CBR3 Book 64: "The Throne of Fire" by Rick Riordan

Publisher: Puffin
Page count: 451 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: August 6th, 2011
Date finished: August 7th, 2011

This is the second book in the Kane Chronicles, and this review may therefore contain some spoilers for the previous book, The Red Pyramid. You probably want to go read that one first, although it's by no means a requirement. You get the events of the previous novel neatly summarized in case this is your first meeting with the Kane siblings.

It's been a few months since their last adventure, and Sadie and Carter Kane now have a whole slew of students at their headquarters in Brooklyn, dedicating themselves to various Egyptian gods and slowly learning to control their own magical powers. Yet again, the siblings have to set out on a quest with a very tight deadline, as Apophis, the embodiment of chaos, is about to escape his prison in four days' time, and when he does, he will swallow the sun and cast the world into chaos. The only way to prevent this, is for the Kanes to locate the three parts of the Book of Ra, so they bring the old king of the Egyptian pantheon back to fight Apophis.

Cue another quest, with many exciting action sequences, multiple international locations, among them St. Petersburg. The Kane siblings split up more in this book, and as always, the narrative alternates between Carter and Sadie. While looking for the Book of Ra, Carter keeps receiving warnings that bad things will happen to Zia, the girl he fell in love with in the previous book. He's obsessed with finding her, and Sadie has her own troubles, with her thirteenth birthday ruined by a giant vulture and baboon chasing her and her friends through London, and her adolescent heart torn between one of the new trainees, Whit, and the immortal Anubis.

Like the last one, this book introduces its readers to a whole host of Egyptian gods, both minor and major and explains several rather difficult concepts while still being entertaining action romps. I suspect these books may appeal to a slightly older age group than the Percy Jackson series, as there is more ambiguity and more complex issues are adressed in them. I certainly enjoyed it, although it does drag and can get a bit repetitive at times with the "new location, danger, kids get out of danger". I also discovered, during my browsing of the Internets, that there is just one more volume in this series. Having assumed that it was going to run to five books, like the Percy Jackson books, I'm delighted that I'll be able to read the conclusion to the trilogy some time next year.

CBR3 Book 51: "The Red Pyramid" by Rick Riordan

Publisher: Puffin
Page count: 544 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: June 25th, 2011
Date finished: June 29th, 2011

In the course of last year, I read the entirety of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, where young Percy Jackson finds out that he is a demi-god and son of the Greek god Poseidon. He and several of his friends, who are either demi-gods or other mythological beings, go on many adventures and quests, usually to save the world from destruction.

Rick Riordan has clearly found a winning formula, and if it ain't broke, he ain't gonna fix nothing. Having successfully sold millions in a series based on Greek mythology, he gleefully takes on Egyptian myth in his new series, this time with two new, young protagonists, siblings Carter and Sadie Kane. Carter has travelled the world with his father, famous archeologist Dr. Julius Kane, while after a very bitter custody hearing after Mrs. Kane's death, Sadie has been raised in London by her grandparents. She only sees her father and brother twice a year, for a day at a time. The kids are mixed race, with Sadie apparently taking after her blonde, English mother (i.e looking Caucasian), while Carter looks like his African American dad.

It's just before Christmas, Carter and his dad are in London to see Sadie, and Dr. Kane drags both his children to the British Museum, acting very shifty all the while. Once in there, he proceeds to blow up the Rosetta Stone with magic, releasing all sorts of trouble in the process. Suddenly everything Sadie and Carter thought they knew is turned on its head. They find out that both their parents are from ancient bloodlines with strong magical abilities, that in trying to right a great wrong, their father accidentally released five Egyptian gods, including Set, god of Chaos, and that they have approximately six days to set everything right, or the world might get destroyed.

So, new mythology, new protagonists, same old quest narrative. I read the Percy Jackson books over the course of a whole year, and didn't really feel that they became quite as repetetive as this book did. It was entertaining, and Riordan really does integrate some pretty complex mythological facts in his adventure books for teens. The Egyptian pantheon and mythology is, in my mind, quite a bit more complicated than the Greek, yet Riordan integrates it very well. The narration changes between Carter and Sadie, and over the course of the book we get to know both characters well. There's very few quiet moments, it jumps from dangerous situation to dangerous situation, in ever changing locations - London, New York, Cairo, Paris and so forth. There's a clear time limit, and the kids are under a lot of pressure. I would have liked some of the book to calm down from its breathless pace, but all in all, it wasn't bad, and I will look out for the next book in the series, especially to see if Sadie's crush on the hunky Anubis goes anywhere.