The first-third was really good and I enjoyed it wholeheartedly. It looks like I only blabbed about the negative parts about the book, but there are some positive points scattered here and there too. Hopefully we'll see more of them in the upcoming books. Oh, and I also liked Chase's friends from Valhalla, but there's only too little too late presence of them in the main quest to make me suitably invested in them. The one character I liked very much is Samira Al-Abbas, Magnus Chase's valkyrie, mainly because she's the only one who didn't outright became a character from slapstick-screwball comedies. Although it had to be also said that Riordan honestly tried to give these two depths and proper motivations to make them more real as the story progressed. Same can be said about other main characters of Blitzen and Hearthstone who I just didn't care that much. But the middle part turned him into a cartoon caricature. I liked his character in the first part of the book when he felt like a genuine sympathetic human being who feels pain, sufferings, fear, anguish and was in way over his head.
As the central figure, Magnus Chase could've been a very interesting and commanding character, but that whole always-trying-to-be-funny-when-he-really-isn't made me annoyed instead of liking him. If the book was 100-150 pages less, I think it would be a much tighter story with a deservingly appropriate faster pace (like the earlier PJ novels).Īside for the story, the characters didn't fare much greatly either. And for a Rick Riordan novel that's just unthinkable to me! Lots of portions of the story didn't matter to the main plotline and could've been easily skipped. But after having to go through the same thing over and over again it became uninteresting and quite simply: boring. At first I didn't mind, it was more or less entertaining as well as we get to explore the various worlds of Norse Mythology. After our hero's quest begin, it turned in to a video game where they go to a new world, and have to solve a side-mission objective to achieve a clue for the main mission. The second problem to me was the length of the novel and the repetitive structure of it's development. That's why in my opinion the tone of the book should never have been this much light and trying-to-be-funny-at-every-turn, which totally undermined all the dark on goings and the seriousness of the underlying plot. So while Percy is an uplifting and lighthearted person, Magnus is damaged and has a mostly negative perspective on life. Ldhood, Magnus was homeless for two years after the tragic death of her mother. The main hero Magnus Chase who should've sounded more like Percy Jackson (that's what Riordan intended), instead just sounded bitter and cynical, because unlike Percy who has a loving mother and a normal chi. More so as for the first time the usual humorous storytelling of Riordan felt forced and most of the supposed jokes fall flat instead of making me laugh. The main problems to me is first: The massive tonal shifts all over the story, on one hand the life and death serious and dark plots (Homeless hero after the sad death of her mother? Supposed death to the main hero in the beginning? Threat of Ragnarok looming, the destruction of the worlds?), and on the other hand countless slapstick comedy and almost Bugs Bunny-level of cartoonish gags and situations that just didn't mesh well with the whole story.
It took me 3 months (!) to finish it, where the other books by Riordan I finished within a week, which should say some thing about the book.