While I was at the library, I came across the first book of The Red Pyramid series — lucky me. It’s actually quite hard to grab ahold of anything that is written by a popular author, but the librarians put a whole lot of YA on display and I happened to be there — yay for me!
I picked up this book because I’d read Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and finished it while I was on vacation last year. It was a strong series starring a protagonist that grows, whose bond with his mother was also quite moving. There were also well-rounded female characters, which was something I didn’t see a lot of in fiction. The Percy Jackson series was fun, witty, and well plotted out. The Red Pyramid isn’t. At all.
Warning: Spoilers abound! Read at your own risk.
We join Carter and Julius Kane, who are coming to London to visit Sadie Kane, Carter’s sister. The siblings have been separated ever since their mother died — the former travels with his father, an archaeologist, around the world, while the latter stays with their grandparents in London. On the way to visit Sadie, Carter and Julius meet someone who issues a cryptic warning to the latter. Julius doesn’t care and brings his children to the museum, summons a demon, and gets locked in a coffin while the Rosetta Stone explodes.
This, of course, sends both siblings on a mission to free their father, and they go on an epic adventure, realising that they are hosts to Egyptian gods, and that they have to do what they can to save their world from being run by the forces of chaos. It sounds like the requisite “chosen-one” story, and it is — just a badly plotted one.
Riordan starts off strong, but the characters become less likeable as the narrative goes on. Sadie and Carter take turns to tell the story, but it is hard to differentiate between characters because their voices blend into each other. The siblings’ antics of interrupting each other throughout the story also bore me, and there really isn’t enough fodder for me to root for them as a pair. They do grow to empathise and learn from one another, but I questioned why I was rooting for them as the book dragged on.
There are lots of explosions and battles as they ping pong from one place to another, and while it may seem exciting, these incidents are badly plotted — it’s as though Riordan forgot the basics of storytelling and put his characters into a pinball machine with no purpose. About half of the scenes in the story could have been cut, but there was so much exposition that it bored me. Riordan also had to introduce two love interests in the story, which honestly bogged the plot down — I didn’t care that Sadie had a crush on Anubis, or that Carter had a crush on a magician — I just wanted to know why they were the chosen ones to save the world from chaos.
To be fair, Riordan reveals most of what was promised at the end, and his research was stellar, as he included as many details of Egyptian culture in the book. But that meant that he compromised his plotting over letting his characters explain the function of many Egyptian motifs. Having characters get into danger, disappear, and reappear at crucial plot points also got old — fast. It was as though he didn’t know what to do with them.
It’s sad to see a book score so low, but I do know that Riordan does have strengths as a writer — it’s just that this series, and its set-up isn’t as strong. It’s a pity, since Carter is African American, and we don’t get to see that many African American characters as protagonists in books.
I don’t recommend reading this book, or even going on with this series. Stick to Percy Jackson — it has better plotting and editing.
4/10