Gods meet children, children meet Adventure of a lifetime! (Part one)

The Lightning Thief/Sea of Monsters/The Titan's Curse: Written by Rick Riordan
Release Dates: 4/16/05, 4/1/06, 5/7/07
Format of Novel: Nook
Ratings: 5/5, 4/5, 4.5 Stars

- - -

I need to make a confession, I only just started reading books by this author as of early this year. When I first heard of it, I was in my freshman year of college and listening to book tubers fan girl/boy about it. And I'll be honest, I wasn't going to pick up his books like Percy Jackson or his Egyptian-inspired trilogy because I fell in love with other books. However, when I started taking classes like mythology, fantasy, and so forth; Rick Riordan's name kept popping up. And as a result to it, I started buying his books, specifically a bind up of the first three books to his Percy Jackson series. And Let me just say, I regret not reading them in the past. I loved them and read them in a three day's span. Riordan has such a way with his writing that allows people to connect with the lore and characters naturally. I very much enjoyed the writing style, Rick Riordan was able to activate his inner child to make the start of this series so entertaining for children who are starting to take reading as an interest.

I'm sure you all know what this series is really about, but if you don't then allow me to explain. This series focuses on the young protagonist by the name Percy Jackson and his discovery of being a demi-god, a son to a God of Greek mythology. We follow his adventure as he tries to uncover more of his powers and the new world around him. We see him meeting characters with their own personalities and god-like abilities I.e Annabeth and Grover, and many more that I probably shouldn't state right now since most of you already read this series already.

One of the things I really like in this series is the concept of the magical realism we are told throughout the books. It reminded me a little bit of Harry Potter, minus the spell names of course. But, we are forced to focus on the importance of names, and other common fantasy tropes we don't tend to notice right away. This is just me stating these things due to the classes I took in college, but I felt that this was cool and well done. It makes us aware as fantasy readers/writers and sometimes we have to follow these tropes to make our stories more pronounced I wanna say, but yeah. Rick Riordan took his time with this series and it turned out so beautiful and my younger sister and cousin enjoy his books too.

Overall, the start of this series was fantastic and I'm dying to spend the money to purchase the rest of this series (and yes, I plan to buy the companion series as well). Percy Jackson is such a fun and humorous character and I want to see how far he's willingly to go stop Hades and Ares from possibly taking over the world. And also see how far Percy and Annabeth's relationship is gonna take place!

Book Review:The Sword of Summer

Magnus Chase and The Gods of Asgard (#1): Written by Rick Riordan

Release Date: October 6th, 2015

Publisher: Disney Hyperion Books

Format of Novel: Hardcover

Rating: 5/5 stars

Summary (from good reads): Magnus Chase has always been a troubled kid. Since his mother’s mysterious death, he’s lived alone on the streets of Boston, surviving by his wits, keeping one step ahead of the police and the truant officers.

One day, he’s tracked down by a man he’s never met—a man his mother claimed was dangerous. The man tells him an impossible secret: Magnus is the son of a Norse god.

The Viking myths are true. The gods of Asgard are preparing for war. Trolls, giants and worse monsters are stirring for doomsday. To prevent Ragnarok, Magnus must search the Nine Worlds for a weapon that has been lost for thousands of years.

When an attack by fire giants forces him to choose between his own safety and the lives of hundreds of innocents, Magnus makes a fatal decision.

Sometimes, the only way to start a new life is to die..

- - -

At long last, Rick Riordan has created a trilogy with Norse Mythology! (Yay Loki and Fenrir!). This book was a delight to read. We follow Magus Chase, the cousin of Annabeth (not a surprise there if you as me..) and his journey in the demi-goddess status of Valhalla after taking the leap of faith to protect those that helped him and dying in the process. Wait a minute you may ask, he died? Well hell yeah he died.. How else are you going to get to the hotel of the gods right? Haha. Sorry there, I needed to be a butt with you all. But, for those that have read this book already caught on with this cruel short summary of the book. Any who, if you all followed Riordan in the past, you know that the end of the book or is it? haha.

In this exciting book, we follow Riordan's take on Norse Mythology and Magus Chase's life before and after he discovers the truth of his heritage. Unlike the Percy Jackson Series, this book took on a little more serious approach with the character development, especially with Magus. We see him transisting from being homeless, to death, to living in this freakin' beautiful and adventurous hotel filled with fallen heroes from all different times periods, to embracing a quest in a similar matter like Percy did in his series. In a personal opinion, I felt that this book was my instant fan girl book out of all of the Rick Riordan books I've read in the past because I felt a more mature connection with Magus from the moment I read the first sentence.

The other character were fantastic as well. Like the ones from Percy Jackson, these characters maintained a humor to them that we see from the crazy author that really brought out the story to life. The action scenes in this was spot on with exciting descriptions and the dialogue was realistic and wonderful. Each of the plot twists and milestones were a great touch to the start of this wonderful trilogy. Even though this was the first to Magus' adventure, I'm dying to read more of this protagonist and his friends in the near future. This book was a nice touch to Riordan's mythological world and I can't wait to read more from him in the near future!