Book #74: The Red Pyramid

Title: The Red Pyramid
Author: Rick Riordan

We at the Miner household were proud of the fact that we got our hands on Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid before the official release date. I walked into a SLC boutique to buy a Mother's Day present the day before Bryce's birthday (the May 4th release date of the book) and the book was sitting on a table right out front (guess someone didn't read their paperwork closely). I was really excited because it saved me an early-morning trip to the store on birthday morning, and I ended up third in line to read the book after Bryce and Annie (who kept fighting over it). Suffice it to say that we were very excited to get our hands on The Red Pyramid, which is the first installment in the Kane Chronicles, a new series by Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan.

The Red Pyramid tells the story of Carter and Sadie. Since their mother's death in a mysterious accident six years earlier, Carter has been traveling the world with his archaeologist father, and Sadie has been living in London with her maternal grandparents.  The siblings reunite just twice a year, and when Carter and his father Julius arrive at Sadie's flat for Christmas Eve, their father proposes a quick trip to the British Museum. That's where things get weird-- strange lights and voices and people appear and Julius ends up breaking the Rosetta Stone and then gets sucked down into a sarcophagus. At first it appears that Sadie and Carter will be in big trouble, but all of a sudden, they're not only not in trouble, but they're traveling by boat at lightning speed across the Atlantic Ocean with their Uncle Amos, who explains that the kids are the heirs of the pharaohs and are quite possibly hosting the spirits of some of the most prominent Egyptian gods, unleashed during their father's accident. The kids then set off on a quest around the world to stop the evil Egyptian god (whose name escapes me now) from world domination.

I love the way that Riordan uses both Carter and Sadie as narrators in The Red Pyramid. He makes it easy for young readers to follow, since each chapter clearly states at the beginning who is speaking. Since telling a story from more than one perspective is a fairly common convention in novels written for adults, I like to see it employed so well in novels for children. I also thought that the story was exciting and well-researched. One of the things I liked best about the Percy Jackson books is the way that my kids used them as a jumping-off point for a more intense study of Greek mythology. Bryce really liked Riordan's The Ultimate Guide, but then read all of the books in his school library and D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths and has since started reading Oracles of Delphi Keep. But there doesn't seem to be the same amount of accessible stuff out there for kids and Egyptian mythology. Maybe if the Kane Chronicles catch on like Percy Jackson did, someone can tackle that writing project.