Putting Annabeth in danger and making that danger feel
real by allowing Percy to have a hand in the reason she is captured (he goes
off after the half-blood siblings as they are escorted out of school by the
manticore) gives a deeper emotional involvement for the character. They feel more real and compounding these
stakes with the fact that the world is at stake makes The Titan’s Curse feel
like there is a real danger. During much
of the climax, Riordan reveals more of Luke’s plan to raise Kronos and actually
makes him a threatening villain whereas in The Sea of Monsters he just
showed up to be intimidating. He has to
be fought with the “big bad” of the novel, whom I will not spoil, making the
climax especially engaging, even if the resolution then resembles the final few
chapters of The Lightning Thief.
Although Annabeth isn’t in the novel, Riordan introduces her father in a
sequence that is perhaps the most memorable and most in parallel to Percy’s
relationship with his stepfather from the first novel and a mirror with Paul
Blofis, a minor character who is revealed to have begun a relationship with
Percy’s mother. Dr. Chase is meant to
represent an understanding of family making it through difficult times and
fixing broken relationships. He was
never an abusive parent: a failure to protect his daughter, but not from lack
of trying (Annabeth may have been misinterpreting his signals) and he is a
fascinating character in his short scenes.
Percy also isn’t chosen to take part in this book’s quest, which is an
interesting decision as it gives him better motivation to go off on his own. There are two points in the novel where Dionysus
is actually given more depth and hints at being a more important god and more
complex than previously thought. First,
he lets Percy go on the quest when by his own admission, he should have stopped
him, and second, he provides aid at one point during the book, even using Percy’s
correct name showing that there is something more to the character.
Percy’s quest in The Titan’s Curse is
summarized by Aphrodite as one for love.
It is made clear to everyone except Percy that there is a romance
between him and Annabeth: this is the reason that he went on the quest and the
reason he blames himself for her capture.
He is losing his innocence and growing up, getting closer to the age of sixteen
and while Thalia could also be the child of prophecy, he very easily can still
be the one it speaks of. The loss of
innocence is a subtle theme running throughout the novel: Riordan introduces Artemis
and her hunters as a group of maidens who have sworn off romance for immortality,
and the hunters are portrayed partially as childish. There are hunters who childishly act like boys
and men are inferior because they are immortal teenagers who never had to grow
up. While equating romance to a loss of
innocence isn’t the best analogy, for what Riordan is going for it works. Artemis is portrayed as both young and old,
innocent and experienced in the ways of the world. There is something both childlike, yet
incredibly strong about the goddess. Early
in the book one of the half-blood siblings, Bianca Di Angelo, joins the Hunters
of Artemis and it is portrayed as almost reclaiming her innocence. Bianca is a character who has been
responsible for taking care of her younger brother Nico and sees the Hunters as
a way to reclaim the childhood she never had and her own identity. Riordan does not portray Bianca as wrong for
doing so. She is a little rash perhaps,
but not a bad person or really dodging a responsibility, even though it hurts
Nico. She has to deal with the
consequences of her decisions and her arc ends in tragedy.
Nico, on the other hand, while a minor character only
appearing in the bookends of the novel, gets his own arc. He starts as a complete innocent: wide-eyed,
liking a card game, and finding the knowledge of being a half-blood like a
game. He is what Percy perhaps could
have been if he was introduced to the world of gods and monsters naturally, but
by the end of the book that innocence is gone and he doesn’t quite know how to
cope with that. Thalia Grace also has
her own arc about growing up. She and
Percy have a much more interesting dynamic than simply rivals: there is a
mutual respect and friendship, but Riordan writes them as similar thinkers in
many ways which is where they clash because of the few differences they
have. The differences are simple and
stark which makes for an interesting dynamic between the two of them. Early on they are put into the position of
co-captains for capture the flag against the Hunters of Artemis and their
styles of leadership clash with one another like the sky clashing with the
sea. They both want to go on the quest and
both are close friends. Finally, there
is a sea creature which follows Percy from a myth about the Titans which
represents innocence in its purest form.
This isn’t to say that The Titan’s Curse is a
perfect book. The formula of The
Lightning Thief is followed pretty closely which makes it feel a bit repetitive
in places. Zoe Nightshade, while a fun character
with her own moments, has a final fate that feels just a bit cliched. Overall, The Titan’s Curse shows that
the series is going places and makes enough changes in the formula to make
things interesting. It leaves the
characters in different places then they started and shows that Rick Riordan is
not writing a static series: things will change, characters will die. It is not going down a darker path, but it
makes the book feel more real and the pending danger of Kronos present. 9/10.
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