The Ship of the Dead

Rick Riordan's The Ship of the Dead is a Norse myth adventure for 10 year olds that opens with Magnus Chase jumping off a very tall ship on purpose.

What happens

He's on the yardarm of an old warship in Boston Harbour because Percy Jackson told him to get up there. An hour earlier the same jump broke every bone in his body. Percy wants him to try again "with less dying".

Magnus is one of Odin's warriors at the Hotel Valhalla, so he's already dead and he dies most days in training. Half an hour later he wakes up in his own bed, good as new.

The trouble is the sea. Loki has a huge ship full of zombie warriors docked somewhere between two of the Nine Worlds. If it sails at Midsummer, Ragnarok starts and every world burns. Magnus has to find it first, and he still can't tell the mizzenmast from the poop deck.

First there's a trip to his uncle's creepy old mansion, where two wolves and a hidden notebook are waiting. Then a raven brings orders to leave RIGHT NOW. (Valhalla's ravens deliver the post by being sick, by the way.)

Magnus tells the story himself, and it's like hanging out with a friend who can't stop making jokes even when he's terrified. Chapters have titles like "I Inherit a Dead Wolf and Some Underwear". That's the vibe.

His friends are half the fun. There's Alex Fierro, a child of Loki who is sometimes he and sometimes she, and who turns into a flamingo whenever the mood takes. And there's Jack, a talking sword who spends lunch trying to chat up Percy's sword. Who knew swords had crushes?

It's worth knowing that dying is a running joke from the very first page. Magnus gets killed and comes back, Alex takes a wolf's head off with a wire, and Magnus remembers the wolves that killed his mum two years before the story starts. It's all told with a grin, but a reader bothered by death on the page might find it a lot.

This is the third Magnus Chase book and it takes for granted that you know everyone (there are a LOT of them). If your reader hasn't met Magnus yet, The Sword of Summer is where to begin.

What to read next

If it's Percy's cameo that has them hooked, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is where his own story starts. He's twelve, he's on his last warning at yet another school, and a class trip to a museum is about to go very wrong.