Where Percy Jackson & The Olympians dealt primarily in Greek mythology, The Kane Chronicles does the same for Egyptian. Carter and Sadie Kane are the brother-and-sister duo who take turns narrating, and they are about as wildly different as you could ever imagine. Carter grew up with his dad traveling from dig site to dig site, museum to museum, while Sadie grew up in England with her grandparents following the death of their mother some years ago. At the start of the novel, their dad takes them both to a museum in London, where he performs a ritual of magic on the Rosetta Stone, which promptly explodes and unleashes five of ancient Egypt's biggest dieties. Thus begins a whirlwind of gods and magic, with Carter and Sadie right in the middle of it all.
If you've read the Percy Jackson series, The Red Pyramid should feel quite familiar. The kids narrate in much the same way as Percy Jackson, and many of the peripheral characters are just as zany, like their uncle's baboon who only eats things that end in -o (Cheetos, cherios, burritos), or Phillip, the huge albino crocodile who guards their house. Riordan's ability to take myths thousands of years old and paint them in a new and relevant way continues to shine through with his take on Egypt. I'm proud/embarrassed to say that I knew quite a lot about Greek myth and was able to pick out more or less everything Riordan threw at the readers in Percy Jackson, but my entire knowledge base of Egyptian myth comes from "Stargate-SG1" and The Mummy, so you could say that I was a touch limited. I can't speak for Riordan's accuracy in his myth retellings, but the explanations he gives are easy to understand, make perfect sense within the context of the story, and are terribly interesting, particularly in the way that he deals with conflicting myths and times when brothers and sisters are sometimes husband-wife, or even mother-son. Only Riordan could make that so unconfusing.
The Red Pyramid keeps the same blistering pace of the Percy Jackson novels. The kids hardly spend more than a chapter in one location before being chased elsewhere, barely managing to escape before the goddess of scorpions, just to name one, turns them into afternoon snacks. It is The Red Pyramid's fast pace that makes it so suitable for today's ADHD, gotta-have-it-now generation of kids, but adults may find it a little too fast. I admit that my reading preferences do match that of a 12-year-old boy, but even I sometimes wished that things would slow down a little. It's not that there isn't character development - the two kids in particular are well-thought out and fun to follow - but sometimes it just felt like there was a little connection missing. Percy Jackson had the same problem, like the characters moved too fast for me to truly see them.
Where The Red Pyramid shines is its portrayal of magic. Again, my knowledge of Egyptian myth is about as limited as my knowledge of Hungarian folk dances, but I'm assuming that Riordan has done his homework and created a brand of magic as close to that of ancient Egypt as possible. Have you ever noticed that this is what young adult fiction novels do? Your typical teenager (Carter/Sadie, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Eregon, even Luke Skywalker) is thrown into a new and magical world and subsequently spends the majority of the first book (at least) learning all about that new world while at the same time stopping some kind of destructive force. Well, The Red Pyramid follows that same old formula, but the world created here is one of my favorites that I've ever encountered. If you think that Egypt is dead, or that myths about Osiris or Anubis are irrelevant to today's world, check this book out. I dare say you may think differently when you finish.
I can't wait for the next in the series. You had better hurry up, Rick Riordan. Your books are addicting.
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