This seems more than a little late, but Hyperion has finally released the cover art, title, and plot description for Rick Riordan's third and final Kane Chronicles book. According to Barnes and Noble, The Serpent's Shadow will be released on May 1, 2012 and will look like this:
Here's the publisher's plot description:
He's b-a-a-ack! Despite their best efforts, Carter and Sadie Kane can't seem to keep Apophis, the chaos snake, down. Now Apophis is threatening to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and the Kanes are faced with the impossible task of having to destroy him once and for all. Unfortunately, the magicians of the House of Life are on the brink of civil war, the gods are divided, and the young initiates of Brooklyn House stand almost alone against the forces of chaos. The Kanes' only hope is an ancient spell that might turn the serpent's own shadow into a weapon, but the magic has been lost for a millennia. To find the answer they need, the Kanes must rely on the murderous ghost of a powerful magician who might be able to lead them to the serpent's shadow... or might lead them to their deaths in the depths of the underworld.
Nothing less than the mortal world is at stake when the Kane family fulfills its destiny in this thrilling conclusion to the Kane Chronicles.
You can read a (poorly formatted) snippet of the first chapter here. Enjoy!
Ugh: Megan told me that a second Percy Jackson and the Olympians movie was in the works, thanks to healthier-than-expected (or justified) international numbers for the first film, but I was hoping she was wrong. Sadly, she wasn't.
It's not due out until March of 2013... but that's nowhere near enough time for me to get over how indescribably dreadful the first movie was. Give it another decade, guys. Or better yet, just try again, with age-appropriate actors, a sharper director, and a way, way, way better script.
Poseidon's Fish Market: Rick Riordan is coming to Olympia!
When I hear about really, seriously, insanely cool book-related events, they always seem to be happening thousands of miles away. But not today, dear readers. Today I am informed that Rick Riordan—one of my very favorite YA authors—is coming to my hometown for an incredible-sounding event that is free, open to the public, totally awesome, and within walking distance of my house. If I was the kind of person who bought lottery tickets, I'd be heading out to the store right now, because clearly my luck is in.
NPR's Morning Edition recently aired a story about "multi-platform" children's books, focusing largely on our beloved 39 Clues series. Personally, we think the literary gimmick is tough to get right, so it's a little disappointing (although not at all surprising) to hear that publishers are planning to run this new format straight into the ground.
Note: Today's book review will appear on the main site.
Now that one buzz-worthy summer release is behind us, it's time to move on to the next. The final book in the 39 Clues series comes out next week. Behold:
Fans of this series know that only a fraction of the 39 clues have been discovered by the main characters in the books. The rest have only been available online and via the collectible cards included in the books. I've been far too lazy to investigate these alternative options, which is why I'm hoping that this sucker connects the many, many dots I haven't figured out myself:
Yes, dear readers, the end is not the end... at least, not while they can still squeeze $12.99 out of you. The 39 Clues: The Black Book of Buried Secrets comes out in October, and I trust it will do most of my thinking for me.
Maybe if it's good enough, I'll begin to consider forgiving them for that movie.
Well, this is just all kinds of awesome. Hyperion has posted the book cover, release date, and plot summary for the first book in Rick Riordan's "Heroes of Olympus" series. Behold The Lost Hero, coming out on October 12th:
"After saving Olympus from the evil Titan lord, Kronos, Percy and friends have rebuilt their beloved Camp Half-Blood, where the next generation of demigods must now prepare for a chilling prophecy of their own:
Seven half-bloods shall answer the call, To storm or fire the world must fall. An oath to keep with a final breath, And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.
Now, in a brand-new series from blockbuster best-selling author Rick Riordan, fans return to the world of Camp Half-Blood. Here, a new group of heroes will inherit a quest. But to survive the journey, they'll need the help of some familiar demigods."
Well, dear readers, I saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland over the weekend, and the best thing I can say about it is that it's probably best that the horrors of the Percy Jackson movie are still so fresh in my mind. It's not that the Alice movie was good, but everything looks better in comparison.
Burton's film had its strengths. The casting was solid, and I thought the actress playing Alice was great. (I've heard complaints that she was too detached, but found them groundless. She's supposed to be English, after all. That's not detachment, it's phlegm.) I approved of the fact that they were making a continuation rather than a straight adaptation, as the original text has never translated well to film, and I enjoyed the movie's early scenes depicting Alice's life in the real world.
Unfortunately, things went way downhill once Alice stepped into Wonderland. The movie turned into just another poorly-written fantasy adventure, complete with a climactic battle scene between a sword-waving hero and a slavering monster. (And what was up with giving the Jabberwocky a generic dragon vibe? Was Tenniel's eel-on-steroids version not scary enough?) The conflict between the too-cute-to-be-truly evil Red Queen and prancing White Queen was meaningless, and I have never found CGI battle scenes even remotely compelling.
But as I said: I'm currently grading all movies on a curve that features Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which means that I'd have to give Alice in Wonderland a solid B-. It wasn't anything close to what I'd hoped for, but—thanks to Chris Columbus and the dread Dr. Titley—I now know that it could have been so much worse.
I don't think that was why the audience was shouting "Blasphemy!"
Oh. My.
Nathan sent me an interview with Craig Titley, the screenwriter for the truly unspeakable Percy Jackson movie. In it, Mr. Titley reflects on the way his recent PhD in mythology changed his screenwriting, making it: "a deeper, smarter, more confident level of writing".
I'll let those of you who've seen the Percy Jackson movie have a moment to take that in. For the rest of you, treasure this quote:
"There was an early draft of the script where I address [the issue of Athena having a daughter]. Perseus is first at the camp and discovering that the gods are alive and well and have kids and he meets Athena’s daughter. He's like “Wait a second, how can you be Athena’s daughter? She’s a virgin goddess? What happened?” And she says “The Sixties.” Which was my solution to that whole problem, but that didn’t make the final cut so now there’s no explanation. And me and my whole class—and you—will be going "Wait a second! This is impossible!"
...um, that would make Annabeth at least forty years old, dude.
One day, you walk to the store and buy a chocolate chip cookie. You've noticed in the past that this store's baker isn't very good, so you worry that maybe the cookie will be too dry, or he'll use imitation vanilla or fake chocolate chips or something, but you still want to try it. After all, it's a chocolate chip cookie, and how badly could anyone screw that up?
But then you bite into the cookie, and you realize that—surprise!—the baker replaced all the flour in the recipe with talcum powder, and the thing you're eating is actually totally inedible. It might look like a cookie at first glance, but that's as far as it goes.
That's how I felt about Chris Columbus's "adaptation" of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which I had the misfortune of seeing this weekend. I have so many complaints I'm not sure where to begin, but I guess the cookie metaphor above comes close—I shelled out $7.25 to watch something that bore only a cursory resemblance to what I had to come to see.
I went in with concerns: Columbus had made some early calls that I thought were weird, including bumping up the three main characters' ages by several years, and I've seen the first two Harry Potter movies, so I knew he was a pedestrian director at best. But you know what? None of that stuff mattered, because everything about this movie was so bad that the things I had thought was going to irritate me didn't even register. Entire chunks of the plot were either heavily altered or completely re-written. Major scenes in the book—all of Percy's early time at camp, the fight on the St. Louis arch, the scene in the water park—were chopped out, and replaced with a generic road trip based on an entirely new storyline. Characters were removed (including Mr. D, Ares, and Clarisse), and new ones appear—Persephone shows up out of the blue, somehow transformed from Riordan's empty-headed Goddess of Spring into a voluptuous vixen in a black lace corset who hits on Grover and plays a major role in the final conflict.
Seriously, with all that, how could I be irritated over stuff like Columbus's decision to rewrite his heroine—blonde, level-headed, 12-year-old Annabeth—as a short-tempered, sword-swinging brunette played by a 23-year-old actress? Not that it mattered, as all of Annabeth's character development was condensed down to looking hot while playing with her sword and staring soulfully at Percy. Any actress between the ages of 15 and 25 with two working arms and the ability to look good in a leather breastplate could have played this role. (And I'm not even going to start on the way that she rarely wore a helmet during the camp training scenes—sure, everybody else was wearing one, and she's the daughter of the goddess of military strategy, but what does that matter? She might have gotten helmet hair!)
Don't see this movie. Don't tell yourself that will be okay because your expectations are already low. Trust me, they aren't low enough. I watched this movie with eight people, ages 11 to 31, and not one of us had anything good to say about it. Most of us were too upset to articulate anything beyond: "GYAH! That was so... so... BAD! I mean... GYAH!" It took more than an hour for us to calm down enough to wonder if Columbus had actually read the book, or if he'd just based his movie on a description from a friend. We debated what it would take to make us feel better (answer: our money back, followed by a personal apology from all parties involved), and discussed the fact that Columbus had removed all of the plot points that connected this book to its sequels, and wondered if that meant that he'd known he was making something too terrible to succeed...
...but I'm betting he didn't. If there's anything I learned from this movie, it is to never underestimate the delusions of Hollywood. If they could take a book chock-full of charm, humor, and cinema-friendly action sequences and make something this terrible out of it, they are definitely crazy enough to hope it will be a major box-office success.
Well, they've released another Percy Jackson and the Olympians trailer:
*sigh* I laughed at the pen line, but otherwise it just looks so hokey. Also, I find myself totally distracted by that kid's emo take on Zac Efron's hair.
And I know I've already complained about this, but why are the actors so old? I seriously want to know (i.e., this isn't just my normal sulkiness over bad casting). Is it because they're combining the whole series into one movie? Because the characters are supposed to age from eleven to sixteen over the course of five books, and if they're making five movies... well, those actors will be thinking seriously about their retirement benefits by the time the series is over.
Publishers Weekly recently interviewed Rick Riordan about his upcoming book The Kane Chronicles: The Red Pyramid, the first story in a middle-grade fantasy series about two siblings—the descendants of Egyptian magicians—who battle a group of ancient gods suddenly released into the present.
I'm sorry, but this plot description sounds like Riordan simply fused elements of his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series with bits of The 39 Clues (a series that he both outlined and contributed the first book to) and called it a day. Normally, I'd take issue with the idea of a new series that has so many similarities to his previous ones... but I can't help myself: I like both of his earlier storylines so much that I'm looking forward to this book like Christmas morning.
Note: There's a link in the article that confirms Mr. Riordan is planning a sequel to the Percy Jackson books, for those of you who've been fretting over that.
