The Kane Chronicles Survival Guide

The Kane Chronicles Survival Guide is a companion reference guide to the Kane Chronicles series, a fantasy series in which two siblings discover that the gods of Ancient Egypt are real and that they descend from a long line of powerful magicians. Rather than following a single narrative arc, the guide is organized thematically across ten sections covering the Kane family, Egyptian gods and mythology, magical creatures, hieroglyphs and spells, the magicians' governing institution, key locations, artifacts, and modes of travel.

The guide opens with the story of how the Kanes' adventures begin. Carter Kane, age fourteen, has spent six years traveling the world with his father, Julius Kane, a renowned Egyptologist, following his mother's death. His younger sister, Sadie, age twelve, has been living with her maternal grandparents in London. The siblings reunite one Christmas Eve when Julius takes them to the British Museum and performs a ritual on the Rosetta Stone, a famous ancient slab inscribed in multiple scripts. The ritual conjures shadowy figures and causes an explosion that destroys the stone. Julius vanishes, and Carter and Sadie learn that he has awakened the gods of Ancient Egypt, at least one of whom harbors evil intentions.

The first section profiles the Kane family. Carter specializes in combat magic and wields a khopesh, an ancient Egyptian curved sword. Sadie possesses a natural ability to read hieroglyphs and carries a tyet, or knot of Isis, amulet. Both the Kane and Faust families carry the blood of the pharaohs and have belonged to the House of Life, the ancient order of Egyptian magicians, for centuries. Their parents' marriage united two powerful magical bloodlines, making Carter and Sadie the most potent magical children born in centuries. Their mother, Ruby Kane, was an anthropologist and magician with the rare power of divination who died under mysterious circumstances at Cleopatra's Needle, an Egyptian obelisk in London. After Julius disappears, his brother Amos Kane, an impeccably dressed jazz musician, takes Carter and Sadie to his Brooklyn headquarters and reveals the truth about their heritage. The guide also introduces Sadie's cat, Muffin, who later transforms into the goddess Bast.

The second section presents Egyptian mythology through three stories of Ra. In the first, Ra emerged from the waters of chaos and created the gods Shu (wind) and Tefnut (rain), who produced Nut (sky) and Geb (earth); together they created all living things. In the second, Ra grew old as the first pharaoh and created his daughter Sekhmet, a fierce lioness goddess, to punish disobedient humans. When her slaughter went too far, Ra tricked her into drinking thousands of jars of beer dyed red to resemble blood, then renamed her Hathor and transformed her nature to be gentle. In the third, the goddess Isis fashioned a cobra from Ra's spittle and mud, creating the first uraeus (the rearing cobra symbol of royalty). The cobra poisoned Ra, and Isis healed him only after he revealed his secret name, which held his power. Ra then relinquished earthly rule, traveling the sky by day and crossing the Duat (underworld) by night.

Individual deity profiles follow. Osiris, god of the dead, was murdered by his brother Set but revived as Lord of the Dead. Isis, a powerful healer and manipulator, enabled Osiris's kingship. Horus, the falcon-headed son of Osiris and Isis, serves as protector of the pharaoh; his damaged eye, replaced with one made of moonlight, became the famous Eye of Horus. Set, god of chaos, was exiled to the desert but continues to cause destruction. Anubis, god of funerals, preserved Osiris's body, creating the first mummy, and weighs the hearts of the dead against the feather of truth. Bast, goddess of cats and Ra's daughter, has a dual nature of gentleness and ferocity. The section closes with the Story of the Demon Days: Ra forbade Nut from giving birth on any of the year's 360 days, but Nut gambled with the moon god Khonsu and won enough moonlight to create five extra days, giving birth to Osiris, Horus the Elder (a separate, older deity distinct from the Horus born to Osiris and Isis), Set, Isis, and Nephthys.

The third section catalogs antagonistic creatures. Apophis, Ra's greatest enemy and the embodiment of chaos, appears as an enormous snake or crocodile. Though killed repeatedly, he always returns to life. Egyptian priests kept him at bay through prayers and spells from The Book of Overcoming Apophis. Other adversaries include Serqet, the scorpion goddess; Sobek, the crocodile god; switchblade demons assembled by Set to guard the Red Pyramid; serpopards, cat-like chaos creatures with long scaly necks that spit poison; and the Set animal, a nameless creature that serves as Set's relentless hunter. Sphinxes guard tombs by posing deadly riddles, and griffins serve as powerful magical guardians sacred to Horus.

The fourth section explains hieroglyphs, magical symbols, and spells. Key symbols include the wedjat (Eye of Horus), which protects against evil; the tyet (knot of Isis), which binds and releases magic; the ankh, representing life; the djed, symbolizing stability; the ba, a bird with a human head representing the soul; and the uraeus, the cobra of royalty. Spoken spells cause hieroglyphs to burn in the air, and magicians must deliberately omit a feature when drawing a living being to avoid bringing it to life.

The fifth section describes the House of Life, headquartered deep beneath Cairo. It is led by a Chief Lector, with senior Sem priests overseeing 360 nomes, or regional territories, worldwide. Chief Lector Iskandar, approximately 2,000 years old, was the last magician trained before Egypt fell to Rome. His spokesman, Michel Desjardins, is hostile to the Kanes because Julius twice broke the sacred law against summoning gods. Zia Rashid, a scribe whose village was destroyed by a monster, opens a portal for Carter and Sadie at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zia defeats Serqet using the Seven Ribbons of Hathor, magical red ribbons that wrap around and burn a target. She later helps Carter and Sadie trick Sekhmet into drinking hot salsa, which the goddess mistakes for blood, transforming her into a sleepy cow in an echo of Ra's ancient ruse. Vladimir Menshikov, who heads the Eighteenth Nome in Russia, opposes the Kanes and practices sympathetic magic (binding a small object to a larger one) and execration (destroying the larger by breaking the smaller).

The sixth section tours Amos's Brooklyn headquarters, the Twenty-first Nome, which houses Egyptian artifacts, a library of papyrus scrolls, and residents including Khufu, a basketball-playing baboon, and Philip of Macedonia, an albino crocodile.

The seventh section introduces the trainee magicians Carter and Sadie recruit after battling Set at the Red Pyramid. Using a djed amulet to attract children with magical potential, they train recruits in specialties ranging from combat magic to healing. The most advanced discipline, the Path of the Gods, involves drawing power directly from a deity but risks the magician being used as the god's tool. The section outlines the Kanes' central mission: They must find and unite the three parts of the Book of Ra to restore the sun god, because Ra, as Apophis's natural enemy, is the only one who can prevent Apophis from escaping and destroying Ma'at, the creative order of the universe. They must accomplish this before the spring equinox, when chaos and order hang in the balance.

The remaining sections survey key locations, artifacts, and transportation. Three Egyptian obelisks called Cleopatra's Needle exert a strong pull on magicians. The Red Pyramid is a magical structure Set built under Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona. Important texts include the Book of Ra, The Book of Overcoming Apophis, and The Book of the Dead. Weapons include the khopesh, staffs that help magicians control elements or transform into creatures, and wands carved from hippo tusks. The feather of truth cannot tolerate any lie, forcing Sadie to maintain absolute honesty while carrying it to defeat Set. Magical portals allow instant travel but shut down during equinoxes. Magical boats offer alternatives: Amos summons a reed boat to transport the siblings from London to New York in minutes, while Carter and Sadie later sail the pharaoh's barge through the Duat, navigating twelve sections of challenges before encountering Apophis himself. The guide closes with Sadie's reflection that the sun god has returned but Apophis, though banished to the depths of the abyss, remains a threat. War is coming, and the Kanes have much work to do.