thepunktheory
Written on Oct 25, 2017
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!
