73 pages • 2 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Hammer of Thor
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A 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 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Could You Please Stop Killing My Goat?”
At the novel’s opening, Samirah al-Abbas and Magnus Chase are supposed to meet an informant at a coffee shop in Boston about Thor’s missing hammer, but Sam gets summoned to save a soul. Magnus protests he won’t know the informant without her, but she insists he will and then flies away “like Super Muslima, leaving me to pay for our order” (5).
The informant is Otis, one of Thor’s goats. When speaking with another goat who goes to the same therapist, Otis got a tip that Thor’s hammer is in the lair of a wight—a dangerous undead creature that lives in a barrow tomb and collects magical items. Otis starts to tell Magnus he needs to warn Sam about something but is cut off by someone throwing an ax into his chest. Otis dies, and Magnus runs after a figure on a nearby rooftop.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Your Standard Rooftop Chase Scene with Talking Swords and Ninjas”
Magnus unsheathes Jack, the Sword of Summer, who is unsurprised to hear they are chasing an assassin. The assassin wears a wolf mask and warns Magnus to stay away from the barrow. Magnus attacks, but before he can take the assassin down, he hears a triumphant wolf howl in the distance, “turning my blood to Freon” (19). Bleeding from a wound on his leg, the assassin once more warns Magnus to stay away from the barrow if he wants his friends to live, and then jumps off the roof, disappearing. Worried the assassin will go back to the coffee shop and corner Sam, Magnus retraces his steps at a sprint.
Chapter 3 Summary: “My Friends Protect Me by Telling Me Absolutely Nothing. Thanks, Friends”
Sam is at the coffee shop, unharmed. Magnus fills her in on the fight, and they speculate that Loki, Sam’s father and god of chaos, is likely involved with the disappearance of Thor’s hammer. Magnus’s description of the assassin’s fighting style sounds like an einherjar or Valkyrie, and Magnus can’t understand why someone from Valhalla would betray them.
To have any chance of retrieving the hammer from the wight’s barrow, they’ll need help from Blitz and Hearth, Magnus’s dwarf and elf friends, respectively. Sam heads back to school for the afternoon, telling Magnus she’ll see him later to welcome the new soul she reaped. She doesn’t seem excited about it, and when Magnus presses, Sam says, “Tonight you’ll have the pleasure of meeting [...] my brother” (29).
Chapter 4 Summary: “A Cheetah Runs Me Over”
Magnus returns to Valhalla via its Beacon Street entrance, vaulting over the wall around its expensive condo facade and crossing the Grove of Glasir to the hotel’s front door. Inside, the hotel staff are in foul moods after how poorly Sam’s brother has treated them since arriving. Magnus retreats to his floor, where a cheetah runs past, stepping on his feet and leaving holes in his shoes. The cheetah is Sam’s brother, who thoroughly destroyed his room and hurled insults at Magnus’s hallmates before shifting shape and running off.
The newcomer’s room once belonged to their former troll hallmate. With the new arrival, the room has shifted from a humid pool to an open-air atrium that looks like Magnus’s room, which makes Magnus uncomfortable because he doesn’t want to “share styles with a murderous wildcat son of Loki who ran over people’s feet” (37). A mix of men’s and women’s formal wear clutters the bedroom floor, and amid the wreckage, Magnus finds broken pottery with a sign of Loki, which greatly concerns him.
Chapter 5 Summary: “My Sword Has a Better Social Life Than I Do”
While Magnus’s hallmates go to lunch, Magnus returns to his room to calm down, studying the pictures over his fireplace. One photo is of his cousin Annabeth, daughter of the Greek goddess Athena, and another shows his mom and her two brothers. The second picture has recently shifted to show a new symbol on Magnus’s Uncle Randolph’s cheek. It matches the one on the broken pottery, which means “somebody had branded my uncle’s face with the mark of Loki” (44). Later, Magnus goes to the evening battle, where he’ll meet his new hallmate.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Love Me Some Weasel Soup”
Magnus joins his hallmates in the battlefield, where residents of the hotel fight each other and giant dragons called lindworms, a feature of Thursday’s battles. A raven drops a weasel at their feet, and when one of Magnus’s hallmates threatens to make soup out of it like he did during the Civil War, the weasel transforms into a gangly teenager. The kid is Alex Fierro, and despite being known as Sam’s brother, Alex tells the group to refer to her as a girl “unless and until I tell you otherwise” (51).
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
These opening chapters introduce the novel’s main characters and conflicts. When Magnus’s group visited Thor in The Sword of Summer, the god’s hammer was missing, and that event jump-starts the plot and main conflict of The Hammer of Thor. In Norse myth, it’s believed that Thor is one of the primary forces keeping Ragnarok (the end of the world) at bay and that Ragnarok will come quicker unless the hammer is found. It is unclear how long Thor’s hammer has been missing or if it’s been in the property of the earth giants the entire time. Magnus and his friends spend the entire book attempting to retrieve the hammer while being bombarded by subplots that waylay their progress.
Magnus and Sam return in their roles of einherji/son of Frey and Valkyrie, respectively. Sam continues to go on secret missions for Odin while maintaining her normal Valkyrie duties and attending school as a mortal. When Sam misses the meeting with Otis because she had to collect a soul, the agenda conflict represents all the commitments Sam has and how she juggles them. Her return to school following her Valkyrie duties and conferring with Magnus is an example of how her Norse and mortal lives intertwine. By contrast, as a resident of Valhalla, Magnus has plenty of spare time, shown by how he stays to meet with Otis and then leisurely returns to the hotel.
Sam’s conflicted commitments immediately introduce ideas of How Identity, Culture, and Heritage Shape Us—a theme furthered with the introduction of Alex Fierro, who is gender-fluid and identifies as male or female at different points throughout the story. Alex is initially introduced as male, but at some point between when Alex’s soul is reaped and the nightly battle, Alex shifts to female. No reason is given for why Alex identifies as a certain gender at any given time, and Alex more often identifies as female. In these opening chapters, Alex is worried that her death means she will no longer be gender-fluid, and her fear leads her to trash her room and attack her new hallmates. Once Alex confirms that her gender still shifts as it did during life, she calms down. However, her initial anxiety adds another layer to the nervousness associated with Valhalla in The Sword of Summer. In the previous book, Magnus faced his own struggles acclimating to his new life as an einherji, but he never worried that he wouldn’t still be himself.
Alex’s arrival in Valhalla also highlights the differences between her and Magnus’s situations prior to their deaths. As a teenager without a home in Boston, Magnus didn’t know the Norse gods were real. Thus, when he died, his struggles transitioning to life in Valhalla were compounded by learning that the world was different from what he previously believed. By contrast, Alex knows she’s a child of Loki and is aware of how the Norse gods affect mortals. She arrives in Valhalla knowing the place exists but not thinking she would end up there, as children of Loki have traditionally not been accepted to the afterlife of heroes. Though Magnus’s and Alex’s fears upon arriving in Valhalla come from different lived experiences and concerns about what to expect, they both initially struggle to adapt to the afterlife. Their specific struggles show how, despite manifesting as unique personal experiences, stress and anxiety are universal emotions.
Chapters 4 and 5 introduce the major internal conflicts Magnus faces throughout the story. The change in the picture of Magnus’s Uncle Randolph foreshadows that Randolph is working with Loki and that Magnus will have to face his uncle at the end of the book. The picture also symbolizes Magnus’s conflicted emotions toward his uncle. Before the beginning of the series, Randolph lost his wife and daughters during a storm when the gods sank the ship he was using to locate the Sword of Summer. In The Hammer of Thor, Randolph sides with Loki after the trickster god promises to reunite Randolph with his family in exchange for Randolph’s help freeing Loki from his bonds. Magnus grapples with Randolph’s alliance with Loki, both understanding how grief could bring his uncle to side with Loki and also being frustrated by his uncle’s decision to trust a god known for betraying people. Finding Loki’s symbol on Alex’s pottery affects Magnus more strongly because of the connection to his uncle. This conflict highlights a theme of Appropriating the Labels of “Good” and “Evil”—the novel continually suggests the futility of trying to fully morally categorize individuals. Randolph’s actions may be dubious, but his intentions are founded in love for his family. Alex herself is initially ambiguous in her moral character. Magnus wants to trust her because she’s Sam’s sibling, but he worries that the symbol shows Alex’s allegiance to Loki. Magnus trusts Sam, a child of Loki, and his immediate distrust of Alex makes him feel bad because he doesn’t want to judge someone based on who their parents are.
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By Rick Riordan
