Well, not much anyway. I was warned. I tried not to get mad. It mostly worked. I’m more exasperated than mad, really. Let me go back a bit here. I enjoyed Rick Riordans Percy Jackson series. It’s good entertainment if you’re after something light-hearted, but still interesting. So I thought that his Kane Chronicles would be similar. It’s set in the same universe. It’s good entertainment. But things about it bug me. I don’t mind the use of the gods Greek names. It makes sense; they are the names that they are well-known for. And yes, I’m sure liberties were taken with their personalities. It’s fiction, after all. The bit that bugs me, is the way he portrays Set. As far as I know (and I’m no expert so there are probably a gajillion inconsistencies) most of the gods are portrayed fairly accurately in their roles in Egyptian mythology, and there are many descriptions of each god. Except Set. He is portrayed only one way. Evil. I tried not to get mad. “It’s a generalisation, it’s for the purposes of the story-telling” right? “Rick will show Set to have a more in-depth personality once the plot moves on from him as the bad guy”. Nope. Even after a whole book of Him not being the bad guy, the glossary of gods at the end has only three words describing Set: “God of evil”. NO. That is a ridiculous description. I might have accepted god of chaos (though that isn’t entirely true, His chaos is necessary). In fact, I would have accepted almost anything but ‘evil’. I’m just so frustrated with Riordan, he mustn’t have looked at how modern Kemetics viewed the gods (or if he did, it was a very select group) and he didn’t research earlier than when the Osiris cult demonized Set because he killed Osiris. Yeah, okay, not a good deed, but not an evil one either. If I remember rightly (and I may not be here, especially because I don’t even remember where I read this) it was necessary for Osiris to die, because he was the only one strong enough to rule the Duat. Or something like that. (I’m now pissed that I can’t remember)
But yeah. Long story short, I’m slightly mad at a piece of fiction for misrepresenting the god I work with most right now. So… Yeah. Rant over I guess.
Creating Tradition 