Carter and Sadie Kane's dad is brilliant Egyptologist with a secret plan that goes horribly wrong. An explosion shatters the ancient Rosetta Stone and unleashes Set, the evil god of chaos...
Set imprisons Dr Kane is a golden coffin, and Carter and Sadie are forced to run for their lives. To save their dad, they must embark on a terrifying quest from Cairo and Paris to the American South-west and discover the truth about their family's connection to the House of Life: an Egyptian temple of magic that has existed for thousands of years.
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt are far from dead and buried. And so, unfortunately are their gods...
My Review:
When Julius Kane blows up the British Museum and releases the ancient Gods and Goddesses, he is trapped in a coffin while his children Carter and Sadie become targets. They must trust their uncle Amos to get them to safety and find a way to develop their own hidden powers to fight the Gods and save their dad.
I was excited by the prospect of this book as I enjoyed the first Percy Jackson book and I love Ancient Egypt. I have lots of books about Egyptian mythology and the gods and goddesses so I really wanted to read this one. Sadly I just did not get into it.
Let me start with what I did like about it. The supporting cast of animals were great. There was Khufu the baboon who likes to play basketball and only eats foods ending in 'o', with a special taste for flamingo. And there was the crocodile in the swimming pool who was called Philip of Macedonia. For some reason Philip just really appealed to me and I thought he was great. I wish there had been more of him in the book. I also liked Bast, the cat goddess who protects them at Amos' house.
Sadie and Carter were ok as the MCs but I never really connected with them. I think this was partly caused by the switching POV between them from chapter to chapter. I was getting getting into what one character was doing when it would switch to the other which was a bit annoying. I also didn't like that when one was narrating the next part of the story he/she would have a one sided conversation with the other in the middle of it. It was like talking to someone on the phone and having them talk to someone else beside them during your conversation.
I also found that the author was putting too many different characters into it in a short time. In one chase sequence we were changing protectors for the kids every few pages and it didn't really give me the chance to connect with any of them. Naturally the kids and the readers were wanting answers to their questions but the continual switching of characters made getting the answers a slow process. Every time a question was to be answered, suddenly it were interrupted by something and had to wait. I don't like huge info dumps but I felt that in some places I was just not getting enough information to sell me on the story and pull me right into it.
I found a few of the plot twists to be pretty obvious though that was not a real issue for me in judging the book. Despite having all the gods appearing, I felt that the book lacked that spark that made you really want to keep turning the pages. I found that my attention was wandering in places and despite wanting to know what happened to Philip of Macedonia, I knew that it was time to move on to another read.
I didn't finish the book and wouldn't read the rest of the series.
