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Title | The Sword of Summer
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Cover Art | John Rocco
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2017
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First Printing | 2015
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Title | The Hammer of Thor
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Cover Art | John Rocco
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2018
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First Printing | 2016
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Title | The Ship of the Dead
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Cover Art | John Rocco
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2019
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First Printing | 2017
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Title | Hotel Valhalla Guide to the Norse Worlds
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Illustrator | Yori Elita Narpati
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2016
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First Printing | 2016
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Title | 9 from the Nine Worlds
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Author | Rick Riordan
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Cover Art | James Firnhaber
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Publisher | Disney - Hyperion - 2018
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First Printing | 2018
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Category | Middle Grade
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Magnus, Hearthstone, Blitzen, Samirah, Alex, Mallory, Halfborn, TJ and the Norse Gods & Monsters
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Main Elements | Gods, giants, dwarves, elves
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Website | Rick Riordan Official Site
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 The Sword of Summer
Magnus Chase has seen his share of trouble. Ever since that terrible night two years ago when his mother told him to run, he has lived alone on the streets of Boston, surviving by his wits, staying one step ahead of the police and the truant officers.
One day, Magnus learns that someone else is trying to track him down—his uncle Randolph, a man his mother had always warned him about. When Magnus tries to outmaneuver his uncle, he falls right into his clutches. Randolph starts rambling about Norse history and Magnus's birthright: a weapon that has been lost for thousands of years. Stories about the gods of Asgard, wolves and Doomsday bubble up from Magnus' memory. But he doesn't have time to consider it all before a fire giant attack the city, forcing him to choose between his own safety and the lives of hundreds of innocents...
Sometimes the only way to start a new life is to die.
The Hammer of Thor
It's been six weeks since Magnus and his friends returned from defeating Fenris Wolf and the fire giants. Magnus has adjusted to life at the Hotel Valhalla—as much as a once-homeless and previously alive kid can. As a son of Frey, the god of summer, fertility, and health, Magnus doesn't exactly fit in with the rest of Odin's chosen warriors, but he has a few good peeps among his hallmates on floor nineteen, and he's been dutifully training for Ragnarok along with everyone else. His days have settled into a new kind of normal.
But Magnus should have known there's no such thing as normal in the Nine Worlds. His friends Hearthstone and Blitzen have disappeared. A new hallmate is creating chaos. According to a very nervous goat, a certain object belonging to Thor is still missing, and the thunder god's enemies will stop at nothing to gain control of it.
Time to summon Jack, the Sword of Summer, and take action. Too bad the only action Jack seems to be interested in is dates with other magical weapons. . . .
The Ship of the Dead
Loki is free from his chains. He's readying Naglfar, the Ship of the Dead, complete with a host of giants and zombies, to sail against the Asgardian gods and begin the final battle of Ragnarok. It's up to Magnus and his friends to stop him, but to do so they will have to sail across the oceans of Midgard, Jotunheim, and Niflheim in a desperate race to reach Naglfar before it's ready to sail. Along the way, they will face angry sea gods, hostile giants, and an evil fire-breathing dragon. But Magnus's biggest challenge will be facing his own inner demons. Does he have what it takes to outwit the wily trickster god?
Hotel Valhalla Guide to the Norse Worlds
Congratulations! You've been chose as one of Odin's brave warriors, and you've made it to the Hotel Valhalla.
Now what?
This can't-live-without guide to the gods and goddesses, mythical beings, and fantastic creatures of the nine Norse Worlds was prepared just for you, honored guest. It provides essential stats, interviews, stories, and personal reflections so you can avoid those awkward introductions and start your training for Ragnarok with both fee running on the ground. You'll never see Ratatosk as a cute little rodent or confuse a dward and an elf ever again!
We hope the Hotel Valhalla Guide to the Norse Worlds brings you both enlightenment and entertainment during your eternal stay at our fine establishment.
9 from the Nine Worlds
How well do you know the nine Norse realms?
Do you get all those heims mixed up? Well, this collection of rollicking short stories - each set in a different world and told by a different character from the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series - will help straighten you out. And even if it doesn't, you'll enjoy reading about how Alex saves Amir's parnts, Samirah plucks a giant's harp, Mallory teaches a dragon how to throw down insults, and much more. Just watch out for Thor, who is running through the whole thing and raising quite a stink.
I feel bad for other middle grade authors trying to win the yearly Goodreads Award, Riordan has won every year that I can remember. And know what...I have to agree. He hits so many points perfectly.
The first of course is the humour, I started laughing at the start and kept on going right to the end, except where he almost made me cry. And that's because of the next point, the characters. He invents such a crazy cast of characters but they all have so much depth and they all grow as the story progresses, you become attached to all of them. And there's a little for everyone here. We have a homeless character, a muslim, a deaf character, a gender-fluid one, several black ones, and an actual Viking (just 'cause they don't exist anymore doesn't mean they shouldn't get representation!). And he handles each of their situations well, showing how they each have to struggle against prejudice, without bashing the reader over the head with it. Instead of telling us we should all live happily together, he shows us that it can be done.
I particularly liked the deaf character, the elf Hearthstone, just because, well, he's an elf, but he's also deaf, which is so unexpected. And the difficulties that implies, whether your father thinks you are "damaged" and doesn't want anything to do with you, or the fact the vast marjority of people don't understand sign language, or you're buried in a pile of a rubble and your friends are running around calling your name...yeah. I also loved the relationship between Blitzen (no he's not a reindeer, not sure why he got stuck with that name) and Hearth, it's like Crowley and Aziraphale in Gaiman's Good Omens. Are they lovers? Are they something that transcends the physical?
Next you need plot, and this one moves at a rapid pace, I could read 150 pages a day and not want to stop. The plots also had some fun quirks I didn't see in other books based on Norse mythology, like our protagonist dies in the first third of the first book...but that's ok, remember Valhalla? From that point on he gets to die...every...single...day, but he always revives in time for dinner. After all they need to practice for Ragnarok. Now, it's not surprising that Ragnarok is a big theme in this trilogy, but I loved the fact that they weren't necessarily right in the middle of it, or doomed to fight it, at least not yet.
The one and only negative I could find I felt was a bit like when in Piers Anthony's Xanth he let the puns drive the plot? Well, I felt that some of the scenes were a bit contrived, where Magnus had to relive a story that the gods themselves previously went through. That didn't really make sense, but fortunately there were only a few moments where I was like this doesn't make any sense. Also the fart jokes kind of got to be a bit much, but I guess these books are aimed at young boys and without fart jokes they won't read it...and he is the god of, well, thunder...*cough*
As for the two companion books, I didn't much care for the Hotel Valhalla guide. I was hoping a bit more of a guide to Norse mythology and less a guide to Rick Riordan's Norse mythology, you really can't use that guide book to learn anything about the mythology at all. On the other hand the short stores in 9 from the Nine Worlds were fun, giving the secondary characters a chance to be the narrators, and I loved the idea of having Thor running a marathon through all the worlds so he just stomps on by leaving a trail of destruction right in the middle of someone else's adventure, fun the keep an eye out for his cameo.
Now, while the Guide is kind of useless as a Guide, the trilogy itself, as all of Riordan's other works, are really good introductions to the real myths. Sure, he makes them goofy, but he sticks to the "facts" (as much as there can be facts in someone that was an oral tradition and changed over the generations), I am always impressed how accurately he takes an ancient god ands imagines what they would be like in a day of cell phones and streaming video. And even after all the reading I'd been doing (I read parts of the original sagas even), I learned about Loki's "flyting" but there were virtually no details of it, which appeared the very next day as the core event in another book I was reading (Hurricane Party by Klas Östergren, which is actually a dystopic modern day with Norse gods, though middle grade readers will likely find it slow and boring, it has a 1984 feel to it only Big Brother is actually Odin...), the two complimented each other so well! A complete fluke I was reading both at the same time, in fact Hurricane Party was a last minute cram in the last few days of the year.
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