The Hidden Oracle (Trials of Apollo, #1)

by Rick Riordan

How do you punish an immortal?

By making him human.

After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour.

But Apollo has many enemies - gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go . . . an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood.

• ISBN10: 0141363916
• ISBN13: 9780141363912
• Publish Date: 3 May 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 February 2017
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Puffin
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[thepunktheory]

Full Review on www.thepunktheory.wordpress.com

As my regular reader will know, I love Rick Riordan's novels. However, with this one I had my problems at first. The name of each chapter is a bad haiku, as Apollo loves to come up with those. Often. At times this is mildly annoying but mostly funny. Apollo himself turns out to be a self-centered prick who could spend the whole day going on about how super duper wonderful and good-looking he is. While reading the first couple of chapter, I kept thinking "I'll throw this book out the window, if it goes on like that!" Well, the good news: very soon you'll get used to Apollo and you will actually grow fond of him! I honestly hadn't expected that but by the end of the book I liked Apollo/Lester and couldn't wait for the next one to come out.
As usual, Rick Riordan composed a funny book based on lots of Greek myths. Some of them pretty famous, others relatively unknown. So even if you fancy Greek mythology (like I do), you will still learn something new. I honestly don't know how Riordan manages to come up with all this hilarious stuff he somehow condenses out of tons of old Greek tales. However, it is absolutely worth to pick up the book. Riordan has a way of really making the story come to life. Throughout the novel I kept thinking "I'd love to see this as movie!", just to see what all the weird creatures he mentions would look like. But after seeing how the Percy Jackson films turned out, I ditched that thought immediately.
Furthermore, it's nice that some of the characters we already know make guest appearances. Rick Riordan inserted that at just the right amount. It's easy to overdo this but he really has a talent for composition!

[sa090]

If I had to rank which mythology I enjoy the most out of Rick's take on them then without a doubt, Greek would be on top. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that every installment in it is going to be a great one.

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Please don't let that start wrongfully imply that the book was garbage, it was okay, just not as great. It's very easy for me to get immersed in Rick Riordan's world and the chapters are pretty short that it makes me feel like I'm reading faster which makes pulling away pretty hard. The thing is, the minute I stop reading, I find it difficult to actually want to come back to this story. I'd get lazy, I'd think of putting it on hold for a bit or I'd find something else to do before I told myself that enough is enough and I finished it in a couple of sittings.

The main issue I have here is Apollo. I really disliked reading his thoughts and how oh so amazing he thinks he is, I found him hard to swallow when he appeared as a side character in the earlier books so with him in full view, it's insanely difficult for me to actually care enough about him to want to see him succeed rather than see him disappear as soon as possible, he's also pretty cringeworthy for me so there's that unfortunately. This ehh part of the book didn't disappear for me at all, it's just in the last 10 chapters of the book the scenes were moving so quickly to wrap it up that it wasn't as easy for him to be himself in a huge degree which in turn made this book more enjoyable for me.

I'm not saying that those chapters were the only ones with that of course since there were other similar instances sprinkled through the book but those 10 chapters had a lot of them that they flew by in less than 30 minutes. The good thing about this approach with his character though is that any character development is going to be very easy to see and while he's not there just yet, Apollo is slowly learning how to be a better Apollo. Therefore, I really hope that one day I'm going to really enjoy his character.

The story in itself doesn't feel that original anymore, it has a few similar elements to earlier books in the series that it doesn't deliver that wow factor anymore for me which again made it a good read, just not on the same level of awesome entertainment as his earlier books in the series delivered for me which could ultimately lead back to the protagonist and my impression of him. I did enjoy seeing and hearing about our old heroes, makes me excited for the Ship of the Dead this October and of course meeting the new faces in the series was interesting in its own way.

Final rating: 2/5

I will forever and always love anything Riordan writes.
Full review to come.

[ellieroth]

Si Rick Riordan hubiera hecho a cierto personaje como yo quería, los siguientes libros de esta serie habrían sido totalmente queer y habría sido hermoso, pero igual estoy contenta con que incluyan a este personaje que no puedo mencionar porque es spoiler.

Y ahora sí de verdad tengo que darme un descanso con Rick y su mundo, tengo que leer otra cosa!

[Artemis]

Follow the The Artemis Reader for more reviews!

I’m a huge fan of anything Rick Riordan writes. I thoroughly enjoyed the Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus, and Kane Chronicles and was glad to see he was starting a new series on Norse mythology. But I was also excited he was returning to the world I first fell in love with – Greek and Roman mythology.

Since its been over a month after reading this I won’t spend paragraphs analyzing everything I love about this series. I’ll save that for the next book. If anything this was a nice reprieve from the teenage demigod focus of the last three series. Riordan managed to find the perfect selfish, sarcastic, narcissistic and hilarious voice for former-god-now-teenager Apollo.

The Hidden Oracle is a highly entertaining new series from Riordan containing new and old characters and many, many adventures.

[Kelly]

Magnificent. Loved it madly. Fans of Mark from Lady Midnight will absolutely adore Apollo.

[Mercy]

4.5/5

[Stephanie]

This took me way too long to read and I think it has to do with being tired of Riordan's writing--lbr, 14 books worth and then some will do that to a person. But hot damn, if I won't read the next one.

[KitsuneBae]

Not as good as Riordan's other works but this was still fun. Poor Apollo.