The Red Pyramid
AV
I've been wanting to read this book since I saw a classmate give a book talk on it a few weeks ago. It seemed like a book different from the books i usually read, so i gave it a try.
Jericho and his cousin Josh are thrilled to be asked to pledge for the Warriors of Distinction; the most popular club in the school. The Warriors of Distinction do toy drives and other things to help out people in their area. There are Fifteen pledges, fourteen boys and one very tough girl named Dana. The pledges are referred to as " Pledge Slime" and must call the members of the club " sir" and " master." The activities the pledges are forced to complete, after committing to several requirements and conditions, are supposed to prove their courage and help them learn to work as a team. But as the secret meetings continue and the things the pledges are forced to do become more and more horrible, Jericho begins to feel very uncomfortable. But not uncomfortable enough to break the vow of secrecy. Jericho amazes even himself by his willingness to sacrifice an amazing opportunity and even his own safety to get into the Warriors of Distinction. But the last thing the pledges are expected to take the " Leap of Faith." This means they must jump out the second story window of a building and land on only a mattress and a few pillows and scraps of rubber. Josh is the last to go. Although everyone before him landed safely, with the exception of one broken arm, Josh spins in the air, away from the semi-safe mattress and hits his head, hard, on a rock. He is dead.
The beginning of this book is pretty much what i expected, but the ending surprised me. I expected Jericho to end up with the girl he liked, but though he was with her during the majority of the book, they were not together at the end. I also never expected anyone to die. From the back of the book, i could tell that the Warriors of Distinction were going to get into some trouble, i never expected them to pressure the pledges to do anything as dangerous as jumping onto a mattress with some pillows and blankets on it. I also thought that it was interesting that Josh was the one to die. Most books end in a place of happiness and contentment, and although this one ended in a moment of temporary happiness for Jericho, him playing his Trumpet in honor of Josh, it is still an ending of discomfort and pain. In the other books i've read about death, the author reflects more on life going back to something near normal after the death, but in this one, there was no real reflection other than a brief conversation between Jericho and some of his friends about Josh's death.
My favorite part of this book was a brief conversation between Jericho and a boy at his school named Eric, who was bound to a wheelchair for life after falling off a fence he was planning to jump off of with his friends. It is about Eric and his wheelchair and how he has come to live with life like that. I predicted, after getting to the point in the book where Jericho and the rest of the pledges discover that they are being pressured to jump out the window and onto the mattress, that Jericho would refuse to jump because of what had happened to Eric, so i was surprised when he didn't make a choice like that. I wonder if Jericho had any regrets about jumping and convincing Josh to jump because he could've prevented it by sharing with Josh what happened to Eric and deciding not to jump. That is an example of the kind of reflection i would expect to see at the end of a book.
I would rate this book a 4.5 out of 5 because i think it would've been significantly better if the author had given more information about how Jericho and his friends moved on after Josh's death. I recommend this book to people in eighth grade and high school because some of the concepts in the book are a little difficult to comprehend.
ZR
