First things first: I have never been particularly drawn to Norse mythology. I'm a Homer fangirl. It's kind of sad, since I'm considerably more Scandinavian than Greco-Roman, at least by blood. Culturally, I'd argue that, through the Roman empire and the Renaissance, Athens is a deeper influence than the Northland. Which is a long way of saying that, unlike the Percy books, I had to interrupt my reading to check the source material from time to time to get Riordan's riffs on it, and that I wasn't as immediately interested in the cosmology.
Style
Straight up Riordan. Take this discussion of a new rope to bind Fenris Wolf:
Junior glowered at me. “Boy, your ignorance is breathtaking. Gleipnir was just as thin and light, but its paradox ingredients gave it great strength. This rope is the same, only better!”
“Paradox ingredients?”
Blitz held up the end of the rope and whistled appreciatively. “He means things that aren’t supposed to exist.”
[...]
Junior huffed. “The point is, this rope is even better! I call it Andskoti, the Adversary. It is woven with the most powerful paradoxes in the Nine Worlds— Wi-Fi with no lag, a politician’s sincerity, a printer that prints, healthy deep-fried food, and an interesting grammar lecture!”Riordan, Rick (2015-10-06). Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 1: The Sword of Summer (Rick Riordan’s Norse Mythology) (Kindle Locations 3897-3900). Disney Book Group. Kindle Edition.We also see Thor wanting to watch television in his hammer, all dwarf-made items being named and having long histories, offhand mentions like Davey Crockett sitting as a thane of Valhalla (and Taylor Swift is a half-elf, in case you didn't already know), chapters like "I Am Trash Talked By A Squirrel," and oddball asides like, "If he was the lord of Muspellheim, High King Roasty Toasty, shouldn’t he pick on more interesting heroes, like the children of Thor? At least their dad had a movie franchise."
And, of course, the setting.
Setting
In Percy Jackson, we learned that the Greek gods had moved to New York, where Olympus is anchored above the Empire State building. In Heroes of Olympus, we discover New Rome in the Berkeley Hills. (The centers of the gods' powers move west with western civilization.) Now, we move to my old stomping grounds in Boston, and there were several moments when I actually laughed aloud.
Boston, you see, is where the World Tree is, and always has been. It's what the Vikings were really questing for. The Puritans' vision of City on a Hill was really a glimpse of another one of the nine worlds, and Valhalla currently appears as a luxury hotel near Copley Square.
And did I mention that you can access Yggdrasil by using a magic sword to cut open the air above the Make Way for Ducklings statue? Or that a giant eagle drops our hero off on the roof of the library, and later roosts on the Art statue, before turning into a giant and sitting on her lap? Or that the dwarfs live just a hop skip and cosmic jump from Southie, which their realm resembles? Okay, that was just fun, and I can't wait to find out if we visit my old neighborhood in Brighton, or if we'll see a send-up of the colleges, or... it's just fun to see Riordan's take on the place.
Other than that, we visit Jotunheim and Folkvanger, which aren't direct analogs of places in Boston (sadly), and dream-visit the ship made of discarded toenails, and ultimately the disappearing island where Fenris is imprisoned. Like most of Riordan's modern myth-settings, it's both tongue-in-cheek and deeply affectionate.
Plot
Hmm. Like the first of the Percy books, The Lightning Thief, The Sword of Summer isn't the best plot. The plot is mostly an excuse to get jerked from place to place and meet new characters. In this case, Magnus Chase (cousin of Percy's girlfriend, Annabeth, daughter of Athena) is a homeless orphan with a rich uncle, who scoops him up on his sixteenth birthday and gets him to reclaim the magical sword of summer, the weapon of his father, Frey, who bargained it away and will die at Ragnarok because he doesn't have it. (In keeping with Riordan's strict adherence to the worldview of the myths, I don't expect them to be able to change this.) He's killed and becomes a warrior of Valhalla, one of the einherjar, after being chosen by the Valkyrie Samirah al-Abbas, a mortal girl who is also trying to live her regular life with her grandparents. He discovers that his two protectors from the time he spent homeless are a fashion-conscious dwarf and an elf mage, and makes some friends among the other einherjar. There are several mini-quests on the way to the main quest, which is to delay Ragnarok a bit by re-binding Fenris Wolf.
Mostly, it's set-up for the series. I hope. I wasn't terribly engaged, but then, I wasn't overly impressed with The Lightning Thief, either, and ended up loving that series.
One note: I'm not sure why Riordan felt compelled to make Magnus Annabeth's cousin. She appears at three points in the book, and it's nice, but right now, I'm not seeing how the two mythos realms are going to interact, and it feels a little superfluous. Also, she doesn't spill any information for him, so we don't get any new tidbits about old friends. So, phooey. :D
Character
Magnus has the sarcastic edge of most of Riordan's characters -- serious WORLD OF SNARK here -- but he's much more bitter than I'm used to. He's not a secretly cheerful dude who lets things roll off his back, though by the end, he's defrosting a little. He has potential, but I'm not hooked yet.
Samirah ("Sam" throughout) is also just forming; you can almost feel her forming on the page as she goes. A young Muslim girl in a hijab (with magical concealment properties) who works as a Valkyrie and is a daughter of Loki. I'm not sure how this is going to work. The cosmology of these books is very clear that the gods presented are very powerful beings associated with various phenomena, but don't delve into the metaphysical question of whether what they refer to as "capital G God" exists, so on certain edges, you could make an argument that you could be a faithful practitioner of another religion while working for Odin, same as for any other boss -- in Heroes of Olympus, there's a minor goddess, Iris, considering becoming a Buddhist -- but it's still a dicey definition of monotheism, and I'm curious and a little concerned about how that will work out in the end (please, let it be handled well). She's in an arranged engagement, and in a surprise move, she's not only good with it, she's glad of it, likes the guy a lot, and thinks her grandparents have been working with her interests at heart. It's an interesting take, and I hope Riordan sticks with it, because I think we've seen enough ARRANGED MARRIAGES ARE EVIL plots. Sometimes, they're fine, and people are happy, and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
Blitz and Hearthstone (dwarf and elf) are sweet, but I find myself not caring about their melodramatic pasts all that much.
Other than that, we get very brief glimpses of the Norse gods, all with Riordan's wry accuracy to the myths. Probably the best moment was when Thor told them not to call him "Lord Thor," because he is a god of the common people. Fenris is a pretty frightening villain, and Magnus and Annabeth's Uncle Randolph is trying to get his family back and will do anything to accomplish it. Odin is wise and Freya is kind of silly. We barely meet Magnus's father, Frey. Loki schemes, as one would expect. There's a whole host of characters I'm not familiar with because I was never obsessive about this mythology, but they seem fun. There's the sea goddess Ran, and her husband Aegir, who's apparently become a divine hipster obsessed with microbrewing. And assorted dwarves and giants.
Theme
Not sure yet. This one was all over the map.
In short, I'm intrigued with the world, but not totally sold yet. I'll definitely pick up The Hammer of Thor next year -- same time, same place.
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