53 pages • 1-hour read
The Serpent's Shadow
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Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.
Chapter 1 Summary: “We Crash and Burn a Party”
In the six months since the end of The Throne of Fire, Apophis has destroyed all but one copy of a special version of The Book of Overcoming Apophis, written by a long-dead magician named Setne. As the novel opens, Carter and Sadie attend a party at the magician stronghold in Dallas, Texas, to warn the leader that Apophis will attack that night. Sadie and Carter offer to bring the scroll back to their stronghold in Brooklyn to protect it. Aside from the siblings, their team of magicians includes Walt Stone (a descendant of King Tut, who is slowly dying from the curse that poisons his blood whenever he uses magic), a baboon named Khufu, and two younger children (Alyssa and Felix).
The leader of the Dallas magicians is skeptical but brings the children to the scroll in the King Tut exhibit of his museum. On the way, Sadie is visited by a strange face that pops out of a wall. The face warns her she’ll never understand the scroll and gives her until sunset the following day to seek his help before disappearing. Sure enough, Sadie struggles to understand the scroll and urges the group to take it away quickly. Before they can, an explosion rocks the museum. Two sphinx statues come to life, blocking the exit, and from everywhere at once, Apophis’s booming voice announces, “[N]o one leaves this place alive” (16).
Chapter 2 Summary: “I Have a Word with Chaos”
Sadie tries to throw up a magical barrier between Apophis and the scroll, but the serpent’s chaos magic is too powerful. Her wand burns her hands, and she’s forced to let it go, nearly passing out. When she regains consciousness, the room is a crumbling ruin, and the scroll is gone. Apophis continues to destroy artifacts. When his energy aims at a golden cabinet, Sadie is overcome with the need to save the object. The others try to stop Apophis, which only works for a moment. Sadie distracts the god, telling him to come after her instead. Unleashing a sphinx statue on her, Apophis replies, “[V]ery well, Sadie Kane. It’s time to die” (22).
Walt stops the statue by summoning a camel from one of his conjuration amulets, which tackles the sphinx and farts at it. As the battle rages, Sadie lets her mind sink into the supernatural Duat realm, where she sees her team fighting alongside the powers of their patron gods and goddesses. Calling on her link to Isis, Sadie speaks the magic word “Ma’at” to restore order against Apophis’s chaos. The spell is strong enough to stop the attacks and force Apophis to retreat deep into the Duat, but Sadie falls unconscious.
In a haze, Sadie sees her dead mother and Isis, who help her regain her strength. Sadie’s mother warns Sadie that she must protect the souls of the dead. Isis praises Sadie’s strength, adding that the two of them will soon rule the world. When the women fade, Sadie finds herself in a graveyard with Anubis—god of death—who appears as a handsome boy. Sadie is annoyed she hasn’t seen him in six months. Anubis apologizes but is bound by the rules of the gods. Since Sadie is so close to death, he can appear to her, and he warns her to watch the unseen before promising to visit her in person.
Sadie wakes up back in the museum, which is almost completely destroyed. Khufu saved the golden cabinet. Outside, the children find the Dallas stronghold crushed. There were no survivors.
Chapter 3 Summary: “We Win a Box Full of Nothing”
After doing their best to clean up the destruction and remove all traces of magic before the police show up, the group boards their transport—an Egyptian boat pulled by a griffin—and flies back to New York.
On the way, Carter thinks about the fight against Apophis. He tries not to feel hopeless, but after everyone he’s lost and the serpent’s prediction that Carter will fail as the leader of the Brooklyn magicians, staying optimistic is tough. Back home, Carter sends Felix, Alyssa, and Walt to rest while he and Sadie talk with Bast—the cat-goddess and protector of the Brooklyn stronghold—about the gold cabinet. Bast identifies the cabinet as a shadow box, made to hold a shadow/sheut—the fifth part of the soul in Egyptian myth.
The shadow box currently holds King Tut’s sheut, which makes Bast very uneasy, but Carter can’t fathom why. After all, Bast “fought Apophis face-to-face, claw to fang, in a magical prison for thousands of years” (51). Before he can ask, Khufu arrives to tell Carter he has an urgent scrying message waiting for him.
Chapter 4 Summary: “I Consult the Pigeon of War”
Carter’s message is from love-interest and fellow magician, Zia. When Carter and Sadie first learned of their magician heritage, Carter developed feelings for Zia, only to realize the Zia he knew was a clay shabti replica. In the six months since he rescued the real Zia from her enchanted sleep, Carter’s relationship with her has been rocky.
Six months ago, Zia accompanied Carter’s Uncle Amos to the stronghold in Cairo, Egypt, where the two, among their allies, have worked to quell a rebellion among magicians who have used Carter and Sadie, allying with the gods to paint the siblings as traitors. The rebels have lured many of the Cairo magicians to their side, leaving Zia and Amos as the last defense. In addition, they are caring for Ra, king of the gods, who has gone senile.
Though Carter knows the problems aren’t his fault, he feels terrible about what the magicians are going through and wonders “if the world had gone sideways because of the Kane family, and if it would be better off without us” (61). Zia ends the message because Ra needs her, leaving Carter to pace his room and fret. If the group can’t figure out how to stop Apophis, they will have to resort to Plan B, which involves using a shabti of Apophis to destroy the god, likely killing himself and Sadie too. As Carter stares at the shabti, the war god Horus arrives in pigeon form to tell Carter Apophis is attacking the gods, much like he is the magicians. He urges Carter to join with him so they can defeat Apophis and rule the world. Carter declines.
Since the start of the school year, all the magicians at the Brooklyn stronghold, except Carter, attend regular school during the week. After sleeping late the following morning, Carter is glad to have the place to himself while he works on a plan to visit Thoth (god of wisdom) to ask the god for help capturing Apophis’s shadow. By placing the shadow in the shabti, Carter hopes to execrate—ritually destroy—Apophis and banish the serpent from existence by destroying a representation of him that houses part of his soul.
When the others get home from school, Carter explains the plan. They all agree they need to talk to Thoth that night, but first, they are all attending a school dance, Carter included.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
By beginning the story with the fight to protect the last copy of Setne’s Book of Overcoming Apophis, Riordan provides a link to the strife the Kanes have faced since the end of The Throne of Fire. In addition, this particular quest sets up for the journey to find another way to destroy Apophis before he fulfills the ancient prophecy that he will devour the sun god Ra and plunge the world into chaos. In doing so, Riordan reintroduces the major players and the stakes should Carter, Sadie, and their friends ultimately fail. Though Sadie isn’t aware of it here, the face she sees in the museum is Setne. Though Setne is dead and, thus, cannot cast many spells available to Egyptian magicians, he still carries vast power that allows him to manipulate events in his favor. His appearance here foreshadows the tentative teamwork between Setne and the Kanes, as well as how Setne ultimately evades judgment in the underworld.
The “word” Sadie has with Apophis in Chapter 2 has a double meaning, introducing the theme of Maintaining Balance Between Order and Chaos. In Egyptian myth, magician spells are also called “words of power,” and the word Sadie uses is ma’at (order), which is the opposite of Apophis’s chaos. This use of the word symbolizes the balance at the center of Egyptian magic and the battle between Apophis and the gods. The gods represent order and calm, while Apophis symbolizes chaos and uncertainty, emphasizing the level of threat and destruction Apophis poses to the characters in the novel.
These forces of order and chaos continuously push and pull against one another, and they influence everything from battles to individual decisions. Sadie’s use of ma’at here also foreshadows her use of the spell to finally defeat Apophis towards the close of the story. Similarly, the introduction of King Tut’s shadow in Chapter 3 foreshadows how Apophis’s shadow will ultimately be used to execrate the serpent and remove him from existence. It also sets up an exploration of the shadow as a part of the soul, which is used as a way for Carter and Sadie to track their own growth throughout the story.
Carter’s thoughts about failure highlight the incredible pressure that’s been placed upon him at such a young age, introducing the theme of The Challenges of Being an Effective Leader. His choice to include only himself, Sadie, and Bast in the discussion of the shadow box reveals how much he has come to depend on the two—particularly Sadie. After a rocky beginning and years apart after the death of their mother, Carter and Sadie have built a relationship as they’ve struggled to protect the world. Now, toward the end of their fight, they finally feel like true siblings and a team. However, Carter still struggles with a private inner conflict about whether the Kane family is playing a good or bad role in the world, and if he is capable of meeting the challenges he faces—doubts that he does not share with Sadie here. His worries set up his character arc, which will involve Carter growing in confidence about his own abilities and power.
The school dance in Chapter 4 represents the “normal” side of the magicians and gives them a chance to bond in a low-pressure setting, reflecting the theme of The Resilience of Relationships in Difficult Times. While they face an incredible amount of pressure and a looming deadline, they are also still teenagers trying to live their lives as best they can. Their experiences include budding romances, as seen through Carter’s complicated feelings for, and relationship with, Zia. Sadie similarly has romantic entanglements with Walt and the god Anubis, both of which are complicated. With Walt’s sickness slowly killing him, he refuses to get involved with Sadie, raising questions about the terms of a relationship and who holds the responsibility for deciding romantic involvement.
After nearly dying many times over the course of the series, Sadie has also developed a close relationship with Anubis, the Egyptian god of death and therefore one closely associated with the underworld. Though Sadie is attracted to Anubis, she recognizes there is an age difference and power imbalance between them that could make the relationship difficult. In addition, the gods have strict rules about how they may interact with mortals. Sadie and Anubis continuously break these rules, and while Sadie understands the need for the rules, she also finds them unfair. Sadie’s conflicting opinions here represent her struggle to navigate her own desires while trying to conform to the expectations the gods have for her.
Sadie’s relationship with Anubis also helps to highlight the broader conflict between mortals and gods. Sadie and Carter both call on the power of Egyptian gods (e.g., Sadie with Isis, and Carter with Horus). While these powers have saved their lives in the past, they also come with direct links to the thoughts of the gods. As a result, Isis and Horus continuously attempt to use Sadie and Carter as hosts so they can wield power in the mortal world. For the siblings, this adds a layer of temptation to using the godly powers available to them, inviting them to test the limits of their own abilities and agency.
In past installments of the series, Sadie and Carter fully merged with the gods in times of need, but in doing so, both Kanes almost lost who they were to godly influence. As a result, both must be careful when calling upon the gods, as Isis and Horus do not necessarily share the urgency to destroy Apophis. Rather, the gods are more interested in expanding their own power, which means that Carter and Sadie giving in too fully to their desires could doom the world.
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