“The Last Olympian” by Rick Riordan

Finally finished the original Percy Jackson series! Very exciting. I honestly forgot how well this final installment wrapped up the series so well. All of the plot lines get wrapped up, and in a really satisfying way.

It starts off with Nico convincing Percy to do the Achilles thing and bathe in the River Styx so that he becomes invincible. Of course he does it, but then he finds out that the Titans are planning an attack on Mount Olympus in NYC, while another Titan distracts them by fighting across the continent. This leaves NYC undefended and perfect for Kronos to capture. Of course, Kronos didn’t think that our favorite demigod heroes would be such great fighters and stop him. The fight comes down to the throne room in Olympus, where Annabeth manages to get through to Luke, who’s hosting Kronos, and Luke essentially suicides to stop Kronos. And a lot of other things happen as well.

There’s so many separate story lines going on here. Nico and his father get acceptance when they come to the rescue of Olympus. Rachel becomes the new Oracle of Delphi, now that the curse has lifted. Grover rallies the satyrs and becomes their leader. Thalia returns as the head of the Hunters of Artemis. Percy apologizes to Hermes and realizes how much strength it took him to not stop Luke. It’s a very strong finale.

One sour note that I’d like to point out is that the first character to die is Beckendorf, a son of Hephaestus. He and Percy go on a mission to explode the huge cruise ship that Luke has made his base. The thing is, Beckendorf dies within that first chapter. Almost immediately after we learn that he’s started dating another recurring character in the series. Oh and he’s black. I have a couple issues with this, first of all, stop killing of the characters of color, second, don’t just stick someone in a relationship to make their death hurt more! It felt like a very cheap way to show that this would be a book where characters die from the beginning. Given all that though, none of the main characters die. It’s just an awful lot of the side characters.

My favorite part of this whole thing though was when Percy talks to Hermes at the end. Percy apologizes for thinking that Hermes was a bad father, and says that he didn’t realize what Hermes went through. Percy also says that he thinks the gods of Olympus can change, and can prevent this from happening again by claiming their children and respecting all of the minor gods. The ending really isn’t static or a “they all lived happily ever after one”, Riordan keeps the door open for further adventures and further growth. Which is really cool. Plus he writes a sequel series to this one so it makes sense.

There’s a lot more I could write about, but I think I’ll leave it there. Very excited to dive into the next series from Riordan!