Your child has finished Percy Jackson and wants more of it, and the internet will hand you forty titles with no way to tell them apart. There is one fact that sorts them, and almost nobody at the shop will say it out loud. Four of these six books come out of a single deliberate project. Rick Riordan Presents is an imprint Riordan founded at Disney-Hyperion for a specific reason: he had become the way American children meet mythology, and he decided he should stop being the man retelling everyone else's. So he handed his platform over. The imprint publishes authors writing the myths of their own cultures — Hindu, Maya, Diné, West African and Black American — for children who already love the Percy shape. The other two here are Riordan himself, doing Egyptian and Norse. That is the map. Six books: pick by which mythology pulls your child and by how much weight they can carry, and the notes below tell you both.
Here is what each of these actually is, because the covers all look the same and the shelf-talkers all say the same six words. The Red Pyramid is Riordan doing Egyptian — Carter and Sadie Kane, brother and sister, descended from pharaohs. Magnus Chase is Riordan doing Norse — Valhalla, Ragnarok, Thor, Loki. Those two are him. The other four are Rick Riordan Presents, which is the imprint he built to publish other people's mythologies in other people's voices, and the difference is not cosmetic. Aru Shah and the End of Time is Hindu, and Roshani Chokshi is Filipino-Indian writing the Mahabharata; it was the imprint's launch title and it is the closest readalike to Percy Jackson that exists. The Storm Runner is Maya, and J.C. Cervantes is Mexican American. Race to the Sun is Diné, and the question of who is telling it is contested — Rebecca Roanhorse has said she is of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo descent, which is a different nation, and Ohkay Owingeh leaders have said publicly she is not enrolled there; a group of Diné writers objected in 2018 to her use of their sacred stories in fiction. Her husband is Navajo. I am not going to settle that argument for you, but you should not learn it after you have told your child the book is an own-voices Diné story, so you are learning it now. Tristan Strong is West African and Black American folklore — Anansi, John Henry, Brer Rabbit — and Kwame Mbalia is Black American. Now, which are harder than Percy, and how. Magnus Chase is funnier than Percy and more violent than Percy; the hero dies on page one and spends the book undead, and the fighting barely stops. The Red Pyramid alternates between two narrators chapter by chapter, and a fair number of children simply bounce off that, so if your child gives up early it is very likely that and not the Egyptian gods. And Tristan Strong opens with the death of Tristan's best friend and builds its monsters out of the slave trade, which is a real step up in seriousness and I would not let anyone hand it to your child without saying so.