Cover Revealed! The Kane Chronicles #3

The Serpent's Shadow
by Rick Riordan
The Kane Chronicles, book three

Publication date: May 1, 2012

Rick Riordan announced the cover and title of the final book in The Kane Chronicles yesterday!
The tagline: Carter and Sadie Kane: humanity's last hope! I'm definitely excited to see how it all ends!

The Throne of Fire

The Throne of Fire
by Rick Riordan
The Kane Chronicles, book two

Ever since the gods of Ancient Egypt were unleashed in the modern world, Carter Kane and his sister Sadie have been in trouble. As descendants of the House of Life, the Kanes have some powers at their command, but the devious gods haven't given them much time to master their skills at Brooklyn House, which has become a training ground for young magicians.

And now their most threatening enemy yet - the chaos snake Apophis - is rising. If they don't prevent him from breaking free in a few days' time, the world will come to an end. In other words, it's a typical week for the Kane family.

To have any chance of battling the Forces of Chaos, the Kanes must revive the sun god Ra. But that would be a feat more powerful than any magician has ever accomplished.

First they have to search the world for the three sections of the Book of Ra, then they have to learn how to chant its spells. Oh, and did we mention that no one knows where Ra is exactly? (description taken from Rick Riordan's website)

Though I liked The Red Pyramid, it was definitely not my favorite book by Rick Riordan. I love Egyptian mythology and Riordan is a great author, but I was not a huge fan of the alternating chapters and had trouble getting into Carter and Sadie's voices.

I think that not only did Riordan improve in this volume, probably because he didn't have to do quite so much world set-up, but I also appreciated the story a lot more as an audio book. Kevin Free and Katherine Kellgren were really great reading this book. They both made things exciting and believable.

This was a fast-paced, exciting and magical adventure. I loved the introduction of new gods...especially Bes, the dwarf god...I think he's my new favorite character. It was also really cool to see the vulture goddess, the baboon god, the hippo goddess, and "Sunny Acres," a retirement home for the aging gods. The different parts of the Duat that the siblings travel through to find Ra are also really cool.

I cannot wait to see how things are finally resolved in the third and final book of the trilogy...and in the meantime, I'm really looking forward to The Son of Neptune that will be coming out this fall!

Full disclosure: Audio book received to review for AudioFile

The Red Pyramid

The Red Pyramid
by Rick Riordan
The Kane Chronicles, book 1

Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane.

One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a "research experiment" at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.

Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them -- Set -- has his sights set on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe -- a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family, and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharoahs.

I really enjoyed delving into the Egyptian mythology that has fascinated me since I was a kid with Carter and Sadie! Riordan again manages to incorporate so much about the gods into the storyline without taking away from the action. It's such a seamless process.

I love the new main characters and Bast, the cat goddess, is now one of my favorite woman's power characters ever! I will say, though, that there were times that I felt like Sadie's and Carter's sibling roles would reverse for me. I would catch myself thinking that Sadie was at least fourteen and the older twin. (especially when she was eyeballing the hot, young-ish god...)

That was also an issue for me when the narration would switch from one twin to the other. Since I didn't always get a clear picture of each twin's voice I would have to keep an eye on the twin label at the top of the page to know whose first person narration I had dropped into.

Once I get past that, though, I really did enjoy the storyline and am anxious to read book 2! Can't wait to see what the godlings get up to next!

*It was brought to my attention today that I accidentally referred to Sadie and Carter several times as twins in my review...when I checked I realized it was totally true! Whoops. This just reinforces for me the fact that I could not keep straight in my head what ages Carter and Sadie were supposed to be...they sounded the same age so often that I must have gotten that stuck in the back of my mind. I apologize. For the record - Carter is fourteen, Sadie is twelve.