Review: #786
Title: Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead
Series: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - 3rd and final book
Author: Rick Riordan
Comments: The Ship of the Dead is the third and final book in the series, which crosses over with the Percy Jackson series (he even appears early on along with Annabeth). Magnus teams up with his friends and goes on a quest to defeat Loki, all this as the deadline looms. Yes, this is a typical Rick Riordan novel and this is the biggest flaw, it does not do anything new. The plot structure has been done 10+ times already, with extremely similar themes and no plot twists anymore. The humor is better but still heavily reliant on contemporary pop culture and feels forced a lot of the times in a misguided effort to be “relevant”. There is too much fluff, padding out the novel, it could have benefited from tighter and more ruthless editing as the author spends literally pages describing things that does not add anything to the story. Nevertheless, this is a solid finale with interesting encounters with different Norse gods. The climax was underwhelming and Loki seemed to have been defeated much too easily, a far cry from previous series. While some of the characters never seem to grow on you, the journey was enjoyable.
Rating: 6.5/10