This book is the final installment of the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. I knew that I read this when it first came out, but I didn’t really have any memory of it. I realized why after I finished this book, it’s… not a great ending to the series.
There’s a lot of good things, don’t get me wrong, but overall it just doesn’t leave much of an impression. The final battle is kind of separated in two, there’s one battle with everyone’s godly parents that is pretty cool, but then there’s the battle with the Greek and Roman demigods fighting Gaea, the big bad of the series. This final final fight just feels anti-climatic. All that really happens is they rip Gaea out of the earth and from there defeating her is pretty simple. It’s mentioned that there are casualties, sure, but none of them are named characters so it doesn’t really impact the reader. It feels like things are getting wrapped up nice and neat because that’s what you do at the end rather than giving a satisfying ending to the series and the journey that we’ve been on.
One exception though that I want to comment on is Nico’s journey. I didn’t think much about this the first time I read the book, like I said I didn’t remember much. I think I forgot that Nico is revealed to be gay in an earlier book. But throughout this book, the relationship between Nico and Will (a child of Apollo) is really clearly a romantic relationship. Well not yet. But likely soon. I did not notice this at all the first time and it was really lovely to go back and realize that this is actually a great way to show a queer character in a way that doesn’t focus on the queerness as the only aspect of their personality. And it shows so nicely that Nico is opening up more to the people around him and forming friendships.
This is as far as I got the first time that I read Riordan’s
books. I’m going to next pick up The Trials of Apollo series, and this will be
the first time that I’m reading these so it’ll be very exciting to see what
I’ve been missing!
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