The Sword of Summer

This was a lot of fun! I listened to it on audiobook and it made my drive tolerable. (I listened to it at 1.5 speed to cram it all into a 10-hour roundtrip.) The narrator was good (even at higher speed, which for some reason made him sound more Canadian).

I've only read the first few Percy Jackson books, and the first Kane Chronicles book–I enjoyed them but just never got around to finishing either series? I think I liked this the best of all those... it helps that Norse mythology is just SO WEIRD. Not that Greek and Egyptian mythology isn't weird, but Norse mythology is just truly next-level bonkers. I really like Magnus, and pretty much all the other characters, especially Hearth and Blitzen, his misfit adopted parental figures <3

I've read concerns about Sam the hijabi Valkyrie and Hearth the Deaf elf character and I don't know enough to say how sensitively they were handled, but overall I loved them both as characters! Hopefully we will see them develop in further books.