The Blood of Olympus Review

The demigods have escaped the House of Hades, but now they must split up in order to save Camp Half-Blood and Olympus from Gaea. Nico shadow-travels with Reyna and Coach Hedge to Camp-Half Blood to bring the Athena statue back quickly. He is sick though, and their journey is definitely not easy. Even Reyna’s ancestors are against her. The rest of the team go on missions of their own, each doing their part and learning more about themselves along the way.

 

This felt like the longest book in the Heroes of Olympus series, even though it may not have been. The beginning part of the story is just a lot of traveling and POV switching. Even though each character’s name was at the start of each chapter, with the constant switching, it still got confusing and frustrating. I never got to really learn a lot about the characters, and I ended up not connecting with anyone in this entire novel.

Also, I really feel that I am tired of reading Riordan’s novels for kids with teenage characters that are simply…..lacking. These stories just don’t seem to have enough character development for me. Another issue is the action scenes. They want to be really intense, but most of them are simply just silly/funny and not actually violent or even really suspenseful. Reading it, I knew that nothing was going to actually happen to any of the characters, and I was right. It just seemed like 50-80 pages of…floundering?

I am glad that I am finally finished the Heroes of Olympus series. I think that this series was just not for me, but I am definitely proud of myself for finally finishing it. I wish that the series had truly shown the growth of the characters from children to adults, but the characters, save a few like Renya who was adult-like from the start, have remained in the immature child-like mindset. I hope that the Magnus Chase series does not end up the same way.

The world-building wasn’t that disappointing as the characters do visit several places. The pacing was also fair, as I was able to speed through this entire book in about 2-3 hours. The only thing that I keep harping on is the lack of character development in the entire series.

I would only really recommend this series to middle-grade readers, I would not recommend it to adults looking for a deep and satisfying fantasy read. Hopefully, Riordan will start to finally write books for truly adult readers. Harry Potter started off as a children’s series, but then it eventually started to have real character development, show the growth of the characters, and even more violent/mature storylines. This series stayed the same nearly the entire way through, and this disappointed me.

Overall Rating: 2/5