The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

Title: The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus #5)

Author: Rick Riordan

Release Date: October 7th

Rating: 3 Stars

Though the Greek and Roman crewmembers of the Argo II have made progress in their many quests, they still seem no closer to defeating the earth mother, Gaea. Her giants have risen—all of them—and they're stronger than ever. They must be stopped before the Feast of Spes, when Gaea plans to have two demigods sacrificed in Athens. She needs their blood—the blood of Olympus—in order to wake.

The demigods are having more frequent visions of a terrible battle at Camp Half-Blood. The Roman legion from Camp Jupiter, led by Octavian, is almost within striking distance. Though it is tempting to take the Athena Parthenos to Athens to use as a secret weapon, the friends know that the huge statue belongs back on Long Island, where it "might" be able to stop a war between the two camps.

The Athena Parthenos will go west; the Argo II will go east. The gods, still suffering from multiple personality disorder, are useless. How can a handful of young demigods hope to persevere against Gaea's army of powerful giants? As dangerous as it is to head to Athens, they have no other option. They have sacrificed too much already. And if Gaea wakes, it is game over. - Summary from Goodreads

           Once again we have to say goodbye to another Rick Riordan series and awesome characters, especially Percy Jackson. Like me, many of you have been waiting a long time to see how this series would end and have been really excited about it. Sadly, I was disappointed and unimpressed with Blood of Olympus. I really wanted to love it, but I had to face the fact that this series was just not very well done. Blood of Olympus was definitely my least favorite of the series.

            To start off, and I know this is just a little thing for some, but there was no Percy or Annabeth narration. Now I can deal without Annabeth because she’s almost always with Percy or one of the others, but Percy is Riordan’s strongest and most loved character and he doesn’t give him a narrative, or even a lot of page time? And when they did bring him up, it seemed like half of the time they were picking on him. Suffice to say, once I found out that he wasn’t a narrator I lost a lot of my interest. Thankfully we still had Leo, and the Reyna and Nico narratives weren’t bad. I had been wanting to hear from Nico for years, but I will admit I was disappointed with that as well. Riordan kind of ruined his character for me in the last book for many reason, but that would take longer than this post should be. I will say though that he had one scene in here that was so bad-ass it was awesome. It finally felt like the Nico I had come to know from all the other books (other meaning before House of Hades) had returned.

            There wasn’t much of a spark to make this a page turner and it lacked the humor that I was use to with this series. Most of the book seemed to deal with all of the characters issues and everyone giving these Hallmark encouraging speeches and it got really annoying. I know Riordan is probably trying to diversify his book and make them for everyone with every type of problem, but he just overdid it. I realized this with HoH and it just became more and more noticeable as I read this book. He needs to go back to trying to write a good story instead of trying to cover every issue he thinks kids are dealing with.

            The only parts I really enjoyed were when old characters would make cameo appearances and when they showed Camp Half-Blood. For me, those brought back all the memories of what I liked about this world. But even through everything that I didn't like about this book the ending was very satisfying and everything that I wanted for these lovely characters. A warm feeling spread through my chest and I was smiling with joy to know that these characters will do alright no matter what trails come their way, they will persevere.

            In a way I’m glad this series is ending now where it is, I think perhaps it might have even gone on too long, but I still will miss a lot of the characters like Percy, Annabeth, Leo, Nico, etc. This world has always been fun to escape in and I look forward to rereading my favorites. Goodbye Percy Jackson and goodbye Heroes of Olympus.

           

           -Sarah