As a fan of Rick Riordan, I love the fact that he wrote the Kane Chronicles. Egyptian mythology is my absolute favorite mythology. However, I do have a few things to say about it.
Overall, I love the series. My favorite part is the Sadie and Anubis romance. I thought that was very romantic. Anubis, for shame, you're acting like a Greek god. The romance between Carter and Zia was also romantic. Overall the story covered the basics of Egyptian mythology, definitely incorporated the culture of Egypt. However, there are a few criticisms I have for the series.
First criticism, I didn't like his interpretation of the Egyptian gods. What I love about Egyptian mythology is the animal heads. The gods who are human and animal to me represent man and nature as one. So when Rick Riordan gives them human heads instead of their animal heads, that really ticked me off. He should have kept the animal heads. For example, Horus should have had a falcon head, Anubis should have shown of his jackal head, Set should have had his Set-animal head, and Ra should not have been a muscular grandpa. If Rick Riordan truly wanted to produce the cycle of rebirth for Ra, he should have made him younger, and have his head the shape of a phoenix/falcon/dragon. I say dragon because of a slight bias from the Yu-gi-oh card Winged Dragon of Ra. But it would at least set the difference between Ra and Horus.
Another thing is that the book does not mention and include every Egyptian god or myth. I can understand some of this partly because the mythology itself is old, scattered, and partially destroyed. But still, he could have atleast added Aten, the solar disk that sits upon Ra's head. He could have even added Wepawet, Anubis's brother, the wolf god of war. Yes that is a real god, I did my research. He's often mistaken for Anubis for some reason. That would have been cool to add Wepawet to the story. It might have added a lot of character development for Anubis. And then he also forgot that Maa't was also a goddess of order. I always wondered why he didn't include that. Also in the Egyptian guide book that was later published, it says that Anubis's father is actually Osiris rather than Set, based on the myth of Nephthys getting Osiris drunk and impregnating her and Set getting really angry at her. In actuality, Rick Riordan is right about Set being Anubis's father. There are actually three myths to the way Anubis was born. One is the more popular Osiris myth, the other his Set, the third is actually that he is the son of Ra. Personally I think that Set makes more sense than the other two.
The last thing I have to say about the Kane Chronicles is that the stories were good. It could have been better. I think Rick Riordan could have researched the mythology a bit more, search for the myths in Egypt and maybe work on his grammar. Often times I felt that the story was rushed, and I also felt that the sentence wording could have been improved. To me, Riordan clearly knows his Greek and Roman mythology better than Egyptian. Like I said, the series was good. It could have been better. I still rate a four star because I really loved it, my criticisms were minor preferences, and I'm a sucker for Egyptian mythology.
That's all I have to say for right now. I also want to make an announcement. I am in the process of reading Mark of Athena. I hope to be finished soon, but it might be awhile before I write a review on that book due to Finals in college.
I hope you all learned a little mythology from me. All I have to say now is well...Keep reading my friends.
,Starvix Draxon
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