I enjoyed a lot reading the Percy Jackson series and I was looking forward for the next series by Riordan. The Egyptian mythology always fascinated me as much as the Greek one or even more and I expected a lot from the Kane Chronicles which is based on the Egyptian mythology. The book was cute, fast-paced and full of action and humor, but I wasn’t dawned by it as I was by the Percy Jackson series.
In this book we have Carter and Sadie, brother and sister. Their mother died when they were 8 and 6, and since then Carter travels around the world with his Archaeologist father, while Sadie stays with her grandparents in London. They only see each other twice a year.
When Sadie is 12 and Carter is 14, Carter and his father visit Sadie, and they all go together to the British Museum. But the father has more than educational intentions, and things go terribly wrong. Carter and Sadie have to fend for themselves, save themselves and by the way also the world, while learning surprising facts about themselves and the Egyptian mythology, that turns out to be more than just old stories.
The story is told by Carter and Sadie, in turns. I always prefer one teller, and a story has to be really good to make me identify with only character (did someone say “Song of Ice and Fire?”…) . It did not happen here. The story starts with the action right away, with no chance to learn about the main characters before they start running for their lives and fighting scary monsters, and that also interfered with the process of falling for the characters and feeling for them before the action starts.
Just like in Percy Jackson, the colliding worlds of 2000’s teenagers and an ancient mythological world is a source for many funny situations and jokes, but it all seemed a little recycled and tired, and I didn’t find it as funny as I found the previous series.
One part really disturbed me at the beginning of the book, where it was explained that the existence of the “gods” does not contradict the one and only “God”, because they are all His creation. I found it a redundant flattery to the believers among the readers, and I don’t remember anything like that in the Percy Jackson series, nor do I remember any problems for believers to read and enjoy Percy Jackson.
All in all it was, like I said, cute, a nice read, but I do not think I will go on to the next books of the series.
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I learnd of the Percy Jackson series from you (LIKE I learnt about twilight nd many more). Like you, I was anticipating riredn's new series of books, knowing our mutual taste in this kind of books, I feel sad.
ReplyDeleteApropo egyptian's mitology, do you still watch supernetural?
Song of ice and fier - someone told me that's a great fantasy series, do you agree?