Review- The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Title: The Red Pyramid
Series: Kane Chronicle's 
Author: Rick Riordan
Published: May 4th 2010
Book 1 

The Red Pyramid is a novel which also consists of God's like the Percy Jackson Series (another series by Riordan), however, the God's are of Egyptian origins rather than Greek. The novel revolves around siblings Sadie and Carter Kane and begins when their father accidently releases five major God's and Goddesses from their "prisons" when he only intended to release one. Releasing the God's are illegal and punishable by death from the organisation called The House of Life (you'll understand more once you read it). The God's are blamed for plunging the world into chaos at one stage and were imprisoned because they were considered unstable and drunk with their own power. 

Anyway, continuing on, once Sadie and Carter's dad release the God's/Goddesses, they become hosts for them, which means that the God's can use their body. One of the God's, named Set, is the evil one and he took his chance to escape and try to reduce the world to nothingness then rebuild it in the form of his empire. Sadie and Carter learn that they are magicians on the way and that they must use their abilities to stop Set and save the world. It turns out that Sadie is hosting the Goddess Isis and Carter is hosting Horus. Along their quest, they endure many challenging obstacles which all take time, and time is not a luxury that they have.

What I absolutely love about this novel is how unique the magic is expressed throughout the book. Weapons like staffs and wands are used (which you may think is general), however, wax figurines, amulets and a number of other essential items are used to make the plot more interesting and appealing to readers. These items and weapons can be modified to the magicians needs. For e.g. the staffs can transform into animals and attack something or someone or they can just be used to emit the magicians spell. Riordan has great ideas put into this which are mostly new and haven't been used before. 

I also liked Riordan's use of hieroglyphs throughout the story line. The hieroglyphs are also part of the way magic is used and they are also used for writing and so on. I may of also mentioned in another review that in many books the characters are like machines and never run out of energy. In Riordan's book, he expresses how exhausted the characters are feeling once they have used too much magic or if they have over extended themselves physically. 

What I didn't really like in the novel was that the characters weren't described in detail. They were brief descriptions of how the character looked and in times of emotion, one sentence was used to describe the basic feeling. Riordan is more focused to the story line, which is great, but the characters are what makes the story line more interesting and effective on readers. The characters are described extremely well in times of combat when they are using magic, however, in other more important parts, as I said before, the descriptions are quite bland. 

Overall, I gave the book a major “thumbs up” and it had many twists and details that left readers entranced within the world of Sadie and Carter.

Rated: 4/5