THE BLOOD OF OLYMPUS | Rick Riordan

THE BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

Rick Riordan

source: own paperback

pub: October 2014

♠.♠.♠.♠

I am so attached to the world of Percy Jackson, I wish I adored about the long-anticipated final installment of Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series the way I love the rest of the books. There were some wonderful things in The Blood of Olympus, but there were some aspects that let me down.

This review will assume at least basic knowledge up to the end of the previous book, House of Hades, and basic knowledge of character points of view in Blood of Olympus, but will otherwise be spoiler-free.

Blood of Olympus opens with the seven demigods of the Great Prophecy on their way to stop the evil earth goddess Gaea rising in Athens, while Reyna and Nico deliver the Athena Parthenous to Camp Half-Blood, to heal the historic rift between the Greek and Roman camps and heal the gods’ split personalities.

It was a lot to fit into one book. The narrative momentum was good, but characterisation definitely suffered.

What’s frustrating is that Rick Riordan can do better. The cynic in me assumes that the gang over at Hyperion has started taking shortcuts in the structural edit because they know any Riordan book is going to make a killing.

The Heroes of Olympus series has a kickass ensemble cast who have all, throughout the series, been shown to be complex, well-drawn, endearing characters. While Blood of Olympus didn’t showcased that as well as previous books, I hope that most fans of the series will be satisfied with how the story ended.

Nico’s chapters were definitely a highlight – not just because they are the narrative voice of a queer character in what is otherwise a very heteronormative series, but also because they exist within a literary landscape in which straight kids all meet their soul mates at fifteen. That’s all I’m going to say about that, because I’m straying into spoiler territory.

I can almost forgive Rick for how little he’s done with Leo since The Lost Hero (that’s an unpopular opinion, I know; feel free to ignore it) because of the girls. The girls.

The female interaction in this book is to die for. This is what pushed my rating to four stars. Representation of positive, nuanced, meaningful female friendship in media is SO IMPORTANT, and Blood of Olympus delivered very satisfying examples.

Piper has progressively been moving away from the anti-feminine, anti-pretty ‘not like other girls’ line she took in when we first met her, and that happened AGAIN and BETTER in this book. Traditional femininity is not weak, emotions are not weak, Piper is fierce and strong and I love her a whole lot.

Reyna’s chapters were the stuff of dreams. Everything about her perspective, her backstory and her interaction with Nico was fabulous. I want an entire series about her.

Blood of Olympus is by far not the strongest of Rick Riordan’s novels, but please don’t let my critical wannabe-editor’s eye put you off the book or this series. I think deeply about things I care about deeply, and I care about this series a lot because it’s really good.

If you haven’t already, you should get on it.

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This is a guest post by Sophie Swancott, who you can catch on Twitter @SophieSwancott9.