100 pages • 3 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Red Pyramid
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 30-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 30 Summary: “Bast Keeps a Promise”
The group stops at the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, to communicate with Nephthys. The goddess’s voice is distant. She’s taking shelter in a sleeping host, and neither Bast nor Sadie knows what that means. Downriver, Carter sees a family disappear into the water and goes after them, only to be attacked by a crocodile. He defeats it and returns to the group, where Bast defeats another crocodile, and Sadie is lying “in a crumpled heap on the riverbank” (385).
Sadie is alive but hurt badly. While Khufu carries her to safety, the god of crocodiles emerges from the river. Bast and Carter fight the god, but they are vastly out-powered. Bast takes a final stand while Carter gets Sadie to safety. She tells Carter to “tell your father I kept my promise” (390) before tackling the crocodile god into the river.
Bast reemerges as Muffin, her divine essence gone. Carter picks up the half-drowned cat and turns to find that Amos and Philip of Macedonia have arrived. While Philip takes on more approaching crocodiles, Amos helps get the kids to safety.
Chapter 31 Summary: “I Deliver a Love Note”
Sadie wakes to Amos tending her head wound and Carter cradling Muffin. Amos relays what he learned about Set while captured. Set is powerful enough that he doesn’t require a human host. He froze Amos as a statue, and Amos overheard plans for the pyramid Set is building. When Set unleashes the storm at sunrise, it will completely destroy Sadie’s father, and Osiris will be “exiled so deep into the Duat he may never rise again” (393).
Sadie shares that she spoke with Nephthys, who claimed to be safe inside a sleeping host. She falls back to sleep, and her ba meets Geb, the earth god. Sadie delivers the note from Nut, which reveals a constellation of her face before dissolving. In thanks, Geb tells Sadie to go to the place of crosses. There will be danger there, but she will also find “what you need most” (399).
Chapter 32 Summary: “The Place of Crosses”
Amos sends Muffin and Khufu back to New York with Philip of Macedonia, who is revealed to be a shabti. Since the place of crosses is Las Cruces, the group heads to the city next, using Amos’s magic boat as transport. Sadie is concerned they’ll be spotted, but Amos assures her that in New Mexico, “They see UFOs here all the time” (405).
The group meets up with Zia, who tries to convince them they need help from the House of Life. Sadie argues that Desjardins is probably working with Set, and Carter has to step between the girls to prevent a fight. Zia asks Carter to speak privately, but Desjardins’s people surround the group before he agrees. Zia unleashes a pillar of fire on Desjardins, which will hunt him relentlessly until it kills him or burns out and drains herself of magic. In return, Desjardins summons Sekhmet, and Amos stays behind to distract the goddess. Despite everything they’ve been through in the last week, Carter warns they must leave immediately, and Sadie has “never seen him look so scared” (414).
Chapter 33 Summary: “We Go Into the Salsa Business”
Carter steers Amos’s boat while trying to stay ahead of Sekhmet’s burning form, heading for a sign advertising “magic salsa.” The ship crashes into the building, setting it ablaze, and Carter and Sadie drag a half-conscious Zia out of the wreckage while Sekhmet searches for them.
Zia forms a plan to stop Sekhmet. In the legends, Sekhmet went on a killing rampage until the people colored vats of beer red like blood. Sekhmet drank her fill, passed out, and was returned to the sky, where she was transformed into a gentler form. While Sadie distracts Sekhmet, Carter transforms into his avatar and breaks open several warehouses full of red salsa. Sekhmet drinks until she can’t drink anymore, turning into “an enormous sleeping cow” (423).
Chapters 30-33 Analysis
These chapters contain a few instances of foreshadowing. Sadie’s conversation with Nephthys in Chapter 30 foreshadows the truth about the goddess and is part of the puzzle surrounding Zia. The group doesn’t yet know that Zia is hosting Nephthys or that Zia is a shabti. Earlier, Iskandar told Sadie he could protect her if she wanted, but she declined. The hero’s journey required her to take up the challenges ahead. Iskandar didn’t specify he was protecting Zia, but Nephthys’s sleeping host hints that Zia took on Nephthys at the British Museum and is now elsewhere for her own safety.
Amos’s arrival is almost too convenient, foreshadowing how Set controls him. On his own, Amos may or may not have been powerful enough to locate the children, especially so close to Set. By contrast, Set is a god and vastly more powerful. He can keep tabs on the kids through dreams, as shown by how Carter’s ba repeatedly visits Set’s pyramid. Amos’s description of being a frozen statue also doesn’t match Carter’s earlier visions, something Carter doesn’t notice.
Sekhmet takes many forms in Egyptian myth, one of which is Ra’s huntress. Riordan stays true to this version of Sekhmet, showing her as a proficient hunter and taking on the form of a lion, which was one of her appearances in myth. Riordan updates the story of her defeat and adapts it to a middle-grade audience. Rather than beer, Carter offers Sekhmet salsa, and instead of becoming intoxicated, Sekhmet experiences indigestion from the hot peppers used to make the salsa. As in the original myth, Sekhmet turns into a less threatening form when she gorges.
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