The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan YP FIC RIORDAN

Brother and sister Carter and Sadie Kane have lived apart from each other since their mother’s death; Sadie in England with their grandparents and Carter travelling the globe with their archeologist father. Suddenly their father tells them he has a way to make things right again, but instead he makes things very, very wrong. He performs a magic ritual that accidentally unleashes the most evil of the Egyptian Gods into our world blowing up part of a museum. Oops. Now their father is missing and Carter and Sadie are being hunted by Set (one of the baddest serpent gods you’ll ever meet) and a league of magicians intent on imprisoning and/or killing them. Oh and if that wasn’t enough, they find out that they have magic powers too, which might end up killing them if they don’t learn how to use them. Thus starts the newest adventure from the author of the Mega hit Percy Jackson series.

Okay, if you’re a Percy Jackson fan things might be sounding more than a little familiar to you, but that’s not always a bad thing. Yes this is a book about kids finding they have magic powers and have to fight ancient gods to save the world, but if ain’t broke why fix it? Riordan keeps enough different about this series from the Percy Jackson books that it stands on its own. The Egyptian mythology is very cool in this book and made me want to learn more about Egyptian myths. We get two heroes instead of one main hero and the chapters alternate between their point of view. That does bring me to my one criticism of this book. We’re told that the story has been transcribed from audio tapes, which sometimes feels like a gimmick. It wasn’t always believable to me the way they told the story would be how someone would speak on an audio tape and it seemed unnecessary. Fortunately, the story is good enough that it didn’t become a dealbreaker for me. This book has Riordan’s excellent use of humor and action to keep the story fast and fresh. I liked the heroes a lot, but my favorite character was Muffin, Sadie’s talking cat and protector. If you liked the Percy Jackson books then you absolutely should check this one out. I would also recommend it to Harry Potter fans.