Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer
Author: Rick Riordan
375 pages digital version
Date published: October 2015
Genre: Fantasy, mythology
Book description: Magnus Chase has always been a troubled kid. Since his mother’s mysterious death, he’s lived alone on the streets of Boston, surviving by his wits, keeping one step ahead of the police and the truant officers.
One day, he’s tracked down by a man he’s never met—a man his mother claimed was dangerous. The man tells him an impossible secret: Magnus is the son of a Norse god.
The Viking myths are true. The gods of Asgard are preparing for war. Trolls, giants and worse monsters are stirring for doomsday. To prevent Ragnarok, Magnus must search the Nine Worlds for a weapon that has been lost for thousands of years.
When an attack by fire giants forces him to choose between his own safety and the lives of hundreds of innocents, Magnus makes a fatal decision.
Sometimes, the only way to start a new life is to die .
To be honest, the book description did not call m in, but I had heard other people sa they got a good surorise with this book and well I decided to give it a try. What caught my attention was the very fist page, it was a very intriguing introduction.
"Yeah, I know. You guys are going to read about how I died in agony, and you’re going be like, ‘Wow! That sounds cool, Magnus! Can I die in agony, too?’
No. Just no. Don’t go jumping off any rooftops. Don’t run into the highway or set yourself on fire. It doesn’t work that way. You will not end up where I ended up. Besides, you wouldn’t want to deal with my situation. Unless you’ve got some crazy desire to see undead warriors hacking one another to pieces, swords flying up giants’ noses and dark elves in snappy outfits, you shouldn’t even think about finding the wolf-headed doors. My name is Magnus Chase. I’m sixteen years old. This is the story of how my life went downhill after I got myself killed."So the main characters are:
1. Magnus Chase, he's a almost fifteen year old living in the streets. He has managed well so far, even in the winter he manages to stay outside and not freezing to death. He has two best friends Blitz a short haired man who seemed to hate daylight and Heart a deaf homeless dude, both were always looking out for Magnus, people in the street dubbed them Magnus' mom and dad because one or the other always seemed to be hovering over him.
2. Blitzen turns out to be not just any short homeless dude but the son of goddes Freya and a dark dwarf; an expert in fashion dwarf who's mission is to keep Magnus Chase safe until he can complete the prophecy.
3. Heart or Heartstone is a deaf elf, who shares Blitz's mission. They both must keep Magnus safe and for the two years they both pretend to be homeless in order to keep an eye on him. Heart is a elf who practices magic an art long lost to elves.
4. Samirah Al-Abbas, an arab girl, daughter of Loki. She was the Valkyrie at the service of Odin and she was the one who picked Magnus to be brought to the Hotel Valahalla as an eiherjar, a warrior whose soul is rescued and kept in training to fight Ragnarok.
5. Sumarbrander or the Sword of Summer the legend says that the sword of Frey's a sword with a soul will bring Ragnarok or stop it. The Sword of summer happens to have feelings, the ability to talk and fight on it's own. A pretty terrific weapon really and by the way, Sumarbrander did not it's name too much so he/she/it decided to change it, now it will be called Jack!
Small inconvinient, the sword might fight on its own and have it's own mind but as soon as Jack is retunred to its pendant form, or shelted the owner in this case Magnus will feel the strain of all the actions performed by the sword. So even if the sword is almost all powerful he can't perform tings that would result imposible for his body to withstand.
I like this book: character-wise the representation is so varied that it gives the story a just a bit of spice. This story is full of adventures, it does not start awfully slow like many fantasy books, it dives right to the running for your life and then running again to save Magnus' second life; its treathening situation one after another, but not too dire to annoy the reader. A nice balance truly.
I highly recommend this if you're looking for a nice light fantasy. I personally don't know much about the Nordic mythology but that doens't seem to matter, the book starts explaining enough that you can go on without any need to further your knowledge on the subject.
I gave this a 5 out of 5 stars, I was surprised with how much I enojyed this, I definately needed a good adventurous story.
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