Book Review: The Red Pyramid

I read the book The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan, a book with strong Egyptian mythological influences. Sadie and Carter are siblings that live far apart and only get to see one another once a year. Their mother and father are both magicians under the House of Life, but their mother died years ago. One night while Carter, their dad, and Sadie are together their dad takes them to a famous museum that has the Rosetta stone inside. Their dad goes in to the museum and attempts to use the old famous artifact to bring his wife back from the dead. He end up unleashing five very powerful gods, one who want to destroy the human world. The god, Set, only has five days until his birthday, the day he is the most powerful on. Sadie and Carter work with multiple allies and prepare themselves to face Set only hours before his birthday. During the final showdown Sadie and Carter work very hard and end up defeating Set and his minions, but their father was sent deep into the depths of the duat where he is assigned to help rule the dead alongside the god of the dead, Osiris.

Throughout the whole story I saw a major theme of teamwork and contributing. The main thing that showed the teamwork theme were the siblings, they didn't know each other very well but no matter what they stuck together and didn't give up on one another. They worked together in many difficult and stressful situations. During the first night that Sadie and Carter were together after finding out about the task at hand Carter told himself "I was not going to go all weak. Sadie needed me. Dad needed us." This to me shows Carter's side of the teamwork. He knew that he had to do his part and stay strong for both his sister and his dad. As far as the contributing theme goes I felt like every character contributed to the success of Sadie and Carter. Even though some of the people they encountered were not necessarily good they did help Carter and Sadie learn something that was useful to them later.

During their adventure Carter and Sadie get to know each other more and get to work together. Carter started the story as a boy that traveled and didn't ever do anything dangerous. As the adventure progresses he does more and more dangerous deeds. He also gets to take up the big brother act, even though his sister is very independent. At the beginning to the story Sadie is somewhat arrogant and doesn't really care what the consequences to her actions are. Through the quest she learns to make sure that her actions don't hurt her or her brother. She also gets better at being there for her brother and making decisions with him instead of doing things at the spur of the moment.

I would recommend this book to people who like adventure. You also have to enjoy cliffhangers and suspense. This book also has a lot of Egyptian mythological references. I enjoyed the books because of the way the character is the one talking, in the first person and also because of the magic events that happen. I like how this book also has teenagers doing things alone in a sense but also referring to adults for advice and help along the way.

I got my picture from: http://www.kingtutone.com/pyramids/information/