The Son of Sobek

Rick Riordan's The Son of Sobek is a monster story for 11 year olds about the day Carter Kane got swallowed by a crocodile and met Percy Jackson.

What happens

Carter tells it himself. He's a magician from Brooklyn, out on Long Island to check reports of a swamp monster. His sister Sadie is away training, so he goes alone (always a mistake in these books).

The monster turns out to be a crocodile big enough to gulp him down whole. He's saved from being digested by a teenager in an orange camp T-shirt who pokes it in the rump with a glowing sword.

Do they thank each other? Absolutely not. They fight instead. Carter punches the stranger out of his shoes with a magic fist by accident, and the stranger answers with a wall of water.

Part of the fun is that they almost speak the same language. Both of them know about gods and monsters, but every word is slightly wrong. One says Duat and nome. The other says demigod, Cyclopes and Tartarus. Carter compares it to chatting to people in Scotland who are definitely speaking English.

There's a lovely moment worth talking about with your reader too. Percy calls Carter a half-blood, and Carter hears it as a nasty comment about his mixed-race family. Percy meant something else entirely (demigod), and the mix-up is handled with a light touch.

Then comes the monster fight, and it's glorious. The croc bites a Prius in half. A gang of local kids charges it with water balloons and Super Soakers. Carter's best move is a half-made wax hippo that ends up wedged in the croc's nostril.

Afterwards the two boys eat cheeseburgers in a diner. Percy offers to pay and finds only a pen in his pocket.

Carter's voice is the big pleasure. He's funny about his own disasters and quick to admit when Percy is the better swordsman. There's real fighting too, and Carter gets a bad cut to the wrist, but it's all told with a grin.

It's written for readers who already know one boy or the other. If yours has read Percy's books, this is a brilliant first look at Carter's world. If they know Carter, they'll enjoy watching him meet someone who can move a whole river.

What to read next

Either way, the natural next step is The Red Pyramid, where Carter and Sadie tell their own story from the beginning. It opens in London on the night their dad blows up the British Museum.