The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero by: Rick Riordan

 

Let’s be honest, setting up for a sequel series at the end of Percy Jackson and the Olympians was a bit of a risky move.  The Last Olympian closed the threads and wrapped everything up nicely, but with a new Great Prophecy being given and The Kane Chronicles being set in the same universe, readers were quick to respond to the announcement of a new series.  The Heroes of Olympus starts only a few months after The Last Olympian and opens in a way that can only be described as frustrating for fans.  And by frustrating I do not mean bad, the opening of this book is brilliant and plays well into the idea that there is already a fanbase reading so the reader can move right into the story quickly, but frustrating for those expecting to see a new story with Percy Jackson.  Percy Jackson does not appear in The Lost Hero, though he is referred to by name several times, other known characters appear, and there is a presence felt that he is important to the plot.  Rick Riordan makes this bold move and pulls it off brilliantly.  The first three chapters saddle the reader with Jason, a sixteen year old with amnesia put in the position of an unreliable narrator.  He wakes up on a bus from a school for troubled kids with a girlfriend and best friend and is immediately attacked at the Grand Canyon by storm spirits.  He’s obviously a half-blood with his two friends, also demigods.  The mystery about Jason and his identity becomes a driving force through this book, underlying the main quest to free a captured Hera and stop ancient giants from waking.

 

While The Lost Hero is a book which follows the standard formula for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians books, there is something markedly different about the way Riordan presents the story.  Outside of moving right along at the start, making it to Camp Half-Blood by the third chapter, there is an attempt to set this book apart as the first in an epic.  Like The Kane Chronicles before it, The Lost Hero switches between narrators between chapters, allowing each of the three heroes to have their time in the spotlight and being given equal characterization.  It feels like a vast improvement over the issues of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, though as this ties into the second Great Prophecy (called the Prophecy of Seven) it makes sense to have more characters getting the points of view.  Like The Lightning Thief there is a pattern to the characters of the hero, the guide best friend, and the romantic interest (though in The Lightning Thief Annabeth would really only develop into this in later books), but getting to see the quest through each of the characters’ eyes with the main theme of the novel being that of discovering and being comfortable with one’s own identity.  Riordan also makes each of the protagonists distinct from Percy, Grover, and Annabeth which becomes the drive of the book: because Jason has amnesia and apparently has this relationship with these two others, much of the book for him is trying to discover what of the relationship is real and what his past was.  As he is the character with perhaps the most focus, and the character who’s arc requires at least a few spoilers in this review, I will be saving analysis of his character for last.

 

Piper McLean and Leo Valdez are our other two point of view characters and protagonists, both demigods with troubled pasts.  Of course, they do not know they are demigods at the beginning of the novel and have had their own lives interfered with by the gods to keep them hidden.  While both of their stories are interesting, Piper’s is the one with the most stake in the plot.  Piper is the daughter of a movie star and Aphrodite, something much of her arc revolves around coming to terms with that and various other aspects of her identity.  Piper already felt split between several worlds: her father is Cherokee and a world famous movie star and adding a literal divine parent into the mix whose entire domain is love and beauty only makes that identity feel completely wrong.  Her father has also disappeared, being captured by the giant’s forces who have captured Hera and Piper is expected to betray her friends.  Add to that the fact that her love for Jason is most likely an implanted memory that has no basis in reality and the fact that her demigod siblings embody the ideal of love as a weapon, Piper is a character whose entire story revolves around accepting her love life and own abilities to manipulate others with her voice.  It’s a journey of self-acceptance and explores themes of what love means, putting her against human and mythological forces.  For instance, Medea is a character who manipulates Jason and Leo with her charm into attraction (well it’s really lust but this is a young adult novel so that word doesn’t come up) and Piper has the power to do so as well, and it revolts her.  It’s a dark side to her own being and something she eventually stops suppressing and accepts at the end.  Her interactions with her mother both stated and implied are also great as it gives Aphrodite a chance to be shown as having more depth, as love has more depth, than in her initial appearance in The Titan’s Curse.

 

Leo Valdez also deals with identity not through suppressing it but running away from it.  Riordan writes him as the third wheel in the trio as a way to continuously place Leo as the outsider.  He doesn’t really fit in and is an orphan who places himself as responsible for his own mother’s death, and has a babysitter who tormented him as a child revealed to be Hera.  Placing him as a son of Hephaestus also puts him as an outcast: Hephaestus was thrown off Olympus by Hera as a baby because he was deformed.  He feels like an outcast from his own siblings and is hurt by the thought that his best friend may be a lie.  Leo’s siblings are suffering under a curse since the events of The Last Olympian where there crafting skills bear disaster.  Leo is also one of two demigods directly mentioned in the Prophecy of Seven, as the fire that the world must fall to (he can manipulate and create fire).  He runs away from his problems and buries himself in humor until the very end of the book: he is the one who repairs the dragon on the cover, he’s the one who figures out why Jason has amnesia, and he’s the one who actually breaks the curse on his cabinmates.  Leo’s identity comes from his own mind.  He pushes it away and it isn’t until he confronted it that he is able to reveal that he can in fact create fire and with Piper is responsible for saving the day.  The humor he uses is all a mask which becomes apparent from his first viewpoint chapter, though Riordan implies that this aspect of his arc is far from over.

 

Jason Grace is the closest thing we have to a main character and he has had his identity stolen, with only three clues to his past (and here’s where spoilers come in): a tattoo with an eagle, the letters SPQR, and 12 tally marks on his arm; a tendency to use the Roman names for the gods; and a memory of his older sister Thalia Grace.  Jason is a character written as someone who has already done great things and stands for something, but that something has been taken right away from him.  While Percy Jackson is The Lost Hero, Jason also fits that bill as he has lost everything that he knows about himself, truly being lost in an unfamiliar world.  His story is one of inner turmoil.  When he meets Thalia in the middle of the novel and gets to at least learn his childhood life there is an emotional catharsis as Jason has an internal breakdown.  Jason expects Thalia to love him like a brother with open arms, but she comes across as cold which is an understandable reaction after she was told that he was dead.  Thalia’s reactions are very human and Jason being allowed to break down, even though subtle, make him feel immediately more complex than Percy did in The Lightning Thief.  Jason also has the added responsibility of being Hera’s champion and being a natural leader who puts everyone else’s safety above his own.  The big reveal is that there is another camp for demigods, those who come from the Roman aspects of the gods, kept separate from Camp Half-Blood as they clash, but Hera/Juno must bring them together to defeat Gaia, the mother of the gods and goddess of the Earth who is essentially a Lovecraftian threat waking.  His memory may be coming back at the end of The Lost Hero, but there is enough to know that both the Greek and Roman demigods must come together to defeat a common threat.

 

While the actual quest to find Hera has plenty of twists and turns with the extended page count used to make each encounter filled with action and character development, the few returning characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians become a treat.  Riordan relegates it to a desperate Annabeth Chase and a serene Rachel Elizabeth Dare.  Annabeth has been running herself ragged in the search for Percy, but still has time to try and make Jason, Piper, and Leo feel at home while Rachel has found herself slipping right into her role as Oracle of Delphi.  For fans they are a great treat, but are essentially cameos with Thalia’s involvement being much larger.  The only other major character which hasn’t been discussed is Gleeson Hedge a satyr who provides the most overt comic relief.  The supporting characters and monsters are all excellent with the glimpse into the Roman world of demigods leaving enough of a hook for the sequels with the added promise of the dead coming back to life and a great evil rising.  It makes The Lost Hero the perfect start to what might be Riordan’s first real epic.  10/10.