it's absolutely no surprise that i loved this as i will generally fangirl every single thing rick riordan writes but oh MY GOD! he is just killing it lately. like can we talk about how amazing it is to have a genderfluid protagonist in a popular middle grade children's book? and the whole thing was handled so well and explained in a very straightforward manner, which i really appreciated. there's none of that 'oh well i don't like ~labels~ but...' kind of stuff you get in most books where the author wants the representation points without putting any effort into it. and oh god alex is just the best, like definitely my new favorite character for this series. [also i think magnus has a little crush and i really hope that goes somewhere!]. 
 if i wanted to be super nitpicky i would say that i don't particularly like loki as this like ~pure evil~ antagonist, but rick never really switches things up wrt which gods are 'good' and 'bad'. it's just that i have read a LOT of norse mythology fiction and loki is the ...well, hero is not the right word but at least anti-hero or protagonist of all of them [i have a bit of a loki obsession] so it's very weird for me to read something where loki is the 100% bad guy but it's such a great series and i appreciate that the children of loki are heroes so it's just something i'll have to get used to.