Book Review - Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid
The Red Pyramid: The Kane Chronicles Book 1 by Rick Riordan
Published by: Hyperion
Publication Date: May 54th, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 528 Pages
Challenge: Fantasy, 1st in Series
Rating: ★★
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Carter and Sadie Kane have lived apart since their mother's death six years previously. Carter has travelled the world with his father, Dr. Julius Kane, while Sadie lives with her grandparents in London. One night everything changes. They have the opportunity to visit the British Museum at night and their father takes this opportunity to try to set things right. But all hell breaks loose, literally, the Rosetta Stone sets loose the evil gods of Egypt and one of them, Set, is hell bent on destroying the world. They are then taken to New York by their Uncle Amos, an uncle they had never met till this horrid day. Their they learn about the House of Life and how the magic of Egypt is preserved and protected, until Amos is "gone" and Zia, a younger member of the house who Carter takes a shine to, takes them to Egypt. But everything goes wrong when the leader of the house dies and it becomes known that Carter and Sadie have developed magical powers by unknowingly doing the forbidden, letting Gods posses them. So not only do they have to keep themselves safe, but they also have to stop Set from building his evil Red Pyramid that will destroy the world all while proving that perhaps The House of Life was wrong and that Gods and mortals must work together, versus the Gods being banished.
I had many, many issues with this book. First off I should say that I have not read the Percy Jackson series, so I'm going into this pretty ignorant. But I wonder who someone who loves Greek mythology thinks of the Percy Jackson books. The thing is, I'm an Egyptological nut, and this book just left me cold. I just didn't like how the Gods were portrayed and every time that damn monkey (yes, there's a monkey who likes basketball) showed up I could just see the horrid movie adaptation... Dunston Checks In anyone? Can't you see him in his little basketball jersey right now? Yeah, see what I mean, it's that bad. And while I liked that they explained away Sadie and Carter's sudden and miraculous powers by making them provided by the Gods, it was really just a lame cop out to make it more imperative to get to the end, and if they needed borrowed power versus learned power to do it in the time constraints, that's how it's going to be. Also with the double narration with the two siblings "voices" being so much the same I forgot who was narrating until Sadie would throw out a measurement in metric and then I'd be like, oh, "Brit" girl cause of metric. Also the last few pages became too Spiderwicky for my taste, not that I'm against Spiderwick, it's just too nudge nudge wink wink self referential. I will not be checking out the sequel I can tell you that. Though I think I will try Percy Jackson.
