When I start these big momentous reading challenges (100 books in 2016), I always want book #1 to be something impressive... like a Foster Wallace... or Faulkner. Reading challenge just screams gravitas. It calls for ambition. It cries out in serious tones the depth of literary commitment. (Or, conversely, it makes me a little old lady voraciously reading romance novels. It's a tough line to walk really.) It just seems so much more appropriate to read something "important" rather than a Rick Riordan novel. Nevertheless, I read the Riordan novel first. (Unofficial theme of the year: self-effacing. It's a stretch goal.)
I have always loved the idea of mythology. It's not just the fantastical realm of gods and heroes, magic etc, it's the sense of a deeper importance to the stories. Imposing an order to the world and to human emotion. It's pretty powerful stuff and I like how Riordan provides a gateway into that world for younger readers. For the last five years I've seen his books floating around the campus in the hands of my students. He's done the Greek myths with Percy Jackson, the Roman myths with Jason Grace, the Egyptian myths with Carter and Sadie Kane, now he's branched out into the Norse myths with Magnus Chase. What's really impressive is that each of these series is tenuously linked together into the same world.
The Norse myths were my favorite growing up for being somehow grittier and more raw so it shouldn't have surprised me that Magnus chase is a harsher more sardonic protagonist than the rest of Riordan's YA work. Magnus starts the story as a homeless orphan living on the streets of Boston and is dead before page 50. So yeah, darker. Riordan backs it up though and it's a good solid read even if it took Magnus "dying" for the book to really grip me.
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