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Rick Riordan's The Hammer of Thor is a Norse myth adventure for 10 year olds where a goat in a trench coat has a tip about Thor's missing weapon.
It's the second Magnus Chase book and it follows on from the first, so this is one to read in order.
Magnus is already dead. (That isn't a spoiler, he tells you so on the first page of book one.) He lives in a luxury hotel for fallen warriors now, where the buffet is fought to the death and so is the croquet.
His friend Sam asks to meet him for coffee about a matter of life and death. She's a Valkyrie with an axe on her belt, flying lessons and a pile of physics homework. Then she's called away to collect a soul and leaves Magnus with the bill.
Her informant turns up anyway. Otis is one of Thor's goats, in a porkpie hat and sunglasses, and very keen to tell you about his therapist. He's heard where Thor's hammer might be. If the giants find out it's gone, they'll invade.
Then an axe flies out of nowhere and Otis is gone before he can finish his warning.
Don't worry too much about Otis. Thor eats his goats for dinner every night and brings them back every morning, which tells you plenty about the tone!
What follows is a rooftop chase with Magnus's sword, Jack, who fights on his own and sings Shake It Off with the wrong words. A masked attacker tells Magnus to stay away from Provincetown. Back at the hotel, the new arrival on his corridor has wrecked a room and run over his feet as a cheetah.
It reads like a very silly sitcom with real worry underneath. A wolf howls across the park and Magnus is fourteen again, on the night his mum died. And the attacker asks him a horrible question. Is he ready to lose his friends?
Death is a running joke here. The warriors at the hotel kill each other for sport and are back in time for dinner, and Otis coughs blood before he goes.
There's one grim line about how the god Loki is tied up and a sprinkle of Old Norse swearing. Magnus is sixteen, so some of the humour is pitched older. If your reader loves cartoon battles and a narrator with a comeback for everything, they'll probably have a great time.
If they haven't met Magnus yet, start them on The Sword of Summer. That's where a homeless Boston boy pulls a rusty blade out of the Charles River and a fire giant comes looking for it.
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