This is that part where I tell you why, even though I love Rick Riordan’s stuff so much, a few MONTHS passed between the release date and when I read his new book. Well, here’s a timeline:
1 Week Before the Release Date: HEY. “The Throne of Fire” comes out in a week. I need to get that, I’m SO psyched!
Release Date: I don’t think I went anywhere, so I didn’t buy it on the release date.
1 Week Later: I should really buy/put on hold at the library “The Throne of Fire”. Didn’t I mean to do that last week?!?
A week ago: *at the library* OHMYGOSHIFORGOTABOUTTHISBOOK.
Maybe it’s good that I didn’t read it right away when I was really excited for it, because then I would have probably been more disappointed. Yes, I said disappointed. Yes, I checked, I was reading the correct “Throne of Fire” by the one and only Rick Riordan, author of many (seemingly always best-selling) novels loved by children, teens, and adults alike.
Sadly, it just didn’t click with me. I felt the same problem I had with “The Red Pyramid” even more than I did before, sometimes having trouble distinguishing Carter and Sadie’s voices. Obviously I could tell, their words are different, Sadie has a huge crush on Anubis, there’s their names at the beginning of the chapters, yadayadayada… but other than that I wouldn’t have been able to tell. Additionally, at times (partially because of the perspective thing, probably) I found the actions confusing and not immediately clear who was doing what and why; at other times, I thought everything was so overly obvious that it was occasionally boring or slow moving.