The Serpent's Shadow

“Most upsetting of all: a small alabaster statue of our friend Bes, the dwarf god. The carving was eons old, but I recognized that pug nose, the bushy sideburns, the potbelly, and the endearingly ugly face that looked as if it had been hit repeatedly with a frying pan. We’d only known Bes for a few days, but he’d literally sacrificed his soul to help us. Now, each time I saw him I was reminded of a debt I could never repay.”

This excerpt from Sadie’s perspective offers critical backstory and foreshadows her character arc for The Serpent’s Shadow. In Egyptian myth, Bes is a defender of order and goodness, whom Riordan modernizes in the Kane Chronicles series to help illustrate the theme of Maintaining Balance Between Order and Chaos. Here, as Sadie wanders through the museum exhibit in Dallas, seeing the statue of Bes calls to her past adventure in Russia and how Bes traded his soul to the moon god to buy Carter and Sadie extra time to help the magicians. Sadie feels personally responsible for what happened to Bes, and she has promised herself she will restore his soul if she can, which plays directly into her idea to test shadow magic on Bes before using it against Apophis.

“It’s hard to describe what it’s like to experience the world on many levels at once—it’s a bit like looking through 3D glasses and seeing hazy colorful auras around things, except the auras don’t always match the objects, and the images are constantly shifting. Magicians have to be careful when they look into the Duat. Best-case scenario, you’ll get mildly nauseous. Worst-case scenario, your brain will explode.”

During the battle against Apophis in Dallas, Sadie peers into the Duat spirit realm to understand what’s happening on a magical level. This is the first experience of the Duat in the novel, and here, Riordan sums up what Sadie sees to remind readers how the Duat functions, as well as the dangers it poses for magicians. As Sadie’s description suggests,