Thursday 18 July 2019

Tome Thursday: The Staff of Serapis


Hello everyone!

Time to continue on with what we started last week, although I only just realized that the finishing sequence of this trilogy will have to wait for JUST a little.

But before I get into that, let's head back into the world of mythos, shall we?

We're dealing with the Greeks and the Egyptians here, and if this sounds like something Blood & Treasure might have cooked up, or even straight out of history with the way Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and made it his personal province, well, you'd be right.

A lot of things you read in books have already happened throughout history, and NOTHING is weirder than actual history, let me tell you.

... There's actually nothing weirder than having huge gods run around with crocodile heads, but if people believed that and it kept them happy, I suppose we can't really argue against it, can we?

Last week, the boys got their adventure in the books.

This week it's girl time, since The Staff of Serapis is all about girl power.
The link to last week's post can be found down at the bottom of this page.

The Son of Sobek covered how Percy Jackson met Carter Kane and the two of them teamed up to take down a ginormous crocodile that was terrorising Long Island, only to discover that someone had purposely made it big by way of a golden necklace. Then the two exchanged hieroglyphs and went separate ways.

In The Staff of Serapis, we catch up with the female parts of this equation.

Annabeth Chase is going home after a failed internship interview and giving herself a pep talk when she sees a weird monster that has a wolf head and a lion head. Since she's on the subway and can't really go all nuclear on this thing, she decides to do what she does best.

Improvise, aka talk to the two heads and distract them from killing any innocent civilians on scene.

Little does she know, however, that it's going to take more than sympathy to get rid of this thing.

She goes after the monster once they're off the subway and attacks it with her knife, to no real effect except getting herself poisoned, and then we have another special appearance.

Sadie Kane is there to save the day - or make it more complicated, whichever suits you most - and she cures Annabeth as well as explains she'd been tracking the two-headed thing for a while, plus that it looks like it needs head number three.

It's a monster, obviously.

The third head is a dog head, a Labrador, that looks the cutest but is actually the deadliest, since people usually don't want to take out something cute and cuddly.

The two girls team up and head after the thing while talking about their respective worlds, aka the Greek Gods are enjoying their time up above Empire State Building, and the Egyptian Gods are still kinda sulky that Ra's made some sort of comeback even if he's not technically king, just ...

Yeah. It's complicated.

They come to an abandoned building where the monster has managed to drag itself, and not only do they find said monster, but they land themselves right in front of Serapis, a god.

Let's explain.

This dude was a minor deity that didn't get much foot traffic until the Ptolemaic dynasty inherited Egypt after Alexander the Great died. That's when he rose to prominence and now wants to recapture his fallen glory by destroying both Greeks AND Egyptians.

The two girls exchange looks, decide that a dude with a flower pot is probably not the best candidate for King of the Cosmos, and go in for the kill.

Annabeth pretends to be an acolyte so she can distract Serapis while Sadie works her magic in the corner, frantically scribbling away (I always found it hilarious how they had to do chalk drawings in the middle of a fight). So while Serapis is busy getting the building tossed on his head, the two girls manage to figure out a way to prevent him from getting hold of the three-headed monster (which is actually the staff mentioned in the title) and destroy both the would-be King AND the three heads.

Regardless how cute the dog is.

Being smart cookies, the two figure out someone's been whispering in the gods' ears and nudging them into action, since the staff was separated for a reason back in the day, and Sadie has a dark suspicion of who it could be.

Also, why did the boys just exchange hieroglyphs again? The girls do one better and go for actual phone numbers, promising to call each other if there's another similar issue and then go separate ways (although I'm here thinking how come the two supposedly "smart" girls didn't remember that cell phone activity attracts trouble like a magnet?).

Something else is cooking on the horizon.

But to find out just what it is, you'll have to wait a little. I'm taking a bit of a break and the conclusion of this series, The Crown of Ptolemy, won't be up until the beginning of August. I promise you it'll be good, however!

xx
*image not mine

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