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octavia_cade 's review for:
The Red Pyramid
by Rick Riordan
One of the things about having shelves at Goodreads is that I'm forced to consider what shelves a book should be on. For years I've wavered on the difference between children's books and young adult books, because a lot of them could go either way. When reading this, however, I had a moment of clarity, and it's not going to make decisions about classification a done deal in future (hey, I'm a biologist, I live by classification), but it's something that should be noted.
It's not cut and dried, I think, but there's a question of power. Carter and Sadie, the two protagonists here, are 14 and 12 respectively. They discover that they've got magic powers, a royal heritage and so forth. They're special. They've always been special, and when shit hits the fan a protective god, a stunning new magical ability, or something turns up in order to reinforce what every powerful new character tells them: that they are the specialist special kids who have ever been born, and so on. It's wish fulfillment fantasy for kids. Nothing wrong with that! It's entertaining. And it's clearly appealing, especially to kids. But I compare this with a young adult protagonist - such as Katniss from The Hunger Games, for example - and the approach is quite different. There, the main character isn't special at all. They're an ordinary person whose entry into adventure and trauma is defined by choice, by simply not tolerating existing conditions any longer. It's that much more realistic - ordinary people standing up, rather than destiny and fate and gifts bestowed from on high. The wish fulfillment has changed, is what I'm saying. It's no longer readers identifying with the secretly special magical wonder child, it's them identifying with the person who has nothing to fall back on but their own poor abilities and chooses to take a stand regardless. And maybe I'm just getting old, but I find that far more appealing.
The Red Pyramid is likeable enough. It's fun. It's too long, I think, and gets a bit samey-same by the end, but as I said: it gave me some clarity about books in general, and there's value in that.
It's not cut and dried, I think, but there's a question of power. Carter and Sadie, the two protagonists here, are 14 and 12 respectively. They discover that they've got magic powers, a royal heritage and so forth. They're special. They've always been special, and when shit hits the fan a protective god, a stunning new magical ability, or something turns up in order to reinforce what every powerful new character tells them: that they are the specialist special kids who have ever been born, and so on. It's wish fulfillment fantasy for kids. Nothing wrong with that! It's entertaining. And it's clearly appealing, especially to kids. But I compare this with a young adult protagonist - such as Katniss from The Hunger Games, for example - and the approach is quite different. There, the main character isn't special at all. They're an ordinary person whose entry into adventure and trauma is defined by choice, by simply not tolerating existing conditions any longer. It's that much more realistic - ordinary people standing up, rather than destiny and fate and gifts bestowed from on high. The wish fulfillment has changed, is what I'm saying. It's no longer readers identifying with the secretly special magical wonder child, it's them identifying with the person who has nothing to fall back on but their own poor abilities and chooses to take a stand regardless. And maybe I'm just getting old, but I find that far more appealing.
The Red Pyramid is likeable enough. It's fun. It's too long, I think, and gets a bit samey-same by the end, but as I said: it gave me some clarity about books in general, and there's value in that.