The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan

TL;DR Percy Jackson. But Norse!

(finished 10/19/15)

Blood of Olympus was bittersweet for me, because it was the only book that I'd had to wait for the release for with everyone else. I was afraid it would be the only book that I'd be caught up with the hype for.

And thankfully, I was wrong! I was so excited to see that there would be a Norse series coming up after the Roman one. Waiting for The Sword of Summer was just as tortuous as Blood of Olympus was.

One of the first things that struck me was how the Percy-sass was back -- a little too much, according to some people. And I have to agree; Magnus sounds a lot like Percy. I've only read through all of the Greek and Roman books once, so I can't say if they're identical or not, but I personally didn't mind it. I love narrators like Percy and Magnus.

I know almost nothing about Norse mythology other than what I've picked up secondhand from the Marvel universe (which, even at that, is little to none), so I was honestly kind of lost for a good part of the book. Not, like, lost, but I had no background knowledge to draw off of in relation to the characters and plot. I think The Sword of Summer still did pretty good with informing the clueless side of the audience (read: me), though a few things felt slightly info-dump-ish. They're kind of forgivable, though, since I'm not sure the story could still function without them and be understandable to a middle-grade audience at the same time. (Not that middle graders aren't bright; there are just a lot of things that need to be established for the plot to work fully.)

The plot felt a little too linear to me for some reason. Like, that's the standard formula for the Percy Jackson books, and I don't know if it's just because it had been a year since I had read any of the books  or what. I think it's also mainly because of my unfamiliarity with Norse mythology that a lot of what happened seemed fairly unrelated to me, when in actuality the opposite may be true.

I'm really glad that my theory about Magnus and Annabeth was true. I was very surprised to see Annabeth play a role in The Sword of Summer! It's very minor, but it still was a nice cameo. (More than just a cameo, I guess.) I'm looking forward to seeing how the Norse aspects are going to be integrated back into the Greek and Roman stuff. I'm hoping that all the aspects are going to come together, but I also have a feeling that the Greek and Roman demigods are going to be a fairly minor aspect of the story. (Which is understandable. But I can hope.)

My favorite character so far is Sam. I was actually surprised by the amount of representation The Sword of Summer had. Sam's conflicts between her cultures was handled well in my opinion, and I'm glad to see that there's a main character in a big children's series that is neither white nor Christian. (I don't know if they ever specifically stated her religion, but she wears a headscarf, and I was glad to see that it wasn't handled as a hindrance -- it causes her a little trouble, sure, but it also played a key part in some scenes.)

I feel like The Sword of Summer is going to be along the same lines as The Lightning Thief for me -- while I liked TLT, it took my friend to compel me to continue reading the rest of the series. Of course, I'm looking forward to the next book (Thor's Hammer? I think?), but I wasn't quite blown away by it like I was with some of the other Percy Jackson books. It's a very good start, but it's not quite Mark of Athena.

Said friend also managed to finish The Sword of Summer before me. This was partially because I only read it at school and because I was putting my social / school life before reading most of the time. It wasn't quite compelling enough for me to choose reading over anything else, but I still enjoyed the time I spent reading while waiting for my ride home.

I'm a little conflicted on how I feel about the ending, because there was something that came fairly out of left field for me. Which may have been fairly obvious. I don't know. It wasn't bad; I was just like "wait what??"

I have a bunch of sticky notes in my copy of the book, but they're mainly to mark sass that I particularly appreciated. I'm going to wait a little bit before I type those up and publish them because the book is still fairly new at this point.

TL;DR it's essentially a Percy sound-alike thrown into a Norse mythology situation, which may not be good if you wanted a different narration, but it's awesome nonetheless.