Will Riordan Score Another Hit?

So in a couple weeks (read: May 4th) the first book by Rick Riordan since the success of Percy Jackson will be released: the Red Pyramid, the first book of the Kane Chronicles, a trilogy.

The story follows the two semi-estranged Kane siblings, Sadie and Carter, as they take on a quest to stop the Egyptian god Set, who was released by their father. To save their father who has been banished by Set, they must travel across the world and find out the secret to their family’s history that dates back to the time of the pharaohs.

I’ll be picking this up the day it comes out. Why? Because I’m very interested to see if this book lives up to Percy Jackson. I could be totally wrong (and I hope I am), but I have a feeling it’ll fall short by quite a bit.

Not to say that Percy Jackson is a great piece of literature, because it isn’t. But it’s entertaining, clever, and better than a lot of IR/YA stuff out there. I always really liked Percy Jackson because of the integration and adaptation of the Greek myths into our world today–some of the ways the Greek ideas/people were modernized were pretty clever, and I really enjoyed that. Plus the story was, like I said, entertaining and there were quite a few times where I was caught by surprise by a plot twist.

I’m hoping that this novel will be a step up for Riordan, that his characters will be stronger and his detail more flushed out, but at the same time I’m worried about him churning another one out so quickly after such a successful series.. sometimes that’s the perfect recipe for failure.