The Hammer of Thor

These chapters include character growth for much of the group while they prepare for their next steps. Chapters 30 through 33 include Amir overcoming his trouble accepting the Norse reality. Though Magnus doesn’t realize it, he somehow helped Amir, which shows how we can be capable of things we don’t even know we can do. The completion of this portion of Amir’s character arc suggests that he will play a bigger role in the Norse conflicts later on. Sam’s vow in Chapter 31 foreshadows that she does not marry Thrym and that she will likely marry Amir. Chapter 33 is a much-needed break for the characters so they can collect themselves and regroup. Amir’s restaurant is a familiar space for everyone, and it harkens back to a time before Magnus knew the Norse gods existed and before he became an einherji. This slice of normality allows them to relax, however briefly, and the act of cooking is the final push Amir needs to accept his new outlook, showing how comfortable actions help us process information.

In Chapter 30, Sam tries to show Amir evidence from the Norse world but is unable to because the Norse magic makes mortals forget what they’ve seen. While Riordan makes magic the cause of Amir’s inability to see, the idea of forgetting things we don’t wish to deal with also applies without magic. Before Magnus somehow helps Amir with his Frey powers, Amir does not want to accept the Norse reality, even though he loves Sam and wants to support her. Here, the magic symbolizes our own unwillingness to see the truth. After Magnus helps Amir, they see the bridge, and while Heimdall sent the bridge for them, it’s possible that Amir would not have seen it without Magnus’s help. Magnus’s calm confidence gives Amir the strength to believe and represents how we must choose to accept before we can change.

Chapter 30 is especially heavily laden with thematic ideas of How Identity, Culture, and Heritage Shape Us. Alex identifies as male. It is never made clear if Alex’s occasional masculine identification is a problem in Islam; either it is not a problem, or Sam is bending the rules to talk to Amir when Alex is the only male relative available to chaperone. Alex clarifies elsewhere in the story that she doesn’t control how or when she shifts identity, and if she were to suddenly shift to female, Sam and Amir would likely have to end their conversation. Chapter 34 candidly explores Alex’s identity. She explains how her particular identity works but does not presume to speak for all gender-fluid people. She understands that every person’s experience (whether with gender-fluidity or not) is unique. Similar to how Alex’s experience is hers alone, Magnus’s experience as a cisgender person (someone whose identity matches their gender assigned at birth) is uniquely his. Similarly, both Alex’s and Magnus’s einherji experiences cannot necessarily be extended to other einherji. Alex’s unique experience of gender-fluidity speaks to the problem of generalizing or stereotyping all gender-fluid or transgender people—and more broadly, it represents how every person has multiple parts to their identity that mix to make all experiences of the world unique.

Riordan incorporates more elements of Norse myth into these chapters. The Bifrost is the rainbow bridge leading from Midgard (the mortal realm) to Asgard (the realm of the gods), and as in the book, Heimdall guards the bridge in the myths. Riordan modernizes Heimdall by giving him a smartphone and an obsession with selfies. Amir’s suggestion for Heimdall to look beyond the phone is the moment where Amir decides to believe the Norse gods are real, and Heimdall seeing more without the lens of his phone shows the difference between pictures and reality. Heimdall’s selfies let him look back at all the places he’s been and people he’s been with, but they don’t show him what’s going on in the moment. As a result, he’s just noticing the army of giants at Midgard’s border. Heimdall symbolizes how dependence on technology and smartphones can keep us from interacting with the world around us, as well as how much we might miss when we don’t look up from our phones.

Big Boy/Utgard-Loki appeared in The Sword of Summer, and Magnus was introduced to the giant when Utgard-Loki turned into an eagle and dragged Magnus halfway across Boston. As a result, Magnus is not looking forward to seeing the giant again, and the trouble Utgard-Loki caused in the previous book foreshadows how the giants will be a problem in The Hammer of Thor. When Heimdall is redirected to Utgard-Loki’s message when he tries to see Otis’s assassin, this twist foreshadows that Utgard-Loki is the assassin.