Jesse > Recent Status Updates

No it really was that obvious that it was Amos! Lol. Idk exactly how all of this is going to play out but I’m sure that it’s gonna be a cliffhanger and we have a lot of casualties so far.

lol wait is set inside Zia??

Sadie, a 12 yr old girl, being horny for Anubis, who is written down to a young at heart teenage God of repose, is kind of weird. But—there is something inherently sleazy in my mind (and I doubt that I’m the only one) in the “traditional” horny male POV. We don’t read Carter describing Zia the same way, and there are multiple (good) reasons for that.

The book is STRONGLY hinting that defeating Set is not the be all and end all of the Kane children—that they will have to work together with Set alongside the rest of the pantheon to overcome the primordial Apophis. I’m not as familiar with Egyptian mythology as I am with Greek, but this tracks in my mind with what I vaguely recall (and is thematically aligned with the ending of PJ5).

Carter’s most interesting character beat is a question of race. He has his own idea of what it means to be of African descent as it was taught to him by his father and how he has experienced it while traveling, coming to a bit of a head with the airline security officer. It’s a facet of POV that is absent in Sadie’s narration. She talks about mixed-race a little, but only as a list of things that other her.

Now that we are getting into the Gods inhabiting individuals (like Horus and Isis) we are getting more into the meat of the setting. I like that the book throws out Desjardin as a red herring when the whole “family” dynamic and messy replaying of conflicts all but ensure that Amos is going to be the avatar of Set. Also not sure what Bast’s deal is. I’m sure that there are a lot of “rules” to come.

Spend 50 pages or so around the first Nome, Iskander dies, and it’s predictably unsafe with Clearly Bad Guy Desjardin looking to kill the Kane kids. Also, now Zia is an ordered enemy. Yawn. Part of the strength of Harry Potter is in being able to marinate in the setting. The thrill ride pacing of Riordan books has its perks but it’s not satisfying in the same way.

Ohhh right Osiris and Set are brothers and Julius is Osiris’s host. Duuurrrrr I wonder where his brother Amos is, surely he’s not working as the host of Set or anything

The Kane kids are on a breakneck crash course through Egyptian mythology, just like Percy Jackson. Functionally, it means single characters are brought in during the daring dash to be really cool and then disappear in quick succession. Hopefully Zia sticks around longer than the others. A lot of the Kane dynamic is both siblings pulling the “I had SO MUCH worse a time!!” which is understandable if annoying.

It was initially refreshing but Sadie is already like 100% into this Egyptian insanity and you would hardly know that her and Carter have been separated for most of their aware childhoods. At the very least, the attitude of this branch of the Jackson mythos toward its gods is very different, classifying them more as forces of nature rather than the lovable Grecian scamps.

So I appreciate the delivery of this book over the Percy Jackson series mostly because it has a tad bit more weight to it. The “recording” framing device is an artificial abstraction but Carter and Sadie give me a better point of view than “guess I’ll just roll with it” Percy, and it helps to have someone who is simultaneously a hellion and Not Actually Down For Egyptian Shenanigans (Sadie)

Here in the last fifty pages we get some semblance of conflict. Akasha meets the final coven at Louis’s behest. Now there is a philosophical debate as to her gendercidal scheme for world peace. But, there’s Mekare hanging out there. This story isn’t ending until Mekare shows up to do whatever it is she’s going to do, I’m pretty sure.

This story develops the facts surrounding the genesis of Akasha and Enkil as mentioned in the second book while weaving in the injected narrative of the redheaded twins. I guess it’s not exactly a retcon because, unlike the second book, it’s operating in the enormous blank spaces of Rice’s prehistory, but it sure smells like a retcon.

Akasha is a goddess on a crusade. Her interlude is a horrifying holy war against the male gender, a genocide of 99% of the male population as the origin for the evils of the world. This begins with Azim, the dude Pandora went to see at the beginning of the book. sUcH wOnDeRfUl ChArAcTeRs…

I am struggling to care about the vampire origin story. this book is one long lore dump.

Maharet is about to tell the tale of the twins to the remaining vampire players, but no, it’s time for a Lestat interlude. TREMENDOUS BOOING.

In a move that should surprise absolutely NO ONE, Jesse is turned into a vampire in order to save her life. You vamps didn’t see that coming?? I think that she’s also the reincarnation of the other twin sister? I think that the one who got her tongue cut out in 4kBC or whatever died, and was possibly eaten by her sister. Idk, the way in which this intersects with Akasha and Lestat is, like, eye-roll inducing.

Jesse is something like a main character. Khayman’s internal revelations at the concert don’t help to clarify. What we have now is that Maharet is one of the twins, and Akasha made her and Khayman. As to the WHY of Akasha, we still don’t know, but Khayman gives credence to the “malicious spirit” theory. My money is on, idk, I got no clue.

we are getting pretty far from Interview With the Vampire. Jesse’s story of the Great Family brings in an entire family history plotted by a vampire matriarch, like the queen bee of an entire secret society of vampires, who is almost certainly directly descended from the twins, if not one of them. It also has psychic detectives and a lot of stuff that further dilutes the first Vampire chronicle.

Rice had played the afterlife pretty ambiguously in the first two novels, less so the second. When Rice gives us a glimpse of her world’s afterlife, with Baby Jenks entering heaven and understanding the eternal love of her own mother who she had at one point despised, she invites judgment on her villainous if sympathetic vampires. I have a feeling that it is meant to undercut Lestat’s atheistic ethos.

This book begins with the insufferable Lestat explaining that he survived all of the events that followed the cliffhanger of the last book, and he’s gonna tell us how the cataclysm went down, but also he’s going to write in different points of view, and if those characters happen to think he is incredibly handsome and sexy well they said it, not him 😘 and thank god we jump off his POV ASAP.

I forgot to mention how eerily the whole Father and Mother dynamic mimics the Origin from Attack on Titan.

Rice pulls back and paints with a very broad brush when the story overlaps with Louis’s. The story gets twisted a bit here. When Lestat is at his most pathetic and beleaguered in the story it kind of makes sense, but there’s a lot of big asks when it comes to explaining away his motivations and cruelty.