The Red Pyramid was published in 2010. This Egyptian themed novel is work of Rick Riordan, an American author.
The Red Pyramid is a fantasy novel that has many common elements typical for its genre. Egyptian culture with its gods and pharaohs are great ideas to build a plot around and the battles with spells and magic keep the action rolling fluently through the book. Riordan has controlled the fantasy elements in a way that they don’t overflow the book, which gives a believable feel for the storyline. In my opinion, when it comes to content, The Red Pyramid is very similar to Percy Jackson books, also written by Riordan.
The book tells the story of Carter and Sadie Kane, two British children that get pulled into the world of Egyptian gods and magic. Sadie and Carter are siblings that have been living in different places of the world away from each other, for almost all of their lives but join together again to start an adventure. The main antagonist of the storyline is the god of disorder, Set. Set is as villain as one can get with plans to destroy the earth and rule the universe. Also if you want to imagine magical crocodiles and talking statues play around in the modern world, this book is made for you.
The book is actually a recording of Sadie and Carter are telling their story to the reader. This makes the book really fun to read because the siblings quite often pause the storytelling and start some funny conversations. Sadie and Carter tell the story in their own turns, so you get two views of the events. With more than one narrator a book easily becomes quite hard to understand but this is not the case with The Red Pyramid. Of course there were times when the identity of the narrator was unclear, but it was easy to sort out by taking a look at the top of the page and find either ”Sadie” or ”Carter”.
My overall opinions of the book are really positive. The book at no point got boring with the action rolling the whole time also teaching cool facts of egyptology. Overall the biggest selling point for me was the way fantasy and ordinary things were welded together. On the negative side I was a bit disappointed of the way Riordan handled the ”non-magic” people in the book. All the pedestrians see the Egyptian monsters as everyday animals. For example at the airport everybody except our heroes were seeing a moose when in fact a monster had been released. In every other aspect the book shines and offeres an enjoyable reading experience. I’ll be looking forward to the next part of the Kane series!