By Rick Riordan
Puffin out now
The fifth and final book in the Heroes of Olympus series.
For those who haven’t come across it before, the series is set in a world of Roman and Greek Gods and demigods (half-mortal, half-human), where young half-blood heroes are recruited to either the Greek Camp Half-Blood or the Roman Camp Jupiter, depending on which form of the gods their divine parent is. For years, both the camps have been kept in the dark about the other’s existence, for whenever they have met in the past they have fought and caused the gods to develop split personalities. However, with the threat of Gaea, the earth mother, waking up and destroying the gods, the camps have been reunited, in the hope that together they can stop the terrible fate that is about to befall them. It does not go well, and war has broken out. Now, with the gods incapacitated, it seems like no one can defeat Gaea and her monstrous children, the giants. The crew of the Argo II is the world’s last and only hope.
These seven demigods, each chosen by the oracle’s prophecy, have already (with the help of their friends) foiled Gaea’s plan to open the Doors of Death, letting unkillable monsters run rampage, and they have recovered the Athena Parthenos: the statue that could be the only way to stop the fighting between the two camps. Now all they have to do is defeat the most powerful being in existence.
Their friends Nico di Angelo (son of Hades), Reyna (daughter of Bellona) and Coach Hedge (a very warlike satyr) have gone west to return the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood to stop the fighting, while the crew (Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus, Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto, Frank Zhang, son of Mars, and Piper McLean, daughter of Aphrodite) must go to Athens where Gaea plans to spill the blood of two demigods – the Blood of Olympus – in order to wake from her millennia of slumber.
I really enjoyed this book, because it is fast paced, extremely funny in places and still contains two epic adventures and two final battles. Having read all of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and the previous Heroes of Olympus books, I think that although it is sad that such a wonderful series is over, it definitely went out in style.
Verdict: A stylish end to a wonderful series. 9/10
Sophie Simpson
IF YOU HAVE COME HERE PLEASE REDIRECT YOUR BROWSER TO WWW.SCIFIBULLETIN.COM 