Ancient Greek culture had several different words to describe
the concept of love, most popularly explored in modern culture by C.S. Lewis in
The Four Loves, which took those concepts and connected them to
Christianity. I bring this Christianity
connection up as a means to illustrate how the concept has lasted into modern society
as the fourth installment in The Heroes of Olympus is an examination of
the many different forms of “love” from the Ancient Greek ideals to more modern
ideas of love. The House of Hades
is a book which has a herculean task ahead of it, it follows up The Mark of
Athena which left the Seven broken, Nico was saved but war was encroaching
on Camp Half-Blood and Percy and Annabeth were dropped into the depths of
Tartarus. The ending could only be
described as throwing our characters to the ground and setting them on fire,
and The House of Hades has the Seven in their two separate settings try
to get to the Doors of Death to close them.
Both groups have to undergo harrowing trials that threaten to destroy
the love that they have for one another in almost every way imaginable. There are several revelations about
characters and this book is essentially guided by the different relationships
formed.
Starting with the most applicable love to the whole
group is storge, the love of one’s family.
The Mark of Athena built up the Seven as this found family and
that love of working together to save the world is the primary motivator for
getting each and every character together at the end. The idea of a war destroying both camps is
there throughout the novel, two families that need to join together being
pushed to the brink. Camp Jupiter and
Camp Half-Blood are essentially their own families and there are cameos from
characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Son of
Neptune to emphasize that point. This
is the type of love that is perhaps most apparent in the general way that each
of the Seven interact with each other, especially the party on Argo II
as Percy and Annabeth are separated from everyone else throughout the
book. Interestingly philia, the undying
friendship, while able to be applied to any friendship, oddly makes itself most
known in how Riordan stops the love triangle between Frank, Hazel, and
Leo. While The Mark of Athena had
Hazel make her choice, Riordan doesn’t forget that Frank Zheng is kind of an
idiot, and is still jealous of Leo. Much
of the first half of the book involves Frank coming into his own as a son of
Mars again (gaining some magical power ups and I guess good looks in the mix)
and Hazel gets over her own reservations of being best friends with her crush’s
great-grandson. They end up forming
their own little trio in this one where they end up learning to trust one
another and basically solve everything together as a group, separating
themselves apart from being a sidekick.
Leo also turns out to represent ludus, the flirtatious
love, along with Piper and Jason. Piper
and Jason’s relationship is obviously the most flirtatious and doesn’t actually
advance more from the previous books and it doesn’t need to (Piper spends most
of this book as the clever one figuring out how to stall the war back home and
charmspeak when necessary, but this isn’t really a problem as she’s had plenty
of development in The Lost Hero and The Mark of Athena). Leo has a small section in the middle of the
book where he is on his own on Calypso’s island. The Battle of the Labyrinth had Percy promising
Calypso that he would get the gods to free her which he did in The Last
Olympian, but they seem to have forgotten that. Calypso and Leo’s romance is essentially an
enemies to lovers, except instead of enemies Leo kind of crash lands and breaks
some of her stuff while Calypso is incredibly annoyed by not being freed and having
another hero on her island. This
actually traps Leo there for a decent amount of the book allowing Riordan to
create this great flirtatious relationship between the two characters with Leo making
the same promise to Calypso as Percy once he eventually does leave. This is also clearly not a book where the
started story arcs are finished by any means.
The plot of The House of Hades has a lot of
side quests for both parties including a return from the Boreads, two more wind
gods appearing, and a final battle which kind of outdoes the Battle of Manhattan
in creativity. Hazel gets a chance to be
apprentice to Hecate and develop magic as her own skills and Hecate is just
really fun in that final battle. The
most important for this review’s/essay’s purpose is the side quest with Jason
and Nico to find Diocletian’s scepter where two forms of love are represented
which means here there be spoilers. They
are guided by Zephros/Zephyr the west wind to Cupid who’s the Roman form of
Eros. Eros isn’t actually represented as
a concept here (that’s for our final couple), but Cupid does have musings on
love in general. Love isn’t always
happy, often it hurts and it hurts hard, but is something that nobody can
really avoid. And Nico’s journey is to
understand philautia, self-love. Now
philautia as a concept often can develop into narcissism, but that isn’t the
fate of Nico. Nico di Angelo is gay. He had a crush on Percy since The Titan’s Curse
and Cupid forces him to admit it to himself and Jason who happens to be present
at the time. With that revelation, every
action of Nico since The Battle of the Labyrinth is recontextualized and
honestly makes a lot more sense, especially the stuff he’s done post-The
Last Olympian (before that could easily be handwaved (mostly) as him
dealing with the death of his sister).
Nico doesn’t actually achieve philautia in The House of Hades, he
just has to admit what he is and admit it to someone. Cupid essentially forces him out of the
closet to Jason, but Riordan doesn’t portray Cupid as good for doing that. Cupid is a god and as eros is passion itself
it is an act of passion. There’s also
the very deep love and death connections which can be made in many ways. Jason, in turn, become a representation of
pragma, the love of one’s companion, committed to keeping Nico’s sexuality a
secret until Nico is ready. Jason Grace
is a character who as the son of Jupiter, is the archetypal hero. This is something that I don’t think Percy would
ever actually do and if Percy was present he would probably react poorly.
The only love that really is missing from The House
of Hades is agape which is empathy and universal love. The only character who kind of fits this one
is Reyna, who appears at the end and puts that love towards her fellow
demigods: she’s the one who is able to delay the camps and stop the war at the
end, she takes the Athena Parthenos back to Camp Half-Blood and is essentially fated
to unite the camps in the next book. Though
that’s not necessarily the best example for agape, so if readers don’t see it
and rather have it not included that works just as well.
Half of this book is the eros of Percy and Annabeth’s trek
through Tartarus. Tartarus as a pit is
essentially Rick Riordan’s tribute to all kinds of horror. The trek that makes up their chapters takes
every range of horror, from Annabeth being blinded, to being constantly hurt by
monsters, to Percy being cursed by every black deed he has done. This is the one where Percy and Annabeth’s own
mistakes come back to haunt them: they have to descend into hell and face their
own demons with their eros being only what saves them in the end. Percy at one point sinks so low as to nearly kill
an immortal goddess who tries to hurt him and Annabeth responds by being scared
that he is now going to kill her. Their
passions are inflamed and once they actually get out at the end of the book it’s
their love that has only deepened as they can only collapse from the
strain. Bob the Titan becomes a
representation of all the bad the two have done and their own journey of atonement.
Overall, The House of Hades is hands down the
best entry in The Heroes of Olympus.
It acts as a beautiful reflection to The Son of Neptune’s thematic
death throughline with its reflections on the nature of love bringing people
together and eventually saving the day. It allows love, like death, to be messy and
present on every page. 10/10.
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