Board Thread:Magnus Chase & the Gods of Asgard/@comment-25044056-20151007012827

I just finished reading Magnus Chase and the gods of Asgard, the sword of Summer. The book was entertaining to read, the heroes were diverse and I liked them all, the plot was interesting. The ending was incredible and it left me hungry for more. Unlike the Heroes of Olympus I actually believe these characters can die and die for good which upped the ante and makes the action more enjoyable. I especially liked the villains in this story, my hands down favorite has got to be Riordan's interpretation of Loki.

This book did have one major flaw however and that's that it could have been a about a hundred pages shorter. It was padded with too many side quests and detours which screwed up the pacing and made the countdown clock less credible. To be fair however this isn't really noticeable until the last third or quarter of the book.

I think I get Riordan's reasoning, there's a lot of Norse myths and he wants to get through as many as possible, but I think a better solution would be to make this series four books instead or just release a collection of short stories in between the 2nd and final book. Maybe he could call it the "Einherjar files".

All in all despite the problematic pacing Sword of Summer is an awesome book and hopefully the issue of too many side-quests is something that will be corrected in the sequels. 