The Fire Keeper - Sep 18

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now let us talk about Ms. Cervantes’ latest YA novel, ‘the Fire Keeper’. A sequel to her earlier ‘Storm Runner’, ‘Fire Keeper’ is the Mesoamerican myths given the Riordan treatment, and-?

And here is the thing. ‘The Storm Runner’ had been a bad imitation of Riordan’s own ‘Lightning Thief’, his very first PJ novel ever. Ms. Cervantes’ novel replaced the mother with a dog, which made ‘Storm Runner’ a disturbing imitation of ‘the Lightning Thief’, as we have discussed it back in the past. The fact that Ms. Cervantes added some sort of a ‘shallow beautiful people are bad’ subplot only distorted her ‘Storm Runner’ further, making it an even more grotesque version of Riordan’s PJ novels at that time. And now it is the turn of ‘the Fire Keeper’. How is it holding up?

It is built less along the lines of Riordan’s PJ and friends novels, and more along the lines of his ‘Kane Chronicles’ trilogy. That trilogy is something of an odd duck in itself – somehow Riordan decided that Greco-Roman and Egyptian magics do not mix in a good way, and so the demigods of the former and the magicians of the latter must be kept separately; the only contact should be the Kane siblings themselves with Percy and Annabeth because of course it’s Percy and Annabeth. By contrast, the Greco-Roman crowd, (yes, primarily Percy and Annabeth again, but still), seems to be mixing freely with team Norse, (led by Magnus Chase and co) without any fallout. What gives?

One theory is that Mr. Riordan is running out of steam on a personal level and is relying on ghost writers to keep him going; as his own next novel – ‘the Tyrant’s Tomb’ – is supposed to hit the shelves later in fall 2019, we’ll have to look over and see. However, even if his own work is running out of steam, the ‘Rick Riordan Presents’ series is keeping on going. Yes, it is a more heterogeneous series than people, including Riordan himself, probably like – ‘Sal and Gabi Break the Universe’ is great, Ms. Chokshi’s ‘Aru Shah’ series is something else, (and we’ve discussed them at length in the past), and Ms. Cervantes’ Mesoamerican – pardon me, Maya – series isn’t very good; ‘the Fire Keeper’ in particular seems to be rushed in a forced sort of things; it still imitates Riordan’s own novels, just in a less specific manner.

Of course, on the other hand, we had Mr. Lee’s ‘Dragon Pearl’ YA novel, which tried to conflate a ‘Star-Trek-like’ sci-fi world with Korean mythology, and the result was kind of meh, not very good, certainly Mr. Lee didn’t return to the ‘Rick Riordan Presents’ series, and more importantly, ‘Dragon Pearl’ seems to have broken something; the first novels of Ms. Chokshi and Ms. Cervantes, as well as the ‘Dragon Pearl’ itself were very much advertised; the following novels, starting with the first ‘Sal and Gabi’ novel – not so much. Officially, the ‘Rick Riordan Presents’ series is planned-out all the way into the year 2020; unofficially, we just have to wait and see what develops. So far, it is a mixed bag and how it will turn out in the future is anyone’s guess.

...Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!