“The Ship of the Dead” by Rick Riordan

This is the final book in Riordan’s series focusing on the gods of Asgard from Norse mythology. I wrote about the first two earlier (links to first book and second book). It is only a three book series, so relatively short.

The book starts with Magnus Chase learning how to jump off of the mast of a ship into the water from Percy Jackson (hey it’s a crossover!). From there Magnus has to get his friends together and sail off on a bright yellow boat to stop Loki and his ship of nails (as in like, fingernails). On the way they get almost eaten by a giant, end up in England fighting another giant, and steal some mead. The mead is to make Magnus more eloquent so that he can challenge and beat Loki in a flyting (like a battle of insults). Once they get to the land of ice, they find Loki, and Magnus wins the flyting by talking up his friends instead of talking down Loki. With him defeated, they rejoin the gods who reinstate Loki’s punishment since nothing can change. Meanwhile, Magnus and Alex face their feelings for each other and set up Magnus’ uncle’s old place as a homeless youth shelter. (It also alludes to Annabeth and Percy getting some bad news, I think Jason’s death?)

Anyways this book is fairly straightforward. They figure out early on what the plan is and go forward with it. I did like that there’s more adventures with Magnus’ hallmates who haven’t had a huge role to play so far. We get to hear about TJ’s backstory, and find out who Mallory’s mother is. It adds more depth to these characters who so far have been enjoyable but not super well defined.

It did strike me as I was reading that the romance is dealt with much more subtly than the Percy Jackson series. Magnus never addresses his feelings for Alex until practically the very end, but he’s thinking about him all the time and is always happy to see her. Which makes it clear what’s going on, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with it. Speaking of, there’s also a part at the end where Magnus is kissing Alex as a boy and bypasses the whole “I’m kissing a boy” to focus on “I’m kissing Alex” which I thought was a really nice way to handle it. Focuses less on labels and more on the individuals.

I was also intrigued by the way the story deals with fate. The whole idea is that your fate doesn’t change, but we can alter the details. We are all destined to die at Ragnarök, but we can take charge of what we can. What makes this interesting is the gods refusing to do anything else. They have to chain Loki back up in essentially the same manner. What fascinates me about this is that it’s a clear choice on their part. They know what is supposed to happen and what will happen and are ensuring that it stays that way. Versus the mortals don’t know their fate exactly, they are flying blind and trying to do what they can. It’s an interesting contrast between the two, but it makes me think that the gods could do other things if they wanted. The reason Loki gets mad is because of his punishment after all. But maybe this is a universe that abides by the rule that changing your fate only makes it approach faster. Hard to tell, since the mortals still don’t know.

This is the end of my readthrough of Riordan’s works, for now. He’s started a new series focusing on Percy Jackson characters, and I’ll likely pick that up eventually when it’s more accessible for me. On to the next book! I think I’ll keep the rereading going on and instead swap to the Young Wizards series. We’ll see!