Andrew Allen

Unpopular opinion: the characters are terrible. Things like asceticism and being a Muslim are tacked on your make them look a little cooler without ever being developed. Numerous scenes that weren’t well enough written to be entertaining and weren’t important to the plot or characters were included in the book, and it handles Norse mythology poorly. It’s biggest strength is the world building, but that’s really just because the ancient nords did all the work and Riordan couldn’t mess it all up. He messed up bits of it though. You know Thor? Yeah he likes farting and is definitely addicted to streaming shows. There is no point in making him stupid and gross except to subvert the expectations put on by marvel’s Thor. He fits better in some sort of “we have Thor at home” meme than in a book. Sure some parts of it were good, Valhalla and the einherjar are interesting, but the gods were predictable and unfunny, the characters had loads of random characteristics that failed to come together to make something interesting and realistic, and the plot would’ve been terrible if it didn’t include lots of cool Norse mythology. Maybe the series gets a bit better, but after a mess like this I’m not going chance wasting my time on the second book.