Gooooood evening!
How are you? How’s going this winter? Everything OK?
I hope so.
Anyway, I am here because I wanted to use today’s review to tell you about a really nice book I have recently read under duress (my sister is “a bit” diehard fan of Rick Riordan, so she waited with trepidation to finally impose me the second saga written by the author become famous with Percy Jackson‘s adventures). The book I am talking about is nothing but the first chapter of The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero.
The Heroes of Olympus is a five book saga which allows us to continue following Percy’s adventures and discovering what Rachel meant with her terrible prophecy at the end of the first saga (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
But first things first, let’s begin from the plot!
What would you do if you woke up with a total amnesia on a school bus, hand in hand with a beautiful girl, sitting next to a hyperactive boy who claims to be your best friend and with a coach who yells at you and who clearly thinks you have never been on that bus until few seconds before?
What would you do if whirls of air attacked you and your friends and the above-mentioned coach, defending you, showed goat legs?
What would you do if a blonde girl with a stormy – as confused – gaze arrived from the sky on the back of a pegasus and brought you in a camp, named “Camp Half-Blood”, because, well, you are demigods?
And what would you do if, faster than you can say “Cool, and whose son am I?”, you all were sent on a mission because Hera has who-knows-what plan to defeat an ancient enemy who is reawakening in the shadow?
There, this and some other “tiny” problems are the ones Jason will have to face with the charming Piper and the fun Leo.
So, let’s talk about it.
I have enjoyed this book for many reasons, first of all the fact that Rick Riordan has continued to give us the Camp Half-Blood’s adventures – with something more.
The style is typical Riordan’s – sharp, fun, captivating, engaging – but this time there is something different.
Indeed, every chapter has a different point of view (Piper’s, Jason’s and Leo’s in this first volume) and, as a consequence, the humour that has always characterized Riordan’s books has to “adapt” to the character.
This book presents, moreover, the saga as more serious. The feeling of anxiety and mystery is greater both because, with different points of view, you know more about characters’ past but you also share all their doubts and questions, and because of the amnesia factor.
(Not so) deep down, you, as all of them, have no idea who Jason really is, what he used to do, where he comes from and so on and you end up empathize with Piper (what if the guy I fall in love with does not even exist?), with Leo (what if my best friend does not even exist?) and with anyone else who has doubts about Jason: can you truly trust a gorgeous no-one popped out of who-knows-where, by the will of who-knows-who and with the purpose of doing who-knows-what?
However, although the tones a bit more serious and (sadly) Percy’s absence in this first book, Rick Riordan manages to bring us back to this wonderful world and to make us appreciate – someone more someone less – the new characters.
Jason’s serious determination, his innate leadership, Piper’s struggles to make people appreciate her for something more than her looks and to win back the love she is afraid she lost, Leo’s congeniality, his intelligence, his genius, his terrible jokes… All this and plenty more contributes to make you cheer this improvised trio and to make you fall in love with them – especially with Leo *coff coff* -.
Moreover, it is very interesting to notice how these three deal with their demigod nature. In the first saga, indeed, Percy was the only one – or nearly – at the camp who did not know anything about his nature and discovers and deals with it at the age of 12. Jason, Piper and Leo, instead, are 16, did not know anything and yet, in some mysterious way, they managed to survive alone in “the outside world”.
How? Why? What is concealing behind each one of them? What the enemy moving from the darkest depths of the earth has in store for them?
You will find everything out only reading and… Trust me, it is worthy.
P.S. Don’t worry, Percy is in the saga! Only in the first volume, for a series of reasons he is absent.
IL CAPPUCCINO 