The Sword of Summer

The Sword of Summer

U.S. cover of first edition
Author	Rick Riordan
Cover artist	John Rocco
Country	United States
Series	Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (bk 1)
Genre	Fantasy, Norse mythology, Young adult
Publisher	Disney Hyperion
Publication date	October 6, 2015
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback), audiobook, e-book
Pages	528 pp.
ISBN	978-1423160915
Followed by	The Hammer of Thor

The Sword of Summer is the first novel in the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy, written by American author Rick Riordan. It is a fantasy novel based on Norse mythology. It was released on October 6, 2015 by Disney•Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. It is narrated in the first-person view by Magnus Chase, 16-year-old demigod and homeless orphan.^[1] After his death and arrival in the Norse afterlife, Magnus discovers that he is the son of the Norse deity, Frey, and must stop Fenris Wolf from escaping his prison and ending the world.

The Sword of Summer has appeared on the New York Times children's Best Seller list and the USA Today Best Seller list. Reviewers such as Publishers Weekly have praised the book, saying, "Riordan plays much of the material for laughs...and brings the Norse gods into the 21st century... The sensibility is right in line with the Percy Jackson novels, and the audience will be just as large."^[2]

A sequel, The Hammer of Thor was released on October 4, 2016.^[3]

Development

During Riordan's book tour for The House of Hades, he announced that he was writing a Norse mythology series that would take place in Boston. He also stated that his plans for the setting were unrelated to his recent move to the city, although living in Boston made researching for the series less difficult.^[4] On September 23, 2014, Riordan broadcast a webcast from the Empire State Building and announced the name of the series: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.^[5] The title of the first book, The Sword of Summer, was revealed in the final page of The Blood of Olympus. On June 18, 2015, the cover and the second chapter were released on USA Today.^[6] The first five chapters were revealed on September 28, 2015.^[7] To prepare readers for the new book, Riordan posted images of Norse vocabulary words on his Twitter account starting August 28, 2015, along with the hashtag #norsecrashcourse. Words such as Valhalla, Ragnarok, and Yggdrasil were all included and defined.^[8]

In the months preceding The Sword of Summer's publication, Disney-Hyperion and Rick Riordan advertised even more heavily for the new book. Riordan embarked on a tour across the U.S., speaking to hundreds of fans on each stop of his tour.^{[9][10][11][12]} An online myth-writing competition was sponsored by Scholastic just before the novel's publication, with the grand prize of a "virtual visit" from Rick Riordan.^[13] Finally, Riordan signed 10,000 copies of The Sword of Summer, to be distributed on Black Friday at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide, as yet another massive advertising campaign.^[14]

Plot

The novel opens on January 13, the sixteenth birthday of the protagonist Magnus Chase. Magnus has been living on the streets of Boston since his mother Natalie's death two years ago, alone except for his friends Blitz and Hearth. He is awakened to find his family unexpectedly searching for him. Overhearing them discuss his uncle Randolph sending them to find him, he breaks into Randolph's house to look for answers, only to be found by Randolph himself. Randolph drives Magnus to Longfellow Bridge and attempts to explain that the Norse not only visited the Boston area in medieval times, but actually believed it the location of their mythological center of the world (the "world tree", Yggdrasil). He also claims that Magnus's father was a Norse god. At the bridge, Magnus is astonished to be able to magically retrieve an ancient sword (Sumarbrander, or the "Sword of Summer") hidden in Boston Harbor. A fire giant known as Surt appears demanding the sword, and begins to destroy the bridge. Magnus attacks Surt to allow other pedestrians time to escape. As he realizes that he is about to die, he manages to wound the demon and hurl the two of them off the bridge. He dies on impact with the water.

Magnus awakens in a place called Hotel Valhalla, the Norse afterlife for the honorable dead (einherjar), where he is told he will now reside forever, training for the day of Ragnarök (the world's end). He is introduced to a Valkyrie named Sam who brought him to Valhalla, and to his new einherjar roommates. During Magnus's welcome feast, the three Norns themselves pronounce Magnus a son of Frey and deliver an important prophecy, but the hotel's ruling council still deems Magnus an unworthy einherjar. Unable to punish Magnus, they banish Sam the Valkyrie.

That night, Magnus's friends Hearth and Blitz arrive and introduce themselves as an elf and dwarf, respectively, who have been secretly protecting Magnus. They convince him to look for Sumarbrander in Boston and escape the hotel with him. Shortly thereafter, the trio make a temporary truce with Sam to find the sword. The group then meets with the god Mimir, who tasks them with finding the Sword before Surt and bringing it to the island of the Fenris Wolf. They retrieve the sword from the sea goddess Ran with help from a giant king, Utgard-Loki, and journey to Nidavellir. There Magnus learns a great deal about his companions' difficult pasts, and retrieves a new binding for Fenrir. After a detour to Jotunheim, where they help the god Thor and Magnus discovers new magical powers, they return to Boston. Magnus experiences dream-visions of Loki, and once even of the goddess Hel, who offers to reunite him with his late mother—a proposal he struggles to refuse.

They finally arrive at the island of the Fenris Wolf. Despite being attacked by a group of Valkyries, some of their own hallmates, and Surt, they successfully rebind the wolf. The battle is finally won once the Valhalla residents choose to change sides, though the Valkyries are killed and Magnus nearly dies from the effort of healing Halfborn Gunderson. He has a brief vision of his father Frey before returning to Hotel Valhalla to stand trial for his disobedience. Before he can be punished, however, Magnus's hallmate X stands and reveals himself to be the god Odin, in disguise. Odin rewards each of the heroes in turn, finally offering Magnus a chance to leave Valhalla for a different afterlife or even the mortal world. Magnus declines, and returns to Boston to speak with his cousin Annabeth. They scatter Magnus's mother's ashes in the Blue Hills south of Boston, one of his mother's favorite places, and exchange stories of each other's lives as demigods.

The novel ends with an epilogue, in which Uncle Randolph is punished by Loki for not being able to stop Magnus from rebinding Fenrir. Loki implies that Randolph's family will be in danger if the man does not cooperate.^[1]

Prophecy

The prophecy that was given to Magnus by the Norns reads:

Wrongly chosen, wrongly slain,
A hero Valhalla cannot contain.
Nine days hence the sun must go east,
Ere Sword of Summer unbinds the beast.^[1]

The first line of the prophecy was initially taken as confirmation that Magnus was unfit for duty as an einherjar; later, Odin interprets it to mean that Loki chose the wrong hero to manipulate. The second line refers to how Magnus manages to leave Valhalla despite claims that the hotel is impossible to escape. The final two lines describe how Jack (Sumarbrander) was fated to free Fenris, and how the one day of the year where Fenris can be reached by a mortal would happen exactly nine days from the time the prophecy was given.^[1]

Characters

• Magnus Chase - A 16-year-old son of Frey who dies in the first few chapters but becomes an einherjar. He is Annabeth Chase's cousin, but last saw her when he was very young. He has healing and regeneration powers, resistance to extreme temperatures, and other magical abilities. As a human, he was asthmatic and weak, but gains extreme strength and endurance after his death.^[1]
• Samirah Al-Abbas (Sam) - The Valkyrie who brought Magnus to Hotel Valhalla. A daughter of Loki, she emigrated from Iraq with her family and is descended from a medieval Arab traveler and historian who wrote an important account about living among the Vikings. She is stripped of her powers as a Valkyrie as a result of her choice to make Magnus an einherjar, but is reinstated by Odin himself. She is a practicing Muslim. She is a shapeshifter and carries an ax and a green hijab, which doubles as a camouflage cloak. She is engaged to her second cousin, Amir Fadlan, who works in a falafel shop.^[1]
• Hearthstone (Hearth) - A friend of Magnus. He is an alf (elf). He is deaf-mute, but speaks Alf Sign Language and can read lips. He had an abusive childhood, with parents who disliked him because of his disabilities. In exchange for working for Mimir, he received the ability to work rune magic.^[1]
• Blitzen (Blitz) - Another friend of Magnus, a svartalf (dwarf). He is the son of Freya. He and Hearth watched over Magnus while he was living in the streets. Blitz's father was killed by Fenris when he was a child, after an attempt to replace the Fenris Wolf's bindings. Blitz is unskilled at crafting (unusual for dwarves) but is a master fashion advisor. He, like Hearth, once worked for Mimir.^[1]
• Gunilla - The former head Valkyrie and daughter of Thor; extremely dedicated and experienced. She is killed by Surt at the end of the book.^[1]
• Mallory Keen - One of Magnus' hallmates; a red-haired woman who speaks with an Irish accent and is said to have died attempting to disarm a car bomb. She has a crush on Halfborn Gunderson.^[1]
• Thomas Jefferson, Jr. (TJ) - One of Magnus' hallmates; an African-American native of Boston and a Union soldier in the American Civil War. A son of Tyr and a woman who fled slavery, TJ arrived at Valhalla in 1863 after dying in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina.^[1]
• Halfborn Gunderson - One of Magnus' hallmates, who died during a Viking invasion of England in medieval times. He has a PhD. in German literature.^[1]
• X/Odin - A half-troll that is one of Magnus' hallmates, X is later revealed to be Odin in disguise, in order to inspect the einherjar without them knowing. Sam brought X to Valhalla when he died dismantling a dog-fighting ring. He is called X because his real name is difficult to pronounce.^[1]
• Jack/Sumarbrander - The title character of the book (Sumerbrander is Norse for "sword of summer"), a magic sword that can talk and once belonged to Frey until he gave it up and lost its allegiance. Magnus retrieved it from Boston Harbor, won its allegiance, and nicknamed it Jack. Jack occasionally speaks in Spanish and uses slang. He can take the form of a pendant and move on his own.^[1]

Publication

It was released on October 6, 2015 with a first printing of 2.5 million hardcover copies in the U.S..^[15] Many publishers in other countries - including Puffin Books in the UK - released hardcover editions on October 6, or shortly thereafter.^[16] Ebook editions were published worldwide on the same date, available through the print edition publishers or ebook distributors such as Kindle.^[16] An audiobook was released October 6 by Listening Library in the U.S., with a similar edition released by Penguin Random House Audio in the UK. An audiobook in German was released in 2016.^[16]

To date, editions have been published in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Polish, Turkish, Dutch, Bulgarian, and Finnish. The majority of foreign-language editions have been published with the same U.S. cover art, but a few boast unique illustrations not done by illustrator John Rocco.^[16]

Reception

The Sword of Summer has been very well received since its publication. Maggie Reagan of Booklist admonished readers and booksellers to "buy extra copies, and prepare for the siege. ...Riordan has the magic touch..."^[17] It debuted as number one on the New York Times Children's Middle Grade Hardcover Best Sellers list and has remained there for 36 weeks as of June 30, 2016.^[18][19] It was also #3 on Amazon's best-selling Children's Books list for 2015.^[20] School Library Journal explained why with its comment: "With an epic plot, engaging (and diverse) characters, and tons of wise-cracking humor, Riordan’s latest is a page turner. ...fans of his previous works will [also] be happy to see clever nods and references to the other in-universe books."^[21] While reviewer Jody Mitori said Riordan's pop culture "references may date the book in years to come", she went on to assert that "for now, they make the trek entertaining".^[22] Among overall children's book sales in 2015, The Sword of Summer did very well, but was not a "big front-runner" among other bestselling books.^[23]

The Sword of Summer has been praised especially as an excellent example of a Riordan novel. Kirkus Reviews, for example, wrote, "First there were the Greek gods, then the Egyptian gods, then the Roman gods—now Riordan takes on the Norse gods. ...A fast-paced, eventful, and largely successful pivot."^[24] More specific aspects of the novel have also been noted by critics. Author Cassandra Clare's review, praised "Riordan's effervescent world-building", in addition to the novel's humor and breakneck plot.^[1] Author Michael Grant lauded the novel as "a propulsive, kinetic, witty rebooting of Norse mythology with all the charm of the Percy Jackson novels."^[1] Kidsreads's review praised the characters and their development, saying "Magnus Chase feels fresh and exciting" even with its oft-used mythological themes.^[25]

A few reviews—most notably Adam Gopnik's in The New York Times—have expressed disappointment at the novel's failing to rise above Riordan's previous work, however.^[22][26][27] Gopnik's review acknowledged the difficulties modern-myth authors like Riordan face in writing for a young audience; such as the "required" action scenes, fantastic powers, and drama; but went on to question Riordan's inadequate portrayal of "the special quiddity that separates Norse mythology from other kinds...its fatalism". A similar review from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asserted that "at nearly 500 pages, Sword of Summer is too long" and loses some of its charm from the overuse of "quests-within-a-quest".^[22] While Gopnik and others accept The Sword of Summer as of passable quality and certain to appeal to many readers, Gopnik summarizes their views in his review's concluding lines: "The marvels of myth Riordan recreates here as before; the mystery of myth remains unactualized in his work or, sadder and more likely, unasked for by his time."^[27]

On a more positive note, some critics appreciated Riordan's new turn towards multiculturalism.^[28][29][30] Other reviewers have shown interest in Riordan's choice to kill his main character and other signs of his newest story being more mature than the famous Percy Jackson & the Olympians.^[29][30] Kirkus praised Riordan's interesting choice to make the main female protagonist, Samirah al-Abbas, happily betrothed—and thus "blessedly free of romantic tension" with Magnus.^[24]

References