Riordan Retrospective: The Sword of Summer

Welcome once again to the Riordan Retrospective.  For those of you just joining the fun, this is my look back at the works of Rick Riordan.  That means we're taking a look at Percy Jackson, its sequel series and its spin-off series.  This is less of a formal review, and more of a look back, along with my thoughts and observations.  Last time we hit another major milestone by finishing our look back at The Heroes of Olympus with a look back at The Blood of Olympus.  This time, we're officially starting our look back at Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.  We're taking a look back at The Sword of Summer, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard book 1.  As usual, we'll kick things off with a brief summary. 

To begin with, Magnus Chase is dead.  Well, he's alive for the first five chapters of the book, but after that he's dead as a door nail.  Ah, but death is not the end, for Magnus soon finds himself being whisked away to the Hotel Valhalla to live and train as an einherjar, one of Odin's chosen warriors.  As it turns out, Norse Mythology is very much real, and the gods are very active in modern day Boston, Massachusetts.  Magnus is going to have to team up with his friends Blitz the dwarf and Hearthstone the elf, along with a valkyrie named Samira.  The chain that binds Fenris Wolf are beginning to loosen, and it's up to Magnus and his friends to rebind him.  To do that they'll need to find Sumarbrander, the missing Sword of Summer that once belong to Magnus' father: the Norse god Frey.

As per usual we've got spoiler of plenty beyond this point.  Turn back now if you don't want any part in that.  Everyone who wants out gone?  Good, then let's begin.

I think we all knew it was only a matter of time before Riordan created a series based on Norse Mythology.  I called that all the way back when The Kane Chronicles was announced.  Apparently, Riordan had plans for a Norse series even before he wrote Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  As you might have gathered from my hints in previous retrospectives, I'm not a big fan of this series.  I'll elaborate on why that is when we hit the other Magnus Chase books, but for now I'm going to do my best to focus on The Sword of Summer.  I'd say that it is probably the best book of the series, if only because of the lack of preachiness.  In hindsight, there were a lot of series red flags about what was to come.  At the time, though, it felt like a welcome return to form after the lackluster finale of The Heroes of Olympus.

Let's start by taking a look at our protagonist.  Magnus is something of a subversion of a typical Riordan protagonist.  While he's not completely without combat skills, he relies much more on his wits and cunning to get out of situations.  It appears that is a Chase family trait, which brings me to my second point.  Whereas The Kane Chronicles mostly tried to keep itself separate from the action of the Camp Half-Blood gang, the Magnus Chase series has much stronger ties to the rest of the Riordanverse.  Annabeth is Magnus' cousin, and he's that Bostonian cousin she mentioned back in The Blood of Olympus.

Magnus is also notable in the he is a child of Frey, a fairly common type of Norse demigod.  However, that in itself isn't quite as subversive as it might appear.  During the Viking Age, Frey was considered the third most important god in the entire Norse Pantheon; only Odin and Thor were more highly revered by the Norse people.  As such, Magnus is the son of a major deity like Percy and Jason.  Amusingly, there a scene at the beginning where a rare child of Odin arrives in Valhalla after accomplishing a great deed, and then is never mentioned again, not even in the other books.

It's also mentioned by Magnus that the Chase family are descended from the kings of Sweden.  That's interesting because, even centuries after Christianization, the Swedish royal family claimed to be descended from Odin.  Does that mean Magnus and Annabeth are legacies of Odin?  Speaking of which, I call bullshit on Magnus having sailing powers just because he's a grandson of Njord, the Norse god of the sea.  Percy, Thalia, Nico, Jason and Hazel don't have any time powers despite being grandchildren of Kronos/Saturn.  Annabeth and Frank don't have lighting powers or wind powers despite being grandchildren of Zeus/Jupiter.  It just seems really out of the left field, as though Riordan was afraid Magnus didn't have enough powers.

Now let's talk about Blitz and Harthstone.  Blitz might seem like another example of tokenism, especially in light of the later books, but I can assure you he is not.  If you go back to the original Norse myths, you'll find that dwarves are actually described as being dark-skinned, and Blitz's physical appearance is meant in invoke that.  Also, we know that he's into fashion, something the other dwarves consider unusual, and he never seems to express much interest in women.  I wonder if Riordan was trying to tell us something?  No, probably not.  As ham-fisted as Magnus Chase is about social issues, if Blitz was gay the books would never stop reminding us.  That's why I don't buy into those theories about Blitz and Hearth being a couple.

Hearthstone is also not a token, though he is deaf.  The way magic works in Norse Mythology is that it requires a sacrifice, and The Sword of Summer accurately reflects this point.  Odin sacrificed an eye to Mimir and hung on the world tree Yggdrasil to gain the secret of runes.  Hearth could have gained hearing and speech, but he would never be able to wield magic.  Fittingly enough, he and Blitz work for Mimir.  He's also immune to Fenris' silver tongue, but would he?  Deaf people can still feel vibrations, so how exactly does Fenris magic work...hmm, maybe I'm overthinking it.

The Floor 19 gang were all criminally underutilized.  We've got TJ, a son of Tyr, who died fighting in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the American Civil War.  For those who don't know, it was a very famous all black regiment of the Union army.  Yeah, turns out Greek and Roman demigods weren't the only children of the gods fighting in the American Civil War.  His name is is short for Thomas Jefferson Junior...uh, what?  Besides the fact that Tyr is his dad, doing the math on when TJ died, he would have been born well after Thomas Jefferson died.  So, how does that name work?  Well, naming issues aside, I enjoyed TJ as a character.

We've also got Halfborn Gunderson, he died during the Viking raid on East Anglia during the Viking Age.  That means he's one of the few characters in the series who can legitimately be said to be a Viking.  He's also notable in that both of his parents were bog standard mortals.  Yeah, Valhalla isn't exclusive to demigods, mortals who die bravely in battle can be admitted to Valhalla as well.  Rounding out the group is Mallory Keen, who died defusing a car bomb in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.  Jumping ahead, by The Ship of the Dead we learn that her mother is Frigg.  Yeah, apparently Frigg doesn't let being a goddess of marriage slow her down from having demigod children, unlike Hera.  A little weird that she'd gotten involve in The Troubles, given that it was a pissing contest, which killed a lot of people, between Catholics and Protestants.  Yeah, there was a nationalist element to it, but it was primarily a religious conflict.  Her physical appearance bears more than a passing resemblance to Rachel Elizabeth Dare, though I always pictured Merida from Brave in my mind.  I know, Scottish not Northern Irish, but still.

Technically there was X the Half-Troll, but he turned out to be Odin in disguise.  It's a bit disappointing that we never got to see any other trolls after that.  When I first read this book, I loved how Odin was like a motivation speaker, and how he was much friendlier and more personal to the einherjar than Zeus is to the demigods of Camp Half-Blood.  I liked it, but his enthusiasm sure got old very quickly in the subsequent books.

Samira was a character who should have been much more of a red flag in hindsight.  I tried to be patient, I tried to have faith that Rick had an actual plan for her, but my faith was sorely misplaced.  I'm really trying to restrain myself on this on, as I'll go into real detail when we get to The Hammer of Thor.  She wears the hijab, doesn't eat pork and mentions taking her grandparents to mosque.  I assumed the hijab was for sentimental reasons and the grandparents thing was against her will, and that he'd actual handle the arraigned marriage thing well...man, I was naive.  So, apparently, she dreams of being a pilot...Rick, serious question, did you not see how people could use that to make off-color jokes?  Anyway, she's a daughter of Loki, and is distrusted because of that by the other valkyries.  Yeah, the social commentary there is a bit on the nose.  It's mentioned her grandparents give her a lot of flak for being illegitimate, and would probably blow a gasket if they knew she was a child of a pagan deity.  Fun fact, even centuries after Christianization, calling someone a child of Loki in Scandinavia was a polite way of saying they were born out of wedlock.

Speaking of Loki, let's talk about him.  Unfortunately, Magnus Chase falls into a trap that a lot of Norse Mythology based series do: it made Loki that villain.  Magnus even calls him the Norse Satan, which is just plain wrong.  Loki is a much more complex and nuanced character than that.  As Neil Gaiman says in his excellent book that I will eventually review, Norse Mythology, you resented Loki even when you were thankful for him, and you were thankful for him even when you resented him.  Loki helped the gods on numerous occasions, even if he could be a pain in the ass.  He also kind of had reason to be made at the gods, considering what they did to his kids.  In many ways, you could say Loki was victim of fate.

I really liked how Loki was portrayed in this book.  He seems to acknowledge that he's just doing what fate dictates, and that it's nothing personal.  That times he seems almost apologetic, and it seems that he was going to walk the path of redemption, and that we'd get that nuanced and complex characterization.  Well, skipping ahead a bit, we most certain did not get any of that, but more on that in The Hammer of Thor.  If Riordan needed a villain why not use Surt?  Him completing his fire sword is the whole reason Ragnarok starts in Norse Mythology, and he was yet another underutilized character.  Seriously, he shows up to kill Magnus, makes another brief appearance, and then totally disappears from the series.  Why underutilize such a great villain?  Especially given how Surt was built up as such a big threat.  I'm bringing to suspect "Riordan just didn't care" to be the answer to a lot of questions in this series.

Speaking of missed opportunities, let's talk Gunilla.  She's a daughter of Thor and captain of valkyries.  She's sort of like a more honorable version of Clarisse, and seemed like she was going to be something of a mentor to the Floor 19 gang.  Unfortunately, she is killed during the battle with Fenris.  I should mention that when einherjar die outside of Valhalla they fade into the mist of ginnungagap, the primordial void.  So that means she's gone for good and we're never getting her back!  Damn it Rick, she was so much better than Alex and Sam!  I'm getting a bit ahead, but imagine if Magnus got together with Gunilla rather than that troglodyte Alex.  It would have inverted the usual dynamic of the boy being the muscle and the girl being the brains.  Oh well, more missed opportunities.

On that note, the einherjar are always killing each other in Valhalla, but it's okay because they revive later.  Wouldn't it still hurt, don't they still feel pain?  Yeah, sign me up for Folkvangr please.  At least there it's a constant party with no battles or serious injuries.  I felt like the book's depiction of Freya fell into a problem many portrayals of her do: it only focused on one aspect of her to the detriment of the others, in this case, her love goddess aspect.  Freya was equal parts love goddess, war goddess, and fertility goddess, that's what makes her such a well-rounded goddess.  Let's also not forget that she was a master sorceress.  Yeah, caricaturing the gods is yet another mark against this series.

Well, let's try to say something positive about this series.  I liked how the book emphasized that the Norse weren't just unsophisticated brutes, and that they had a complex culture.  I also appreciate that it pointed out that Viking refers to the raiders and pillages, and Norse is the technical term for the people.  It wasn't always consistent about this, but it's something if nothing else.  One thing I noticed is that the Norse gods are much more geographically limited than the Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods.  The Norse gods seem to be limited to New England.  It is mentioned that, in the Riordanverse, the hypothesis that the Norse made it to New England is true, so maybe that has something to do with it.  They actually had people who believed in and worshiped them living on American soil, so they were bound to that part of America, sort of like in American Gods.  It is mentioned that Leif Erikson was a son of Skirnir.  I also liked that Snorri Sturluson is one of the thanes of Valhalla.  He's the one who preserved many of the Norse myths even though he was a Christian...or maybe that's just what the Mist wants you to think.

We also get hints that Jesus might exist in the Riordanverse.  It's mentioned that Thor challenged Jesus to a contest, but Jesus was a no-show.  That's actually based on an account that occurred during the Christianization of Iceland.  An old woman who still followed the Norse gods told a Christian priest that Thor could kick Jesus' ass and would challenge him to a contest.  Naturally, in Valhalla they use BCE and CE rather than BC and AD for dates.

I'm also going to put in a good word for the audiobook version.  It is narrated by Christopher Guetig, who does an excellent job.

Yeah, this retrospective has really been the calm before the storm.  When we get to The Hammer of Thor, I am not holding anything back anymore.  For now, however, let's take a look at the cover.

We see Magnus standing in front of the world tree Yggdrasil with Jack the sword fooling above his hand.  Fenris wolf stands in front of him looking fierce and blue...for some reason.

Now for a fun piece of trivia.  The beloved PBS series Arthur has a parody of Percy Jackson and the Olympians in-show called Loki Benediktssen and the Teenage Aesir.  What's particularly funny is that Loki Benediktssen looks exactly like an Arthurfied version of Magnus, and his main villain is Fenris wolf, and he has to get a necklace of tears from Freya.  He also teams up with Vidar, who later shows up in The Hammer of Thor, and Vidar's not a god most people would know off the top of their heads.  It also pretty obvious the writers were at least somewhat familiar with the Percy Jackson books, so it didn’t wind up as a shallow parody.  I tip my hat to the writers.  Keep in mind, the episode featuring him came out two years before Magnus Chase was published.  It's mentioned the characters Fern and Ladonna are fans of the series.  Coincidence or something more, I leave it for you to decide.

Well, that should do it for now.  Like I've previously said, we'll be alternating between Magnus Chase and Trails of Apollo books until we run out of Magnus Chase books.  As such, we're starting our look back at The Trails of Apollo next time.  Join me again next time when we take a look back at The Hidden Oracle.  I will see you all next time.