Title:  The Red Pyramid
Author:  Rick Riordan
Format:  Hardcover
Pages:  516
Genre:  Fantasy/Young adult/Children's
Series #:  1 of ??
Read:  2010

Rating:  A

Description (from BN.com):  Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane.

One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a "research experiment" at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.

Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them —Set— has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe - a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The opening book of Rick Riordan's new Egyptian mythology series (The Kane Chronicles) has everything you'd want in a first book.  There's a great plot, interesting characters, and a satisfying conclusion, as well as unsolved mysteries and cliffhangers to get you excited for the following books.

Riordan's style of writing and extensive research on mythology work together brilliantly to create an amazing world within our world.  That's one of the reasons I loved his Percy Jackson & the Olympians series.  Everything just seems so much more believable and real because Riordan builds on what we already know.

There was one little moment in the story that I loved so much, I had to put the book down and share it with my whole family.  It was a brief conversation between Sadie, Carter, and their uncle Amos, during which Amos makes an allusion to the Empire State Building and the gods of Riordan's original series.  It was just an extremely small crossover between the series, but one that I loved and (crosses fingers) might possibly foreshadow an even bigger crossover later on.  I cannot wait to see what happens in the next book in May!  A