The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, is probably one of my favourite authors. In the Percy series he did such a good job of weaving together educational facts, humour, plot, and good characters.

And he's done it again with The Red Pyramid.

The story starts off with Carter Kane, a 14 year old boy who's had to travel the world, living out of a suitcase, with his ever since his mother died six years ago. He's always felt jealous of his sister, Sadie, who gets to live with their grandparents in London and have a normal life, going to school and making friends.

The ending had just the right amount of tying up lose strings, while leaving things open ended, so that you felt you'd read a complete story

Sadie, of course, has always felt jealous of Carter who gets to spend so much time with their Dad.

The siblings, who are basically strangers, have to band together after their Dad blows up an important Egypt artifact and releases five dangerous Egyptian gods.

Rick does so many things right in this book. There's action, adventure, a plethora of fun characters, and a lot of cool Egyptian mythology. And, in the same style as the Percy Jackson books, Rick combines actual history and mythology with a fantastic plot, making the books entertaining and educational.

The book switches between Carter and Sadie as narrators, which helped keep the book fresh, and with a female narrator widened the prospective audience. Both characters are intelligent but still children and do stupid things, and reason things out the way people their age would. And the book does a good job of leaving the kids on their own realistically. The adults don't just abandon them but they were taken out of the equation in ways that weren't too devastating to the young heroes.

The ending had a good balance of tying up lose ends while still leaving things open so that the reader felt they'd read a complete story but was still knew there was more to come.

The Red Pyramid was fun, fast-paced, and a terrific read. I'm very eager for more in this series.