This is the final installment in Riordan’s series, “The Kane Chronicles,” that focuses on Egyptian mythology and gods. I covered the first book here and the second book here. I do remember reading it when I was younger, although there was a lot that I did forget and rediscovered with this reading.
The book starts with the Kane siblings along with their trainees at another museum trying to get a scroll that details how to defeat Apophis, the giant Chaos snake that is about to rise and take over the world. The snake knows they and there though, and ends up destroying the whole place, including the scroll. However, they get a clue from that, a fragment of a shadow. That gives them the idea to use Apophis’ shadow to banish him from the world. What then follows is they head to the Egyptian afterlife to find a ghost who knows the magic of how to do this. They convince their father to hand him over, and then split up. Sadie and Walk go to test out the spell on Bes’ shadow. Bes was a dwarf god who gave up his spirit in the previous book, the idea is you use the shadow to do the opposite of a banishment, use that to call his spirit back. While they’re doing that, Walt learns that he’s about to die from his family curse that drains his magic. He has a plan though, he merges with the god Anubis, and together they really freak Sadie out. She runs out of there, and goes to help Carter and Zia who are in the middle of Chaos looking for Apophis’ shadow. Along the way the ghost they’re traveling with plays a few nasty tricks, and then runs for it. Sadie drops in just in time to capture the shadow, but then they are surrounded by demons who came to protect the shadow!
Just then Bes comes to the rescue, along with other forgotten Egyptian gods. They rescue the team, and they hitch a ride with the sun chariot. There, Zia merges with the sun god Ra. Similarly, this freaks out Carter. There isn’t a time to get into this though, as the final battle is upon them. First they save their uncle Amos, then they go to fight the serpent. Zia gets swallowed by the serpent, and Carter and Sadie finally do the banishment. This causes the serpent to spit Zia back up, and the serpent retreats. Unfortunately though, this means that the gods have to retreat as well, to maintain balance. In the aftermath, Zia/Carter make up, and Sadie learns to be ok with the boy she likes having merged with the god she likes. And she hears from her mother that there are other gods that soon will threaten the Egyptian ones. So while this is the end for now, the seeds for future stories are planted!
Alright so first thing that caught my eye, are there a ton of polyamorous relationships in this book? Walt and Anubis are more or less constantly sharing a body now. Zia and Ra are debatable as Zia ends up separating from Ra, same with Carter and Horus and Sadie and Isis. So those likely are not poly, but Sadie ends up with not one but two boys that she likes! And she is happy to not have to choose between them! That right there, sounds like a poly relationship. I imagine that Riordan did not intend to create a poly relationship, he likely just wanted to resolve this love triangle, but that is a fun ending that subverts a lot of tropes!
The book does have a lot of interesting things to say about shadows though. I did not know the history of the shadow being part of the soul in Ancient Egypt, but it makes sense. The shadow is a representation of the individual, following wherever you go. But it also represents a person’s impact, in that they “cast a long shadow.” If you get rid of that, you get rid of the whole person and their work. And we see shadows in other works as well, like Peter Pan trying to find his shadow and reattach it. It definitely is a figure that we see a lot of.
To be nitpicky though, I do not think it ever gets addressed that Zia hosts both Nephthys and Ra. In the first book, she is hidden away because she’s hosting the former. In the last book, it’s turned into the latter. Of course, this can easily be explained away by her being able to host different gods at different times. But we aren’t given any other instance of this, and no one even brings up that she hosted Nephthys. So might be a little loophole in the story.
Other thing I want to touch on is the ending, and the tidbit about other gods. I remember reading that in high school and being so excited for a crossover with Percy Jackson or something like that. As far as I know, there is just a short story overlapping the two series right now, but I do think Riordan is getting closer to a big series or something like that. The ending of “The Trials of Apollo” alludes to a meeting between different pantheons of gods, and a cat is there. Likely that is Bast, the cat goddess from this series. So who knows, there could be something cool on the horizon.
Anyways, another Riordan series knocked down. I think next I
will be reading the series on the Norse gods? I have never read that one so I
am excited to finally be tackling that!
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