The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus, #4)

by Rick Riordan

[Nessa Luna]

In 2012 I first heard about the Percy Jackson series, a fictional series about the children of Greek Gods (aka demigods). I read the books and fell in love with the characters, the story, everything! Then, I found out there was a sequel series called The Heroes of Olympus, featuring old characters but also new characters. Including the most important: Jason, Piper, Leo, Hazel and Frank. These books feature more Greek (and also Roman) heroes, gods, monsters and much much more!

The House of Hades is the fourth book in the series. It starts off a couple of days (hours?) after Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus (which is like the worst part of Hell. It's the place where the monsters come from). The rest of the team doesn't know what to do after losing their 'leaders', but they decide to not let Percy and Annabeth's sacrifice be in vain. They travel from Italy to Greece - with several detours and monster attacks along the way - in order to close the Doors of Death. Meanwhile - in Tartarus - Percy and Annabeth are struggling to get to their side of the Doors, but they get help from some very unexpected companions.

Personally, I like the story of the Percy Jackson series better, but I like the writing style of these books more. The Heroes of Olympus books feel a lot more 'grown-up', or at least they feel more YA than the PJ books, which were definitely books for kids around the age of 12. I did enjoy these books though, because it was more of the Greek demigods which I love, and then with the Romans added made it even more awesome (okay technically, the Roman gods are the exact same as the Greek ones, except they have different names, and sometimes a god(dess) has one or two different 'powers' in Roman than they have in Greek).

My favourite chapters had to be the ones from Percy or Annabeth's POV, mainly because I wanted to know how their journey through Tartarus went. The descriptions of that place were incredibly awful though, and it made me a bit terrified. I probably wouldn't have been as brave as those two if I ended up in a place like that, also I probably would have died almost instantly. But Percy and Annabeth are of course 'professional' demigods, and they know how to fight and survive. Still, I was so afraid for them throughout the whole book, and I was so convinced something was going to go wrong.

The writing was, as usual, very good and I just couldn't stop reading. I guess I finished two/thirds of the story within this weekend, mainly because I hadn't read a thing during the previous week and I just wanted to finish a book. But the writing in THoH just made me want to read and read and read. I just love how Riordan is able to mix drama with humour, I have several quotes marked that just made me laugh out loud. I do believe that demigods have the worst luck EVER, because every time they seem to be safe, they get attacked by something else again. Maybe that's the problem of having such a big book, stuff needs to keep happening in order for it to be exciting. That was the only thing I didn't really like about this book - that a lot of the fights just seemed to be added to fill up the book and delay the demigods even further, ha ha ha!

In the end, I really really liked The House of Hades and I both can't and can wait to get my hands on the last book in this series, The Blood of Olympus. Then, after that I will pick up Riordan's new demigod series; Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - YES, a book about Norse Goods, woohooooooo!

My opinion on this book in one gif: