The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan

This is the second in the series that started with The Red Pyramid.  Carter and Sadie Kane are siblings who discovered, in their first adventure, that Egyptian gods are real, and that their family has a long history of being Egyptian magicians.  When this story starts Carter and Sadie are living in a safe house in Brooklyn and training new recruits in the Egyptian magic. They are also trying to figure out a way to bring the god, Ra back to life so that he can battle the giant snake, Apophis, god of chaos.  They team up the a dwarf god, Bes, who can scare away even gods because he is so ugly.  The trio race against the clock to find the three pieces of the scroll of Ra, and then raise him from his millennia-long sleep before Chaos destroys the world. The story is punctuated with Riodan's fun fantasy action scenes and spiced up with a few romantic crushes on the part of both siblings. I think I liked this book better than the first.  I am not as familiar with Egyptian mythology as I am with some others, so as I read the first book I was still getting used to how the gods worked and interacted with each other.  By the time I read the second book, it was all making more sense to me and I was able to sit back and enjoy the story and characters more. (452 p)