Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

'Cause how embarrassing would it be for your 10-year-old Little Leaguer or Girl Scout not to know to ask their little playmates for their "preferred pronoun of the day"?! Yikes! Or to seem anything but politely bored by flamboyant transgenderism, bisexuality, gay romance, cannibalism, or patricide! Yep, folks, it's all in here. It's as if an overeager Diversity Enforcement Officer held a gun to Rick Riordan's head while he was writing this. That's my only explanation for how a writer as creative and entertaining as Rick Riordan could turn out such a ludicrous, though GLBTQA (...XYZ)-approved series as this. Personally, if I was going to jam-pack all the latest in PC genderqueer sensitivity training into a series based on mythology, I would have gone with basing it in Greek mythology. Choosing Viking mythology for your backdrop?!! It turns into unintentional comedy so much that it totally backfires. Viking culture isn't famous for its, ummm, sensitivity. I don't blame Rick Riordan for trying to plant his rainbow flag on territory usually claimed by white supremacists and Aryan Nation types, though... But to make it a propaganda piece for the holiness of Islam at the same time?!!! That goes beyond forced into pure preposterous. To go from Alex Fierro's (our gender-fluid mascot/character) boring and ponderous college lectures on genderqueer terminology (which are so many, so long, and so boring that they actually slow down the plot!!) and the archaic wickedness of anybody who doesn't rejoice in that sort of thing to our Muslima Valkyrie Samirah Al Abbas instructing us on how to properly pray to Allah just made me burst into uncontrollable laughter!! Oh come on now, Rick! Where is your trademark irreverent, clever, hilarious take on every culture's mythology now? Watching Rick go to great pains to spotlight the intense nobility of every Muslim character, and to exhort the reader through Samirah's apologetics on how wonderful it is to experience the peace of the Muslim faith through prayer is an interesting experience. Don't really blame him... I wouldn't want a fatwa pronounced against me either! So, in summary, this series is without a doubt THE most awkward series I've EVER read. Rick Riordan's genius was clearly beaten up and locked away by some PC bully who gave him the impossible task of reconciling genderqueer theory and Islamic apologetics in the most hostile and unlikely of places... the cosmology of the Aryan Nation. Coming from someone who has read just about every Rick Riordan book there is, I have to say: I would give this series a hard pass. Seriously, it's such a ludicrous, chaotic mess.