horus, their dad latches onto Osiris, and it is unclear where Set and Nephthys went. This is bad though because the Egyptian magicians have outlawed hosting the gods out of fear. As a result, the Kanes are on the run with the cat goddess Bast as their guide to find their father and defeat Set. This takes them to the desert where they team up with magician Zia and their uncle Amos to fight Set and his huge red pyramid of chaos. Turns out that Amos has been hosting Set and fighting himself the whole way. Once this is revealed, they are successful at defeating Set, but they fail to recover their father. Zia is then revealed to be hosting Nephthys, she gives Set’s secret name to Sadie which allows them to win, but Zia also turns out to be an animated clay doll. The pair sets out to find the real Zia and learn more about magic.

This series has a number of very cool things going for it. The narrative style is that Sadie and Carter are recording what happened to them as they try to find more kids that can host gods. For the most part, this does not differ too much from Riordan’s usual style, but he throws in some asides between the siblings, usually at the beginning of the chapters. Sadie needling Carter or Carter defending himself really adds to their dynamic, even though it is technically separate from the action.

The characters are also different. Carter is explicitly a Black man, and Sadie passes as white but is still very much part of the family. The characters talk about this, how Carter has always been expected to behave impeccably and dress nice while people are constantly questioning Sadie being related to the rest of the family. It’s a different dynamic and I bet that kids reading the book with similar identities are thrilled to have that representation.

The book also does a really good job of having these twists at the end (Amos hosting Set, Zia being a clay doll) without overly relying on that as a plot device. There are clues throughout the story that I picked up on since I have read it before, but knowing how it ends did not wreck my experience or anything like that. Riordan’s just a masterful storyteller, not much else I can add there.

Anyways I am very excited to continue with this book series. Riordan does such a good job with the source material, I truly feel like I am learning more while having a good time!