Book Review: The Blood of Olympus

Though the Greek and Roman crewmembers of the Argo II have made progress in their many quests, they still seem no closer to defeating the earth mother, Gaea. Her giants have risen—all of them—and they're stronger than ever. They must be stopped before the Feast of Spes, when Gaea plans to have two demigods sacrificed in Athens. She needs their blood—the blood of Olympus—in order to wake.

The demigods are having more frequent visions of a terrible battle at Camp Half-Blood. The Roman legion from Camp Jupiter, led by Octavian, is almost within striking distance. Though it is tempting to take the Athena Parthenos to Athens to use as a secret weapon, the friends know that the huge statue belongs back on Long Island, where it "might" be able to stop a war between the two camps.

The Athena Parthenos will go west; the Argo II will go east. The gods, still suffering from multiple personality disorder, are useless. How can a handful of young demigods hope to persevere against Gaea's army of powerful giants? As dangerous as it is to head to Athens, they have no other option. They have sacrificed too much already. And if Gaea wakes, it is game over.   Quoted from Goodreads

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Loved it.

I was going to leave it at that.  I mean, if you've made it through the previous nine books, you have to be a fan of the series, but I'll be honest, I never would have thought I'd enjoy it as much as I have when I started reading the first book.  

This was the perfect ending to the series.  It's reminiscent of the first book, The Lost Hero, in that we get POV from Jason, Piper, and Leo (with Rayna and Nico thrown in, which made for a more complete story and a nice change).  It was an excellent way to end the series, but at the same time, that was probably my only complaint with the book.  I wanted to at least get a chapter or two from Percy's POV, maybe get a little bit of Annabeth thrown in there.  We still find out what happens to the characters, and see plenty of action with them, but we never get their POV specifically.  Granted, the arcs that Rick Riordan did choose to follow made sense and covered all the important parts of the story and what was happening.  It's just the selfish part of me that wanted a chapter or two from Percy.

As for action, this book, like all the others never lets up.  It's like Rick Riordan is trying to torture his readers.  Every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, and when he switches POVs, it's in the most inconvenient place ever.  There is always screaming or mortal peril involved.  Still, it keeps you turning pages, making the book next to impossible to put down.

As for the end?  I loved it.  It was perfect.  Really, besides my whole Percy rant, it was better than I could have expected.  I'm not going to go into details about who lives or dies and what happens after, but really, it was everything I wanted, and I'm perfectly satisfied with the way everything ended up.

If you're a fan of the series, pick up this book now.  It's got everything you might want in the story and wraps up the series nicely. I know I've been really vague about everything, but I don't want to give anything away. I'm giving The Blood of Olympus 4.5 amazing stars.  It's been a fun roller coaster ride and I'm sad to see it end.  Still, there's always his Norse mythology series that comes out next year . . .