The Reader's Shire - Book Reviews

Book Review: Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

Disclaimer:

This review is rated S because of major spoilers. It's going to be partially controvershul regarding Authors' Rights and whatnot. Read at your own risk. The Reader's Shire is not responsible for any tears or tantrums. Butthurt and unfriendly readers are warned. Also, this review was written before the release of the Trials of Apollo and Magnus Chase books.

Title: The Blood of Olympus
Author: Rick Riordan
Series: Heroes of Olympus #5
Genres: Young Adult, Greek Mythology.
Format: Paperback
Length: 441 pages.
Publication date: March 13, 2014
Publisher: Disney Hyperion Books
Goodreads Avg. Rating: 4.10 out of 5 stars
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Seven half bloods shall answer the call.
To storm or fire, the world must fall.
An oath to keep with a final breath.
And foes bear arms to the doors of death.

I don't know about you but I always get chills whenever I read this prophecy. Always.

So hello, friends! Riordan is at it, again! This time, featuring a bunch of idiots who have no idea what they're doing and can't stay alive, an immensely tired Grandma, a handful of angry romans, a pretty statue, some gods who really need to be slapped with a hammer and...a nose bleed! I hope you enjoy reading this roller coaster of a book.

Remember when the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series was finished and everyone was beaming and going on about how for once, the author did his solid research on Greek mythology and created the right mixture of the ancient gods and modern day America? Yeah, well. I did too. I loved the Percy Jackson series - it stands along with Harry Potter, it does. I loved the main trio - the dorky, chivalrous and reckless Percy. The intelligent, terrifying and badass Annabeth. The aluminium-loving, sarcastic and environmentalist Grover. They were all brilliantly written characters who became my best friends. The books were so dynamic and fast paced with the right spoonfuls of humour, love and gory deaths.

Moving on to the Heroes of Olympus, I loved the beautiful and badass Piper and her powerful voice. Sweet, athletic and insecure Jason. The badass Reyna and Coach Hedge. The hateful and hated Octavian. Hazel and Frank who were both adorably written characters. And of course, the one and only, Leo "Fish-Blood" Valdez.

The variety of P.O.Vs were interesting too. We met old faces too - Percy who really grew up and was annoyingly romantic and serious now. My love for Nico Di Angelo tripled. The PJO series had been written in only one perspective and it was fascinating to discover how Annabeth became a little more possessive of her friends and turned out to have a fragile side too.

The Blood of Olympus was not exactly bad but it didn't meet my expectations. The ending left me a bit...underwhelmed. I can't say I'm surprised, though. I half expected this to happen because of Riordan being a, well, troll and master of deaths but I didn't expect such a shitty ending to such a great series. No, I did not see that shit coming. I'm quite disappointed at how things wrapped up. It all felt too rushed and I can easily summarize the ending in a few lines.

Piper: Tralalala *charmspeak* Go to sleep, Grandma. You're tired, lol. *charmspeak*

Gaia: Hmmm, I think you're right. I've had enough of my descendents' nonsense.

Octavian: I can defeat Gaia single-handedly! I'm a psychopath! Screw you, Greeks!

Nico: Lmao, go ahead. I aint stopping you. I'm just going to stay here and stare at Will's hair.

*explosions*
*Gaia goes back to sleep*
*Leo dies*

What a pile of nonsense. When Kronos was defeated, it took quite a lot of time for the characters to manage that but for Gaia, it took, what? Four lines? One chapter at the maximum? Gaia must have been very tired if a millenia wasn't enough for her to freshen up. Piper literally just said, "Go to sleep, Grandma!" and that's it. She single-handedly stopped her from waking up. Take that, Piper-haters! Please call her useless, again. I dare you. Jokes aside, I suppose stopping-mother-earth from waking up wasn't the primary plotline of this series. It was simply a war between the Romans and the Greeks. The Gods and the other forces. Gaia was literally nothing.

I suppose the poorly executed finale and shit ending is an accurate representation of what happens when the fandom goes crazy. When the "loyal readership" begins pressuring the author into writing faster and starts sending death threats for stupid reasons. If the Percy Jackson Fandom understood that a book needs to breathe and live before it gets to see the real world, then this finale would've been a lot of better.

I strongly believe that the author owes the readers nothing. It's their book. Not ours. They can do whatever the hell they want with their book - from deciding the ending and which character(s) they'd like to kill to choosing the publication date. If Riordan had snapped and given those so-called "dedicated" fans a piece of his mind, (politely, I might add) he might have done what he wanted. If he had invested his time into writing his book, instead of wasting it by trolling on twitter and creating unrealistic suspense for a shit book, then this might have been a decent finale.

Riordan really needs an award for his cliffhangers. Why does it feel like this series is never going to finish? I expected this book to be the end. At least, the end of Percy Jackson and his squad's adventures. Don't you think that the poor fellas have suffered enough? Don't you think they should reside in some calm place, go to college and just live a normal-as-possible-for-a-demigod, happy life? Apparently, Riordan doesn't think so. Now, we have to wait for another damn series and probably more to find out where the hell Leo is and what's happening to him and Calypso, whether a millenia has passed or not, what the incredibly worthless Olympians are up to and when Solangelo would be a thing.

Irrespective of whether I didn't love this as much as I expected to, this series was a hell of a journey. To the Argo II crew - it has been an honour. Thank you for being a part of my life.

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