This is the second book in the “Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard” series. I wrote about the first one a little while ago and was really eager to dive into this one.
The story picks up a little after it left off, by cleaning up the loose thread that was Thor losing his hammer. Again. The squad of Magnus the undead warrior, Sam the Valkyrie, Blitz the dwarf, and Hearth the elf all get together again. They’ve had time to train since the first book and it shows with Riordan telling us more about the runes. But their information was bad and they ended up finding a legendary sword. Loki shows up (conveniently) and demonstrates his power over his children by knocking Sam out, then drawing the sword and stabbing Blitz.
The only thing that can heal Blitz is the stone that goes with the sword. Conveniently, Hearth’s dad has it. Inconveniently, he’s a huge asshole. Hearth and Magnus head there to get the stone while Sam recovers. Meanwhile Loki has been making a mess of Sam’s private life, by telling her family that she’s going to marry a giant for him. Her fiancée takes this hard, understandably, and Sam ends up telling him all about her life as a Valkyrie. Magnus returns from getting the stone just in time to coax him into believing Sam.
They end up going to the wedding, with Sam’s half-sibling Alex (a gender-fluid character!) posing as her. Thor and some gods in theory have their back, but when it comes to the fighting they are too late. Magnus’ uncle takes the sword and severs Loki’s bonds, the god and man both escape. Sam learns that to recapture him they have to sail to Scandinavia. The book ends with Magnus getting advice from his cousin Annabeth, and she decides to introduce him to Percy.
Alright so there’s just so much going on in this book. I’ll admit that I was lost when following the plot for most of the time, there’s just a lot of giants and subterfuge and trickery when it comes to Loki. If I reread it I’ll probably pick up on more then that I missed this time!
Highlight of the book is definitely Alex. Alex is gender-fluid, sometimes uses he/him pronouns and sometimes uses she/her. There’s a conversation about this with Magnus where Alex says that he doesn’t want to use they/them pronouns because when they feel a gender, they FEEL a gender. They/them just doesn’t cut it. It’s really nice because it’s both a vehicle to explain gender fluidity to the audience, and it plays a role in the plot. Famously Loki is pretty genderqueer, he becomes pregnant and gives birth sometimes, and as a child of Loki Alex embraces change and uses that to recapture her independence from her father. I’m really excited to see where this character goes next.
Also there’s the ending. Annabeth has been in the series from the beginning, but she hasn’t played a very big role. Mostly she’s there in the background, more explicit than the other Riordan series, but still not doing much. Bringing in Percy would be a big step, especially if he’s advising on the upcoming adventure. Maybe this will bring some clarity into how all of these different gods can coexist? I’m not sure. There’s also more clarity for where in the Percy Jackson storyline we are. Earlier you couldn’t tell, but now Annabeth is telling Magnus about a god that came to earth (Apollo) and some Roman gods mucking things up. It’s pretty clearly The Trials of Apollo.
When Riordan first started doing crossover things and I was
still in high school, I thought it was really cool. Now though with the MCU and
all that it feels pretty… played out. I don’t really particularly want a huge
crossover series with all of the gods and everything. But I trust Riordan a lot
in how he’s grown as a writer. Quite possibly he’ll find a really interesting
twist on it all. We will just have to wait and see.
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