Finally, we are at the end of this trek through hell and unlike my review of Rings of Power, Rick Riordan hasn’t come out with anything else set in Norse mythology so I won’t have to do even more reviews of this awful series.
I thank God for that small mercy. I don’t think my braincells could take it if I had to read more Magnus Chase books to do reviews on. I was losing IQ points by just reading the trilogy.
The third and last book of the trilogy is called The Ship of the Dead, and once again, has all the same problems as books one and two. Magnus is still a whiny brat (but gay now), Alex can’t figure out what gender he is, Samirah is a girlboss with a beta-male boyfriend (but this time she’s fasting because of Ramadan), Mallory is an Irish girlboss, Halfborn is still a masculine meathead because strong men need to be humiliated, T.J. the black Civil War soldier doesn’t know his contemporary history, and none of us remember who any of these characters are (other than Magnus, Alex, and Samirah). We’re still using trope after overused trope, the story is still an overdone knockoff of every other Rangnarok story (including Thor: Ragnarok which came out in the same year), and we don’t care about any of the characters because they’re about as deep as a kiddie-pool. On the bright side, Percy and Annabeth are here to save the book, right? Right?
Crap. They were only there for a two-chapter cameo appearance to let us know Riptide is a girl sword (because we need to gender everything, including inanimate objects) and tell us that Percy now has a baby sister. I’m this close to throwing the book in a trash compactor.
Why did I think it was a good idea to read this book?
One of the things that annoyed me about The Ship of the Dead was the return of innacurate history. As mentioned previously, Rick Riordan was a middle and high-school history teacher before he became an author. With that said, he should know accurate history. After all, his job was to teach middle and highschool students history. But did he remember any American history while writing this book?
Nope. Instead, it went flying out the window to God-knows-where. In the book, there’s a chapter where the character T.J. (a character that we have no emotional attachment to and hardly remember) says that he had always wanted to go to Britian to say “thank you” to the English for not joining with the South during the Civil War. When he goes to England, he makes it a point to thank random Brits for that reason. However, this isn’t true by any means. In the book Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, by James M. McPherson (a book published by Oxford University), we’re told that the British actually did join with the South for a brief period of time as observers. It was after the battle of Antietam (the bloodiest day of the Civil War, in which it’s estimated that casulties on both sides numbered well over 23,000) that the British pulled out of the war because they saw that there was nothing to gain by being involved and the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed by Lincoln after the battle. It makes no sense that T.J. wouldn’t know this because Antietam was fought in 1862 and in February of 1863 (a month after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation), the first black Union regiment was formed in Massachusetts. Even if T.J. hadn’t become a soldier, he still would’ve known about Antietam since it was such a massive battle.
Remember a former history teacher wrote this nonsense.
On top of that, why the hell did Rick Riordan feel it was necessary to put two gay kisses in a kids book? When I read those two scenes when Alex kisses Magnus (on the lips, mind you; not a friendly peck on the head), I gagged. We did not need two gay kisses in a kids‘ book; we didn’t need one for that matter. What we needed was none. You can argue with me in the comments and say, “Oh, then why’s it okay when a straight couple makes out in young adults novel? What’s the difference between a straight couple making out and a gay/gender-fluid couple making out? Why are you okay with it when a straight couple makes out in a book?”
First of all, I don’t think we should have graphic make out scenes in young adult novels, period. If you’ve read my review on Divergent, you’ll know that I’m very anti-make-out-scenes. I’m okay with a kiss here and there between characters, but if there are entire paragraphs of characters kissing – I don’t care if it’s gay or not – it shouldn’t be in a young adult’s novel.
Secondly, Magnus and Alex are two minors and unfortunately the gay rights movement is very sexualized. I’m not okay with books that delve into the sexualities of minors and put them in what can be described as sexual encounters with other characters even if it’s not explicitly smut. I see those types of things as borderline (if not completely in some cases) pedophilic. You should not be sexualizing minors, fictional or not.
The difference between a straight couple kissing in a book and a gay couple kissing is that we don’t sexualize straight people as much as we do gays. Why? Because being straight is a natural inclination that we were designed to have that in most cases produces real, loving relationships. Meanwhile, most gay relationships are based on lust, which is often conflated as loving when it is not. I’m not saying that all gay people in relationships are there just for sex and don’t actually love their partner, but sadly that is the case in many relationships. On top of that, most teens that identify as gay are doing it because it’s a social contagion and they are encouraged to sleep around with people to explore their newfound “identity”. Stop sexualizing the children! If you want to write a gay character in your book, that’s fine. Our first amendment allows that and it’s your book, but please don’t push that lifestyle onto kids like it’s the cool thing that they need to be.
Lastly, the ending of Magnus Chase was terrible. If you were expecting the ending that you got in Percy Jackson, you’re going to be disappointed. The ending was something out of My Little Pony and I half expected Magnus and friends to start singing:
My Little Pony!
Dooo-doo-doo-do-doo-doo-do
My Little Pony!
Dooo-doo-doo-do-doo-doo-do
Friendship is magic!
Sharing kindness is an amazing thing and magic makes it all the rage!
(Sorry if I got any of those lyrics wrong. I haven’t watched that show since I was eight.)
Instead of having a massive battle on the shores Maryland or something, we instead get a cheesy anime battle where people just throw insults at each other, but Magnus saves the day with the power of FRIENDSHIP! I guess Rick couldn’t have even fit in a fight between Magnus or Loki anywhere. Instead it was Loki hearing Magnus complement his friends that had him going, “Please put me in the fricking walnut shell! I don’t want to be in this book any more!” I wanted an ending where I was cheering on the fight and could feel it shifting this way or that, once towards Loki and again towards Magnus until one of them (preferrably Loki since the destruction of the world seems more pleasant than Magnus’s personality) won. Instead we got an ending that was painfully predictable and boring (one might even say gay), that had us cringing instead of cheering, wondering if we just had a bad dream where we read the book or if we actually had just experienced a circle of hell.
Rick Riordan, if you read this, I hope you’re ashamed of what you wrote.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
I hope you’re ashamed of what you wrote. I would have thought a so-called “Christian” would have the decency not to lie, at least, but I suppose if you already think you’re inherently superior to other people it’s not much of a stretch.
First of all, there is very little evidence “straight” is a natural inclination over gay. Beyond mating behaviors being observed between same sex animals (most famously same sex penguin couples engaging in courtship, sexual conduct and even raising chicks) the vast majority of gay people remember gay tendencies all the way from when they were very young. If you don’t already think I’m a despicable sinner and are willing to hear me out, I’m happy to tell my story.
Even when I was very young watching TV shows, I was always drawn to female characters with certain personality traits, often over male characters. I didn’t know why, but I simply enjoyed watching them more. When I turned 12 (when puberty started for me), I began to feel what I now know is sexual arousal for the first time when viewing attractive women in ads, movies, etc. – to be clear, this was before I even knew what the word “lesbian” meant. No one told me, yet I was deeply ashamed of the feelings and felt as though I was broken. I began hating myself, paranoid my parents would find out I hid it as my shameful secret, convinced I was “disgusting”, which was one of the instances that led to me developing generalized anxiety disorder later. If ppl had explained to me that this is something that happens sometimes, that you can feel physically attracted to girls and this isn’t abnormal, maybe it could have been avoided. I don’t know for sure but I do know it would have made me feel a lot better about myself.
Before you say anything about me being groomed, I already said I didn’t learn the term lesbian until I was like 13, and even then I only heard it once and barely thought about it. I knew maybe 1 other gay person at my whole school, a friend of mine I asked soon after learning about it, who admitted it and we literally never talked about it again for years. My teachers only talked about their heterosexual relationships (which they did do a lot) and only when I was 15 did I move to a school with a male teacher who talked about having a husband occasionally. I was never sexually abused by anyone nor do I know anyone who was.
You’re also dead wrong about LGBT ppl being inherently more sexual than straight people. I am one of the least openly sexual people at my high school. I keep hearing gossip in my school about s*x – all by straight couples, mind you, girls who were cheated on by their boyfriends, boys talking about how sexy X person is, meanwhile every single person in my LGBT club is still a virgin and we very rarely even talk about who we find attractive. Meanwhile my heterosexual friends were dating, making out or otherwise in some kind of relationship. Even though I do feel sexual attraction and arousal the idea of actually going through with it having sex with anyone also disgusts me and I’m actually planning on only having it during marriage if at all.
Obviously this is only my personal experience – I assume you’d file me under the “minority of gays that isn’t that interested in sex”, a convenient category you’ve carved out to file anyone with opposing experiences into without actually providing any concrete evidence that LGBT ppl are usually inherently sexual due to their identity.
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Hello,
I’m sorry for the late reply. Your comments (this one in particular) gave me a lot to think about. Now that I’ve had some time, I will answer your two main points that you seem to be making (and please forgive me if I’ve gotten your assertions wrong; I’m happy to be corrected if I am) of 1). LGBTQ+ is not inherently sexual and 2). LGBTQ+ has a place in kids’ books as much as straight relationships. But before that, please allow me to explain the Christian view of homosexuality and sexual sin so you know where I’m coming from.
In the Bible, the practice of homosexuality is condemned as sexual sin. We see this as far back as Genesis and it’s mentioned elsewhere as well. However, homosexuality isn’t the only sexual sin that’s mentioned. The idea of sexual sin applies to straight people as well. Basically, anything that falls outside of God’s plan for sex and marriage (the union between a man and a woman) is considered sexual sin. Because of this, you being a lesbian does not make you a horrible person. You’re just struggling with a different variation of the same sin that every person on Earth has struggled with at one point or the other. That does not make you less than in the Christian’s eyes. What it means is that, just like everyone else (including Christians), you are part of fallen mankind and are in need of the grace of God through true faith in Christ who died for you as much as He died for me and everyone else and I hope that you do come to Christ at some point. Though you might have been born with lesbian tendencies, just like with straight people, it is a choice whether you act on them.
Now that you (hopefully) can see more where I’m coming from as a Christian (which interestingly wasn’t where I was coming from back in 2023 when I wrote this blog; I wasn’t saved until late summer of last year), it’s time to address your first point that LGBTQ+ is not inherently sexual. For this point, I would ask you to please watch these videos by a guy named Becket Cook. He’s a gay man who lived that lifestyle for many years who was saved by Christ and now talks about his time in the LGBTQ+ community and that community’s effect on the culture.
From his experience as a teenager, he saw that the gay culture was very hypersexualized, particularly regarding gay men. Today, we still see this in the media, on social media, etc. You’ve argued in your second comment that the LGBTQ+ lifestyle isn’t being pushed onto kids in the media, but it is in some very sexualized ways. We’ve seen this in shows like Riverdale and HBO’s Euphoria, which are both targeted at teenagers (even though Euphoria is rated TV-MA and includes graphic sex scenes, drug abuse, and violence; it was also praised by critics for its portrayal of LGBTQ+ life), kids’ shows such as Blue’s Clues which, in 2021, showed a pride parade led by Ru Paul (this is a show for toddlers including drag queens, drag being a very hypersexualized form of entertainment), etc. Moreover, last year I went to my local Barnes & Noble, went to the young adult section, and at least 70% of it or more was about some LGBTQ+ relationship or coming out story, mostly revolving around lesbians. One cover even went so far as to have a picture of a lesbian couple making out on the cover. They also had a table covered in merch and books from the Nick and Charlie series, a series about a gay couple in high school (I did an entire blog post about it which you can read here: News: If You Don’t Think That There’s a Gay Agenda in Your Kids’ Books, Think Again. – The Tanuki Corner). That’s not even mentioning the LGBTQ+ books being put in school libraries that portray graphic images of people partaking in sex acts (such as in Gender Queer) and describe how to do them.
Furthermore, LGBTQ+ used to be considered a behavior, not an identity. Today, however, it is considered an identity. Why? Because it’s become cool. No longer is it just for people who were born with gay/lesbian tendencies. Now you can identify as a whole myriad of sexualities and claim victim status for them. The big problem with this (especially when you mix it with minors) is that you’re making your entire identity about who you’re sexually attracted to instead of the things that make you you (such as your interests, quirks, beliefs, etc.) This automatically makes it sexual, even if you aren’t sexual with anyone else (as in your case).
Now, you also bring up that straight people are hypersexual too in response to my assertion that the LGBTQ+ movement is inherently sexual. Though I do not deny that straight people also sometimes seem to define themselves by who they sleep with (the existence of OnlyFans models is a good example of straight women making their sexuality their identity), the difference is this: If my straight friend is telling me that she wants to fool around with her boyfriend and I tell her that’s not a good idea, while she might be a bit offended, more likely than not, we’ll still be friends at the end of the day. Meanwhile, if a lesbian were to tell me that she wanted to fool around with another girl and I told her the same thing, the offense would go much deeper, and she might even cut contact with me because I’m gently criticizing her “identity”. That’s the difference. Once again, that’s what makes the LGBTQ+ movement so inherently sexual. It’s no longer a behavior, but an identity.
Finally, for the assertion that you seem to be making that LGBTQ+ is just as normal in a kids’ book as a straight relationship. The simple fact is that because of my original assertion that LGBTQ+ is inherently sexualized, then LGBTQ+ doesn’t belong in children’s literature, especially for young kids who cannot wrap their minds around what sex even is yet. You’re introducing them to a world in which they will not find stable relationships or happiness. If you watch the Beckett Cook video about the strategy to “make gay okay,” the writers of After the Ball (the book Cook’s talking about) actually admit that most successful male gay relationships are only successful because they’re open relationships where there are multiple partners on the side. (As a side note, lesbian relationships, though they last longer and are usually more serious, usually end in divorce. In 2019, about 75% of petitions filed by homosexual couples were filed by lesbians (LGBTQ Couples And Divorce Trends – Mediate.com.) LGBTQ+ couples also experience higher rates of domestic abuse than heterosexual couples (Domestic Violence in the LGBTQ+ Community) with lesbian and bisexual women receiving the brunt of it.) That’s also not accounting for how many advocates of the LGBTQ+ community are trying to teach kids about things that are not appropriate for them to know about and how some are even pushing for pedophilia to be normalized, insisting on calling pedophiles “MAPs” (Minor Attracted Persons).
If your reasoning to allow LGBTQ+ relationships in kids’ books is so that fellow LGBTQ+ people can feel seen in those books and not feel bad for not being in some sort of heterosexual relationship, I want you to understand another thing which is that that feeling of being pressured to have a boyfriend/girlfriend is universal. It’s not just gay/lesbian/bi people that feel it. Straight guys and girls feel it too around the beginning of middle school and high school (this pressure is also exacerbated by the onset of puberty). Why do you think that everyone is so focused on trying to find a partner? One of the biggest reasons is that they’re made fun of if they don’t. It sucks, but that’s life. I (and a good chunk of GenZ) wish that more people just represented some platonic relationships in movies and T.V. for once, but that often doesn’t sell as well. We just have to deal with it.
Once again, I apologize for the late reply, but I hope this helps. Feel free to comment if you have any more questions. I plan on talking more about LGBTQ+ and the Christian response to it in June, so maybe some of your questions can be addressed then.
Thanks for commenting!
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You should be ashamed of what you wrote. Christians aren’t supposed to lie.
“Secondly, Magnus and Alex are two minors”
Yeah in a book where plenty of heterosexual characters kiss. You already said you’re against “make out scenes” but if you would be ok with a straight couples getting a quick kiss but not a gay couple that is incredibly hypocritical.
“and unfortunately the gay rights movement is very sexualized.”
Pretty much everyone in my high school LGBT club is still a virgin meanwhile I constantly hear straight couples talking about how they had sex or were cheated on or whatever. Just yesterday I had to avoid a crying girl in the bathroom telling everyone how her boyfriend cheated on her with a “slut”. But okay whatever you say heterosexual person that’s never met an LGBT person.
“I’m not okay with books that delve into the sexualities of minors”
You have written a whole article where you speculate about Nico’s crush on Annabeth because he listens to her and not Percy, you need to shut your trap on this.
“and put them in what can be described as sexual encounters with other characters even if it’s not explicitly smut”
Fine, what’s your line then? Hand holding? Kiss on the cheek? Or is every depiction of a gay couple inherently sexualized?
“You should not be sexualizing minors, fictional or not.”
Then don’t speculate about a fictional character’s crush on another fictional character because he decided to listen to her.
“The difference between a straight couple kissing in a book and a gay couple kissing is that we don’t sexualize straight people as much as we do gays.”
You’re so close to getting it lmao
“Why? Because being straight is a natural inclination that we were designed to have that in most cases produces real, loving relationships.”
I’m going to need a source on this. The vast majority of gay people remember being gay all the way back when their puberty started. I was 11-12 when I first started feeling what I know now is arousal when seeing attractive women in ads. We also have homosexual behaviors in animals, most famously same sex penguin couples that engage in courtship, sexual conduct, and even adoption of chicks.
“Meanwhile, most gay relationships are based on lust, which is often conflated as loving when it is not.”
I don’t even want to have sex before marriage lol (not religious reasons just personal preference) but go off I guess.
“I’m not saying that all gay people in relationships are there just for sex and don’t actually love their partner, but sadly that is the case in many relationships.”
So all gay people who you meet who love their partner are going to fall into a group you’ve decided is undeniably the minority without evidence. How convenient for you.
“On top of that, most teens that identify as gay are doing it because it’s a social contagion and they are encouraged to sleep around with people to explore their newfound “identity”.”
Are you just making all this up? How many gay people do you even know? I didn’t even see a gay relationship depicted in any media until I was nearing 13, and there was maybe 1 queer person in my whole school. I’m still bi. Also, as I already said, everyone LGBT I know is still a virgin, and personally, I’m planning on it staying that way.
“Stop sexualizing the children!”
Make that your new years resolution, go ahead. You do need it more out of the two of us I think
“please don’t push that lifestyle onto kids like it’s the cool thing that they need to be.”
I spent so much thinking I was broken for feeling attracted to women, I even hid it from my parents because I was so ashamed. Every piece of media I watched until I was like 12-13 contained exclusively heterosexual couples, and I felt bad for not being in a relationship with a boy yet. But being LGBT is the lifestyle being pushed onto kids, sure, sure.
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The amount of things I could debate are great, but I’m going to focus on one aspect. You say, “…heterosexual person that’s never met an LGBT person.” As a person who’s best friend, one of if not the only person who isn’t family that I would die for, is bi. The kicker? I agree whole-flippin-heartedly with M.J. Maybe try a different approach. Or don’t, please. (Btw I’m the Nerdy Blogger, I’m just on a device where I’m not signed in lol)
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