Review: Why was Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard Published? (Part 1/3) (Spoilers)

2020 was a crappy year for everyone, but one of the things that made it crappy for me personally was the fact that I read the Magnus Chase trilogy.

For some context, from the ages of 12-14, I was a huge Rick Riordan fan. I had all the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, the entire Kane Chronicles trilogy, the box set of Heroes of Olympus, and was working on collecting all of the Rick Riordan side books and spin-off series. All of Rick Riordan’s books had been really good – I would’ve even classified some of them as borderline conservative or libertarian. I was looking foward to reading the Magnus Chase series and reading a modern spin on the great Norse myths; the myths that inspired people like J.R.R. Tolkien to craft the worlds that we have fallen in love with. However, when I actually read Magnus Chase, I was incredibly disappointed by what I saw. Instead of reading a book with the same charm as Percy Jackson, I was slogging through a woke hellscape. And so today, I’m reviewing the first book in this circle of hell known as The Sword of Summer.

#1: Magnus

There’s no saving this character. Magnus is just about as insufferable as most of the people you find on TikTok nowadays.

While you could tell that Rick Riordan was desperately trying to make Magnus Chase a likeable character similar to Percy Jackson, he failed miserably. Instead of being funny, Magnus comes off as a whiny, entitled, good-for-nothing brat who steals and insults his way to the top. Within the first few chapters, we already can tell that he’d be a wondeful addition to Anti-fa. Not only does he openly talk about stealing from the rich Bostonians by breaking into their cars, but he brags about it incessantly, even making it out like he has the moral high-ground by claiming the person he was stealing from looked like a jerk and – quote – “If you can afford five thousand dollars to blow you nose, then you can afford to buy me dinner.”

Other wonderful quotes from this delightful character are:

“Still…I figured it would be simple enough to to break in, look around, and find some answers about what was going on. While I was there, maybe I could grab some stuff to pawn. Sorry if that offends your sense of right and wrong. Oh, wait. No I’m not.”

“I don’t steal from just anybody. I choose obnoxious jerks who have too much already. If you’re driving a new BMW and you park it in a handicapped spot without a disabled placard, then yeah, I’ve got no problem jimmying your window and taking some change from your cupholder.”

“I’m judge, jury, and theif.”

Ironically, if you look up Rick Riordan’s net-worth, he’s worth $35 million and enjoys a salary of $10,500,000.00 a year as of 2023. That’s hardly lower or middle class. I wonder if he would appreciate it if a random homeless person broke into his car or home and stole his stuff. If Rick Riordan was morally consistent, then he should have no problem if I – an unemployed sophmore student who’s 1/8 Navajo and Cherokee Indian – were to break into his house and help myself to his bank account. After all, I’m part of a racially oppressed minority, even though I look white. I demand my reparations!

Not only does Magnus act like this before he dies and goes to Valhalla (regardless of the fact that he isn’t a hero and only got to go to Valhalla because he saved a mom and her baby), but he acts like this even after he dies and is living in a lavish hotel for the undead. There is no character growth for his character because the whiny, entitled brat needs to have the woke moral high ground above everyone else unless they are part of an oppressed minority too.

Isn’t it wonderful how if you can claim you’re oppressed, you can just do whatever the hell you want? If you’re black, you can loot buildings and burn down buisnesses or if you’re part of the alphabet mafia you can strut around in front of children with all your bits showing doing God-probably-doesn’t-want-to-know-what to other people. Who cares if you kill people in the burning and violence or sexually abuse children, because it’s an expression of your authentic, disgusting, immoral self.

Empowerment!

#2: Muslims and Vikings: Expectation vs. Reality

While the inclusion of two Muslim characters in Magnus Chase is somewhat historically accurate, you could tell that Rick Riordan was doing it less for actual inclusion and more for the woke brownie points. Throughout the book, its clear that he has a very tenuous grasp of Islam and some of what it teaches and is only going off of the more well known history (ironic since in order to fully grasp history, you must be able to grasp religion. Rick Riordan was a history teacher).

On one hand, it’s true that the Vikings had trade relations with Muslims throughout Central Asia and beyond, but they weren’t all buddy-buddy all the time. Like all human people groups, they fought sometimes.

On the other hand, the Norse were pagans. They didn’t start converting to Christianity until the late 8th century and Christianity didn’t become established amongst the Norse until the late 10th to 11th centuries. Very few Vikings ever became Muslims. If you know anything about Islam, you know that Muslims hate pagans even more than they hate Jews or Christians. During the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, they were blowing up Buddhist statues. With this said, it makes no sense as to why Samirah Al-Abbas would be the daughter of Loki – much less a Valkyrie – while still trying to worship Allah. Her own religion would be telling her that she was basically a demon. Her relationship with her Muslim fiance would’ve realistically ended at “My dad’s a Norse god and I work for Valhalla”.

If you’re going to try to be inclusive of other people and cultures in your books, at least make sure it jives with the story in a realistic way. Otherwise, it just seems like your writing the character in for your own gain, not to “destigmatize” certain groups. You actually run the risk of offending more people that way.

#3: The Plot

While the plot of needing to stop Fenris from kickstarting Ragnarok was an interesting take on the Ragnarok storyline that I think isn’t done very often, how many movies about Vikings have you seen center around Ragnarok?

If your answer was “Pretty much every single one,” you win a cookie. The Ragnarok trope is way overdone and I feel that Rick Riordan could’ve found a better story in Norse mythology to tell that would’ve been more original. He managed to do that with his other books; why not this one? There are plenty of stories to be told in Norse mythology that haven’t been covered by modern media that he could’ve shed some light on and based a better story off of. Why would you go with a generic tale?

To make matters even worse, his publisher is Disney Hyperion and The Sword of Summer came out in 2015. At that time, Marvel (which is owned by Disney), was working on Thor: Ragnarok and owned the other Thor movies. If you need more evidence that this was a cash grab, I don’t know what to give you.

#4: Annabeth Cameos

In The Sword of Summer, we find out that Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson series has a cousin and would you believe that it’s Magnus?

Unfortunately, the only highlights of the Magnus Chase series – not just the first book – are the Annabeth cameos. She is by far the only likeable character and the most flushed out one because she was already in two far superior book series. Obviously Rick Riordan was struggling to fix his flop of a book by putting in characters that were already well-known and loved.

#5: The Characters

Other than Annabeth, every single character in the book is flat. They have no character growth and are merely stereotypes of people to be more “inclusive” to minorities. Blitz is gay, Hearthstone is deaf/mute, Magnus is a jerk, Samirah is a pious(?) muslim, Gunilla is a girlboss, Mallory is an Irish girlboss, Halfborn is a manly-man (who’s a meathead because of course he is) and that’s pretty much all we get in terms of character growth.

Does that seem interesting? No. It doesn’t. We don’t find much else about the characters and all the “plot-twists” concerning them are superficial and don’t add to their characters. And unfortunately, if this sounds bad, it will only get worse as the series progresses, but I’ll save that for tommorrow.

Until next time,

M.J.