Book Review #10 - The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan

Reason of the choice

This is the final book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and I was eager to finish this series because the previous four books were amazing and I really wanted to know how it would end.

Reaction to the first pages

The beginning of this book is slightly different from the others but I still liked it because I just wanted to know how the series would end, so I didn’t need to be very impressed with the first pages to decide if I wanted to keep reading it or not, because the previous books had made that decision for me. However, even with a different start, it hasn’t disappointed me because this final book had to be different from the previous ones or it would leave us with the feeling that we would need more books to finish the story properly.

Summary

The book starts when Percy and Rachel were hanging out but Charles Beckendorf, one of Percy’s friends at Camp, appears and tells Percy it was time to destroy a ship were part of Kronos’s army were. However, it didn’t go as they planned: they exploded the ship but Beckendorf died and Percy was able to get away from there with his life because he was son of Poseidon, or he would have died too.

After the explosion, Percy was carried by the waters to Poseidon’s palace which was being attacked but the Sea God said he would be able to hold it without Percy’s help and he also said that Percy should went back to Camp because that was the palace where he was needed the most.

As he arrived at Camp, he told the bad news and asked his teacher, Chiron, to tell him the Big Prophecy related to him. Then, Percy was taken to the attic, where the Oracle lived, and she told him the prophecy. While he was at Camp, he was told that almost all the Gods were fighting Typhon, the “father” of all the other monsters, which Percy had freed from his prison and he was also told that nobody was guarding Olympus, so they decided that they had to guard it themselves.

Before leaving the Camp, Percy found Nico, who taught him how to shadow travel with his pet, a hellhound he had inherited from Daedalus to go to Luke’s mother’s house because they needed to know more about Luke’s past if they wanted to defeat him because he was the one who had given his body to Kronos. When they left Luke’s mother’s house, they haven’t understood much of what she said, so they felt it was a little useless but with the development of the story, it all made sense. After that, they went to the Underworld, the realm of Hades, to keep going with Nico’s plan to defeat Kronos.

As soon as they arrived, Hades imprisoned Percy but Nico freed him and convinced Percy to have a bath on River Styx, to be as strong as Achilles, because Luke had also done that before him and that was the only way that they would stand a chance to defeat Kronos. When Hades noticed Percy had escaped, he led an army to jail him again but Percy annihilated them and he left the Underworld.

As soon as Percy arrived in New York, he made a plan to defend the city with the help of the other Half-Bloods, of the nature spirits gathered by Grover, a satyr and his best friend, and by Artemis’s Hunters. They were able to hold Kronos’s attacks but they suffered many losses. In the following day, Prometheus met Percy, offering them their lives if they gave up, but he refused. He had predicted Percy would say something like that, so he gave Percy Pandora’s box and he said that if he changed his mind to open it, so their lives would be spared.

In the next days, they were able to keep holding Olympus away from the Titan’s army but they were losing ground, despite the help given by the centaurs, led by Chiron, by Hades’s army, which was convinced by Nico to help defend Olympus, and by the Ares’s cabin, led by Clarisse, which wasn’t in the battle since the beginning.

When Typhon was near Olympus, the Gods were able to imprison it again because Poseidon came to help. By that time, Kronos was already in Olympus and Percy fought him until Annabeth understood the prophecy and told Percy to give a blade to Kronos while she was trying to bring back Luke’s consciousness. Their plan went well and they were able to defeat Kronos because Luke’s had stabbed himself in his “Achilles spot”, which killed him and the Titan.

Highlights

Once again, the author was able to adapt the old Greek Mythology into the modern times so successfully that all we want to do is to keep reading.

In my opinion, this was an amazing series finale book but I have to admit that I liked more the previous books because the final battle between Percy and Kronos seemed just so little when we compare it to the other stories which contributed to make this series so great.

Nevertheless, after four amazing books, Rick Riordan was still able to bring back even more creatures from the Greek Mythology but I think this was not the best book of this series because its plot was almost only about Percy’s battle against Kronos’s army, while the remaining books had stories with more action and more creatures, creating a very engaging plot which culminated in this last book.

Book Review #9 - The Battle of the Labyrinth, by Rick Riordan

Reason of the choice

Since its beginning, I always loved the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. This is the fourth book of this series, so, in order to know how this series will end, I had to read this book to fully understand the whole plot.

Reaction to the first pages

As he always does in these books, Rick Riordan starts them when Percy is at his school, in the mortal world, and something bad happens to him. This book is no different from the others and, then, it developed itself naturally, not forgetting anything that had happened before, described in the previous books, that could influence the series.

Summary

As mentioned above, Percy was at his new school when two creatures, which were serving Kronos, attacked him and Rachel, a mortal girl, who could see through the Mist, a magical veil that doesn’t allow the mortals to see the monsters, gods and everything related to their world.

After fleeing from the school, Percy met Annabeth and they went back to the camp. In there, they found a new sword-master, Quintus, who had a hellhound, which is a creature that usually hunts the Half-Bloods, as a pet. Percy also found that the Council of the Satyrs, creatures which were looking for the wild god, Pan, didn’t believe that Grover, also a satyr, heard Pan. Moreover, all the campers knew that Kronos’s army was trying to find a way to use the Labyrinth created by Daedalus to attack and destroy the Camp.

Being in that situation, Chiron, the centaur who had trained many heroes through the times, named Annabeth to lead a quest with the goal to avoid Daedalus from giving Kronos a way to navigate through the maze. Then, she chose Percy, Tyson, a cyclops and Percy’s brother, and Grover to join her to help her complete the quest.

They were challenged many times: they had to face Kampê, an old monster, to free Briares, a creature with one hundred hands; they had to slay Geryon, a monster with three hearts; Percy almost destroyed one forge of Hephaestus to get rid of some creatures that were using it but that Hephaestues didn’t know what were they; and Percy also had to refuse to stay in Calypso’s island.

Only after all these things had happened, they found out they needed a mortal who could see through the Mist to guide them in the maze, so they went back to New York and asked Rachel to help them. She agreed and, with her guiding them through the Labyrinth, they found Daedalus’s workshop but, in that time, it was too late because he had already given Kronos's army Ariadne’s string, another tool to navigate through the maze. In their way back to Camp, they found Grover and Tyson, after splitting because Grover had felt Pan’s presence, and, after being all together, they found Pan, who died in front of them.

After Pan’s death, they went back to Camp and when they arrived, the Camp was being attacked by Kronos’s army but they were able to defend themselves and contain the attack with the help of Briares, who had got back some hope, and Daedalus, who came back to help because he felt sorry for all the bad things he had done in the past but, in the end, he kills himself to destroy the Labyrinth, which was connected to his life, to prevent Kronos’ army to use it. 

Highlights

Once again, Rick Riordan’s writing style kept unchanged and he kept introducing us new creatures and new stories of the ancient Greek mythology. However, these stories are told us as they had happened but the author also tells this main story by adapting the old creatures, gods and titans to our times and it is so interesting because it is not boring to read because we just want to read more and more to know how the story ends.