62 pages • 2 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Throne of Fire
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Fun with Spontaneous Combustion”
Carter starts the story by telling the reader that he needs to “tell this story quickly, or we’re all going to die” (1). Carter and Sadie Kane, along with their trainees Jaz and Walt, are breaking into a museum to steal a statue of Khnum (the moose-headed version of Ra at sunset) that will help them find the Book of Ra. After breaking the magical locks on the museum’s dome so they can escape with the statue, Carter and Sadie check on Jaz and Walt, who quickly stop holding hands when the siblings arrive. The group enters through a window, and after searching through exhibits that feature familiar Egyptian objects, they find the statue near a frieze (protector statue) of a griffin.
Khnum was known for forming humans from clay, and the statue depicts him molding a person’s head. Sadie taps her wand to the scarab charm around the human’s neck, and its head pops open, revealing a scroll. Sadie takes it, triggering protective spells that set her hand on fire, and the griffin frieze comes to life with a scream “like a really large, really angry parrot” (14).
Chapter 2 Summary: “We Tame a Seven-Thousand-Pound Hummingbird”
While Carter and Sadie fight off the griffin, Walt tries to open a window, only to get blasted with white fire that shoots outward to form the bau (seven plague spirits known as the Arrows of Sekhmet). Sadie shoots her magical rope at the griffin, which dodges to chase the figures from the room. Carter runs after them, starting “a game of total annihilation tag” (20).
The procession runs through a wedding party, sending the guests into a panic. The griffin eats one of the bau with no ill effects, and its brief pause allows Sadie’s rope to bind it. Jaz casts a powerful spell to stop the bau, which leaves her smoking and unconscious. Sadie detangles the griffin, and Carter ties it to a boat Walt creates. With the four kids on board, the griffin pulls them up through the ceiling dome and across the city. As they go, white flames like the one surrounding Sadie’s hand appear atop buildings, and Carter ends the chapter thinking, “I had a feeling we’d finally pushed our luck too far” (29).
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Ice Cream Man Plots Our Death”
Sadie informs the reader that she is taking over the storytelling. The group flies to the mansion that belongs to Carter and Sadie’s uncle. It is the headquarters of the Egyptian magicians in Brooklyn. Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess who protects the mansion, dispels the curse on the scroll, making the flames on Sadie’s hand and across the city go out. Jaz is still unconscious, and Walt hovers at her side, looking terrified. Feeling jealous and exhausted, Sadie goes to her room, where she listens to sad music and stares at a picture of Anubis (the god of death) in his human form until she falls asleep.
In her sleep, Sadie’s ba (spirit) takes her to the magician headquarters in Cairo, where she sees an enemy magician, Michel Desjardins, talking to another magician, Vladimir Menshikov, who wears a white suit that makes him look like “an evil ice cream vendor” (42). Desjardins’s main concern is keeping the serpent Apophis from destroying the world, and while he believes the Kanes’ attempts to bring back the gods are a threat, he won’t go after them yet because he may need their help.
With a magical intensity to his voice, Menshikov suggests that the Kanes are making the problem worse by giving chaos power. Blinking, Desjardins haltingly gives Menshikov permission to rally his forces to attack the Brooklyn mansion, and Sadie’s ba rushes back to her body. She wakes to morning light coming in the windows and her uncle Amos standing in her room. Gasping, Sadie tells him the Egyptian magicians are going to attack.
Chapter 4 Summary: “A Birthday Invitation to Armageddon”
It’s Sadie’s birthday, and she thinks it’s unfair that she has to spend it planning for an attack on the mansion. Over breakfast, she tells Bast, Carter, and the trainees about what she saw in Egypt. Carter reveals that the mission the night before was the first step in waking Ra so the god can stop Apophis from destroying the world on the spring equinox (in four days). They need to find the other two parts of the scroll—one that’s been missing for centuries and one in the possession of the enemy magicians. Carter wants to get going, but Sadie refuses to spend her birthday hunting down scrolls. She is taking one day for herself: “[I]f I was going to die, then it could wait until tomorrow morning” (60).
Before Sadie leaves, she speaks with Carter, who’s in a foul mood. Since Zia Rashid, the girl he fell in love with a few months ago, was revealed to be a shabti (a clay replica), he’s been obsessed with finding the real Zia. During the attack at the museum, one of the bau told him “she” would die if he didn’t rescue her immediately. Sadie knows something else is bothering him, but Carter won’t say what. Irritated, Sadie summons a portal to London, where she finds her grandmother has been possessed by Nekhbet, the vulture goddess.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
These chapters introduce the main protagonists, antagonists, and conflicts of The Throne of Fire and set up the main themes. The book picks up a few months after The Red Pyramid, and the Kanes have made good on their promise to train more magicians in the path of the gods. Desjardins and the other magicians believe allying with the gods will only lead to ruin, but since doing so saved the world in the previous book, The Throne of Fire opens with a tentative truce between Carter, Sadie, and the other magicians. Vladimir Menshikov represents the renewal of the conflict amid the magicians. He uses magic to drain Desjardins’s energy and influence his thoughts, which almost leads to the release of Apophis, and Desjardins’s sacrifice in the final chapters sets up for the joining of the warring magician factions, as well as the magicians and the gods.
Carter and Sadie are also moving forward from the final events of the previous book. The Red Pyramid ended with Sadie receiving cryptic emotional messages from Anubis, the god of death, and Carter learning Zia Rashid was in a magical sleep, replaced by a shabti. These events set up Carter and Sadie’s internal and external conflicts in The Throne of Fire. Carter is determined to find and wake the real Zia, and Sadie struggles with her feelings for Anubis and Walt. Coupled with their new responsibilities as teachers, Carter and Sadie feel the mounting pressure as the deadline to stop Apophis approaches. Jaz falling unconscious in Chapter 2 illustrates the danger the magicians face, as well as the price of using too much magic.
As an introduction to The Different Types of Power, Riordan weaves elements of Egyptian myth into these chapters alongside the magicians’ abilities. In ancient Egypt, the Arrows of Sekhmet were believed to bring bad luck, and Riordan shows this through their destructive power and how they trigger a series of worsening events for the Kanes. The frieze as a protector statue is taken straight from Egyptian myth, as is the ba being a human-headed bird part of a person’s soul. Riordan also reintroduces magical elements from The Red Pyramid, such as Sadie’s magic rope (which Zia used to bind a goddess) and the idea of a magician’s ba traveling during sleep, which is adapted from the belief that the ba left the body upon death.
Sadie’s dream in Chapter 3 jumpstarts the main conflict of the novel—finding the three sections of the Book of Ra to wake the king of the gods. Menshikov is the main antagonist and possesses one of the three sections of the book, and his presence here foreshadows the Kanes stealing the scroll from him, as well as facing him at Apophis’s prison. Desjardins was a major antagonist in the prequel, and his reduced power here shows that he is now less of a threat and foreshadows his death. Likewise, his reluctance to go after them hints at his acceptance of the Kanes.
Sadie and Carter’s reactions to Sadie’s dream show the differences between the siblings. Carter takes the dream as additional motivation to find the book quickly, and though he only just learned of the book’s existence from Horus, he sees nothing wrong with dropping everything to make sure Apophis doesn’t rise. By contrast, Sadie is annoyed at her dream and Carter’s eagerness to find the book. While she doesn’t want Apophis to rise, Sadie hates that any semblance of normalcy has disappeared from their lives. She’s been looking forward to spending her birthday with her friends in London, and the sudden urgency to stop Apophis angers her because it feels unfair. This conflict sets up the theme The Difficulty of Making Choices; Sadie must acknowledge that her choice to celebrate her birthday and set her mission aside means taking a great risk, as they only have four days to prevent the awakening of Apophis. This theme also begins to emerge with Carter, who is preoccupied with thoughts of Zia despite his willingness to search for the book.
Carter and Sadie are the introduction to the theme The Many Forms of Family. Though they are siblings, their relationship has been rocky, as they spent much of their lives apart. The timing of Apophis’s threat brings back the tension from the previous book by highlighting their differences—Carter’s dedication to ancient Egypt and Sadie’s desire to have a normal life balanced against her responsibility as a magician.
Related Titles
By Rick Riordan
