The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Gosh, reading this was very strange.
The Red Pyramid is, to be blunt, Percy Jackson with Egyptian gods. I won’t fault Riordan on his use of mythology; strong, competent and solid. He weaves in a hell of a lot of stuff in there and it very rarely slips into dry didacticism. It’s also thrilling stuff. Myth and legend is exciting and crazy stuff and he shares the madness of it well. And because I’ve had some amazing moments with Riordan, you kind of believe that he’ll pay you off and give you a fun ride along the way. He’s got an excellent ability to instill faith in the reader; you go along for the ride because you very genuinely want to know what happens.
What I didn’t get on with was the shift in narrators. It’s a conceit which involves a shift between Carter and Sadie Kane every two chapters. Initially I was quite intrigued by this but the further I got into the book, the more I found the two voices were becoming very generic and similar. What I love about Percy Jackson is that you know him – you know him instantly through how he speaks and how he stands. It may be the fact that it’s the start of what I presume is a new series and Carter and Sadie still haven’t found their voices yet but I don’t have the intimate awareness of them yet that being a reader of the PJ series can provide.
I’ll check out the next Kane chronicles but I won’t do it with the same feverish excitement I had with the PJ shelves. Unfortunately this was just a little too standard adventure story for me. The Red Pyramid just never quite came together.
Daisy May Johnson 