I was skeptical about this--I'd never read anything by Rick Riordan, and I had some kind of "he's popular so he's probably bad!" attitude problem about him. But I actually really enjoyed this book and am definitely going to seek out the sequel (...maybe over winter break). I don't know much about Egyptian mythology and it turns out it has some awesome stories. I found Sadie, the younger narrator, to be kind of obnoxious, but, well, she was 12. Carter was very endearing. This book is long but a real page-turner. I dug it.