I feel like I’ve been reading this book for a lot longer then I actually have been reading it

The Blood of Olympus is the final book in Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series, which is the second series in the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles. In addition, it’s part of the same universe as his Kane Chronicles and the Magnus Chase series (I’ve read and loved the former, haven’t started the latter yet.) And someday, I’m sure, Riordan is going to write a book where all of his heroes meet and it will either be absolutely crazy or epically awesome. I will probably read it either way, because lo I am a sucker for his books.

At any rate, being that it’s set in the middle of a bunch of other books it’s practically impossible to talk about this series without getting extremely spoilery. So, short version of review. I liked this book a lot. I also feel like I’ve been reading it FOREVER. I bought it when it was first released in 2014, started it and then put it down and picked it up again in early December and only just now finished it. For all that I enjoyed it; I think the main thing which prevented me from really getting engrossed in the book is the POV switches. And here starts the spoilers.

So, Gaea is waking up and she’s a pissed off primordial goddess who wants to wipe mankind off the face of… well… her and she’s enlisted a whole slew of monsters and demi-gods to help her. On the side of humanity, there are a small group of demi-gods from Camp Half-Bood (the Greeks) and Camp Jupiter (the Romans) led by Percy Jackson and Jason *Ican’trememberhislastname*. We’ve got two different plot lines going on here. Plot one is Nico and his group taking the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood in order to heal the rift between the Greeks and Romans, and thus heal the conflicted gods and unite the two camps to fight the monsters. On the other plot we’ve got the remainder of the heroes going to the Parthenon where the monsters are going to do a ritual to finally awaken Gaea and destroy humanity. Does that sound complicated? Cause it really is, but if you’ve read the series all along it does make sense I promise.

There are multiple point of view switches, which further complicates things. However, I really like all of these characters, even if I sometimes feel that they aren’t really that distinct from each other. Which is to say; Riordan has a couple of character types he really likes to play with, and some of the characters in this series don’t really deviate much from it. That sounds way more critical then I mean it to be. That being said, I’m giving this book four stars simply for Nico. I think he might be my favorite. He’s the kind of character that could easily go into the brooding batman stereotype, but Riordan has a lightness and humor to his writing that doesn’t allow his characters to delve too deeply into their own darkness and so there are characters who essentially slap some sense into Nico at various times in the book.

In general, if you like Riordan’s crazy take on mythology, you’ll probably like this one. I don’t think you should start here though. And now that I’ve finished it I can go pick up the Magnus Chase novels and The Trials of Apollo .