Book Review - THE RED PYRAMID - by Rick Riordan

     The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan is the first book in the Kane chronicles series. The language used in the book is quite similar to Franklin W. Dixon’s ‘Hardy Boys’ series and Jeff Kinney’s ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ series. The two protagonists, Carter and Sadie Kane are shown to talk in an informal, friendly way with the reader. The book is basically a transcript of an audio recording made by the two. The books starts off with a bang. It starts with these words - “We only have a few hours, so listen carefully.” This urges the reader to read on.

 There were some really funny lines in the book, but halfway through it, the author used the same pattern, which wasn’t all that humorous. At the end of the book, I felt as if I were a close friend of Carter and Sadie. They did, in a way, talk to the reader. But once the book ended, I didn’t feel happy and satisfied, as I would have felt on completing any other novel. Instead I felt sad. Literally. At the end of the book, Carter and Sadie suddenly stopped talking after saying “This is Carter and Sadie Kane signing off. Come to Brooklyn. We’ll be waiting.” Even though they were imaginary, I was filled with sorrow.

One thing that makes this book stand out are adjectives. The descriptions of some things are really great. This makes it easier for us to imagine those things. But some descriptions were so abstract, vivid and unimaginable, it made imagining those things all the more difficult. The way of speech of Carter and Sadie is different and well executed. Carter is an African American boy who is a well behaved and obedient person, and his way of speech is the same, while Sadie has a kind of, well, what do you say, ‘cool’ attitude.

The book also shows family bondage and brother-sister relationship. Most of the book is on Egyptian mythology and magic, and I’m sure the author must have done a lot of research. This book has influenced me so much that even I have started doubting whether magic really doesn’t exist. The type of writing in this book can be used by young writers who have just started to write. They can start writing personal experiences the way the author has written (just the way I’ve written-scroll down). I would give 8 out 10 points to this book and congratulations to Rick Riordan on writing such a wonderful book.

-         Manas Trivedi