62 pages • 2 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Throne of Fire
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “I Get a Demon Up My Nose”
Bes works out where Zia’s village might have been, and the two hitch a ride with travelers to get there. On the way, Carter feels both relieved and terrible to be away from Sadie. He hates himself for leaving her, but he also feels exposed after she learned his secret name.
Bes warns Carter not to romanticize rescuing Zia. It might feel heroic, but it may not end how Carter hopes, and he shouldn’t focus on someone he may not be able to have “especially if it blinds [him] to somebody who’s really important” (228).
Zia’s village is underwater as a result of the Nile trying to wash away the evil of the place. Carter and Bes wade out and find stairs leading to a tomb, but before they can investigate, water demons attack. Carter remembers how Horus was once in a similar situation, and that similarity lets him channel the god’s strength, destroying the demons and displacing the river. He and Bes end up on muddy land. At the bottom of the stairs, a door glows with the magician symbol and hieroglyphics that spell Zia’s name.
Chapter 14 Summary: “At the Tomb of Zia Rashid”
Inside the tomb, Zia floats in a sarcophagus made of water, holding the original crook and flail—the royal instruments of Ra. The items are meant to be an extremely powerful form of protection, but Carter touches the water and senses Zia’s chaotic dreams and crumbling mental health, evidence that Apophis has gotten through to her. Carter parts the water sarcophagus like he did the river, but the goddess Nephthys is still inhabiting her, forcing Carter to rush Zia out to the river so Nephthys can return to the water. The goddess thanks Carter and tells him to guard Zia because she has “a good heart, and an important destiny” (242).
Zia doesn’t remember anything after her and Carter’s first meeting, and she still believes the Kanes are outlaws. Bes warns them they need to leave, but Carter insists on staying and trying to help her remember their connection. He and Zia keep fighting until Desjardins and Menshikov appear in a flash of white light, imprisoning Bes. Menshikov convinces Zia that Carter is the enemy. He tells her that together, they will bring him back to magician headquarters where he “will be given a fair trial [...] and then, executed” (249).
Chapter 15 Summary: “Camels Are Evil”
While Carter deals with rescuing Zia, Sadie and Walt take magic camels to Bahariya, one of which likes to chew on Sadie’s hair. Walt finally tells Sadie what’s been bothering him. He is descended from the pharaoh Akhenaton, who tried to do away with all the gods but Aten, the sun itself. After his death, Egypt reverted to worshipping the gods, but Akhenaton’s line was cursed. Before Walt can explain more, the camels halt as a ragged cat approaches. It’s Bast using her ba to tell them Apophis is “timing his release to coincide with [their] waking Ra” (257).
In a flash, Sadie realizes everything about their journey has been too easy. Walt asks her if they should stop trying to wake Ra, but Sadie disagrees; everyone is confused about what to do. Sadie decides they must stay on track and believe that awakening Ra will unite magicians and gods against chaos. She tells Bast to meet them in Brooklyn on the equinox. Bast starts to give them the details they need to enter the tomb, but her ba vanishes from the cat before she can finish. Unable to open the hidden entrance, Sadie blows it up, crushing a row of mummies beneath.
Chapter 16 Summary: “But Not as Evil as Romans”
In the tomb, Sadie and Walt meet a Roman ghost who is angry that his people were bamboozled into fake Egyptian burials. In exchange for magic so his ba can move on, the ghost shows Sadie and Walt to the oldest part of the tomb, where a statue of Ptah, god of openings, stands surrounded by carvings of rats. The Book of Ra’s scrolls grow warm near a blocked-off doorway, but Sadie doesn’t know how to get through, even after praying and leaving offerings to Ptah. She chips away at the barrier with the knife Anubis gave her, which the ghost says she can use to send him to the afterlife. When Sadie yells the knife is for Ra, the ghost says Walt can get more knives because he’s dying and connected to Anubis.
Walt finishes explaining his family curse. The curse has been affecting him since he was born, and it gets worse when he does magic. He has maybe two years left, and when Sadie yells at him for not staying safe in Brooklyn, Walt says that if he’s going to die, he wants to do something meaningful and “spend as much time as [he] can with [her]” (278). The ghost interrupts their tender moment to demand they help him and the other spirits, but when Sadie refuses, he disappears with an ominous warning.
Remembering how she cured Carter by using a tiny representation of him, Sadie forms a small replica of the barrier and links the two, opening the room beyond and finding the scroll. Before they can leave, the ghost returns with an army of angry mummies to kill Sadie and take the knife. However, an army of rats, directed by Ptah, destroys them. Ptah apologizes for not helping sooner and opens a portal to Carter’s location, telling them to get to the great Pyramid in Cairo to wake Ra.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
These chapters accelerate the plot while weaving in threads of backstory, tying The Red Pyramid and The Throne of Fire even more closely together. Carter uses Horus’s power by remembering a time the god was in a similar situation, similar to the magic Sadie used to save Carter from the serpent-dragon Menshikov summoned. This use of godly powers through sympathetic understanding is one of The Different Types of Power, and it is the path of the gods that’s frowned upon by most magicians. Unlike when Carter and Sadie hosted gods, this use of memories to direct magic doesn’t put their lives in danger but allows them to channel greater power when needed. It represents magicians and gods working together to defeat the forces of chaos and Apophis, and it foreshadows the magicians coming to realize this is the way forward by the end of the book.
Chapters 13 and 14 show Carter completing his personal mission to save Zia and symbolize how situations don’t always end up as planned. While Carter does free Zia from the prison that is eating away at her mental health, the Zia he wakes doesn’t have the memories her shabti formed of Carter. She doesn’t return Carter’s feelings or even believe she and Carter are on the same side. While Carter told himself this was a possibility, he didn’t believe it was likely until it came to pass. Bes’s warning not to romanticize rescuing Zia was good advice that Carter didn’t take because he wanted Zia to remember him and everything they’d shared. In addition, the amount of magic it took to enter Zia’s tomb and free her announced Carter’s location to Desjardins and Menshikov, another problem Carter didn’t plan for. By the time Sadie and Walt arrive in the following chapters, Carter has done what he set out to do, but the circumstances around his task almost get him killed and Bes captured. This harkens back to Sadie’s comment about everything going wrong (219), and the situation represents the fact that unintended consequences are some of The Difficulties of Making Choices.
The release of Zia brings new insight to magical items and characters. In The Red Pyramid, the former magician leader hid Zia when she unintentionally became a host for the goddess Nephthys, which is a crime among magicians. Knowing Zia had an important part to play in the fight against chaos, the former leader built Zia’s hiding place both to protect Nephthys and to make her particularly difficult for Apophis to find. No explanation is given for why Zia was hidden with Ra’s divine weapons, but Bes comments on how powerful they are, comparing it to using nuclear weapons as an alarm. Thus, it is likely they were also meant to be kept away from Apophis, and hopefully only found by someone intending to raise Ra and save the world.
Riordan stays true to the legacy of Akhenaton as the pharaoh who tried to do away with Egyptian polytheism in favor of Aten. In ancient Egyptian, aten meant “disc,” and Akhenaton applied this word to the disc-shaped sun, which was one aspect of Ra. Riordan adds to Akhenaton’s influence by creating the curse of his line. Since magicians are linked to the pharaohs and the gods, Akhenaton’s line is weakened by simply having magic in their blood, and the process is expedited by the active use of magic. Walt uses amulets because they require less magic to make but can be used to great effect, but even so, he feels the effects of the curse and knows he doesn’t have much time left. In another example of The Difficulty of Making Choices, Walt tells Sadie that he’s chosen to use the time he has left in a meaningful way—fighting for good alongside her. If Walt stayed safe and didn’t use magic, he would have more time, but his life would be empty. Instead, he wants to help save the world, even at the cost of himself.
Riordan also enriches his world with further references to real places. The Bahariya Oasis is the site of an Egyptian burial ground that contains mummies from when Romans were present in Egypt, mostly wealthy elites. The tomb of Riordan’s story world depicts mummies with various levels of grandeur—some being crammed into wall crevices with several other mummies. Ptah was the god of craftsmen, including those who constructed tombs. The Ptah present in Chapter 16 is cryptic, as many of the gods are, but he helps Walt and Sadie because they showed respect to his statue by leaving offerings, showing that the Egyptian gods reward appreciation.
Lastly, Chapter 16 shows Sadie coming into her own as a magician. She makes bold decisions and works with Bast to decide how to handle new information about Apophis’s plan, showing that she has embraced her role as a leader. Using magic to link the small pile of rubble to the barrier represents the strength of the power she’s capable of harnessing, and finding the final piece of the Book of Ra opens the story up to the climactic chapters and sets up the final installment in the series.
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