Before I get started, City of Blades is the second book in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities trilogy. I am a terrible judge of whether you will need the earlier book to understand this one, and I apologize for that. I don’t think I need to spoil anything about the first to talk about the second, but everyone has their own tolerance level. Non-spoilery, but necessary background about the world of the Divine Cities. One hundred years ago, the gods were real. The Continent was […]
A satisfying end to a fun series
I’ve finally (regretfully) reached the end of the Percy Jackson books. It’s a little bittersweet finishing an enjoyable new series. It’s been highly enjoyable, however, and I do see myself returning to the series and recommending it to younger readers along the way. The nice thing about these books is that they’re fun without taking themselves too seriously and informational about mythology without being too heavy-handed in focus. In short: they’re appropriate for the audience to whom they are addressed. Percy is trying not to […]
Back into the groove with a maze plot.
Rick Riordan twists the plot a bit so that he breaks the predictability factor of the books. This is overall good for the series, as he has only one book to wrap up the story arc after this. Because I am a puzzle-person, the archetype of the maze or labyrinth has always been of interest to me (though please do not put me in one of those panic rooms), so I was probably going to find The Battle of the Labyrinth more interesting by default. […]
A more repetitive entry in the series.
I think this middle book might have been the weakest of the series for me—it was certainly the least memorable. While Percy falls into a sort of rhythm, Rick Riordan’s plotting starts to get a little paint-by-numbers in a way that makes me wonder if his enormous book output after the Percy Jackson books is being manned by a bookmill of ghostwriters. That said, I was glad to keep inhabiting the Percy universe and learn even more obscure mythology. Annabeth goes missing while Percy is […]