The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by: Rick Riordan

 

The Trials of Apollo is a series with a premise which shouldn’t necessarily work: the god Apollo cast down from Olympus for his failings in The Heroes of Olympus (or perceived failings) and essentially having to survive as a mortal.  It’s an interesting premise, and one that Rick Riordan easily could mess up especially as writing a character whose only concept of time to this point had been of an immortal, only understanding an eternity.  There is also the massive amounts of identity issues one such character would undergo now becoming a 16 year old who has to interact with his own children.  The Hidden Oracle is the first book of Riordan’s third pentalogy and is perhaps his most ambitious book yet.  There have been several criticisms which I have had of his previous series in not giving enough time for the side characters to really shine and an overabundance on simply retelling myths in the modern day, but The Hidden Oracle takes great steps to go away from that type of storytelling and into something different.  This really is the first novel from Riordan which does not actually go across swaths of the US or the world to tell its tale, limiting itself to New York City and Camp Half-Blood which really allows some honing in on the plight of our characters and how the world has changed since the end of The Blood of Olympus.

 

The premise here is that the prophetic powers of the Oracle of Delphi, and four other ancient oracles, has disappeared and an evil corporation, Triumvirate Holdings, has been building power in the last twenty years or so to hold some sort of takeover.  The extent of the takeover is never really clear and it seems that Riordan really wants to write something that goes blatantly against corporations and capitalism in general, but this book doesn’t ever actually make the villains plans clear, though this is the first of five books it isn’t that much of a problem.  There is also a nice twist with one of the characters having connections to the Emperor Nero who is alive and running Triumvirate Holdings.  Nero is an interesting final act twist villain, as he isn’t played as the usual insane man who played the fiddle while Rome burned, Riordan even going so far as to lampshade the saying as completely historically inaccurate.  Nero’s madness is much less ranting villain who is ineffectual, but charming madman who is clearly moving pieces along a chessboard, yet still a man.  There is the implication of the Python of Greek Mythology being a true big bad, but humanity becomes a major theme of The Hidden Oracle which is perhaps some of Riordan’s most interesting work.  Every character is written intentionally to be human and just that, not necessarily all good, not all bad, just painfully human.  Meg McCaffrey’s a homeless teen and daughter of Demeter who is simply human: she saves Apollo because he’s there and ends up using him for her own ends.  They learn to care for one another.

 

Apollo being forced into mortality means that over the course of the book he is becoming human, and that really can be seen in multiple ways.  First, his way of speaking and internal monologue starts incredibly arrogant, only actually caring for his own children as human beings (though being disgusted at being in a body younger than some of them), but slowly morphing to someone who actually begins to understand and almost resent bits of his godliness.  He’s still got a long way to go with a lot of his godliness still seeping through.  There’s also the matter of the chapter titles: they’re haikus as Apollo is the god of poetry, but as the book goes on they start from mostly pithy comments to some genuinely heartfelt reflections on Apollo’s slow realization about himself.  His conversations with his children, including Will Solace is also an incredibly interesting thing.  There is most definitely some oddness in the fact that he is now younger than some of his children which means that there are things here that are awkward as well as Apollo’s regret about his past lovers, ancient and modern.  Daphne and Hyacinthus are perhaps the most prominent lovers that Apollo actively regrets leaving, or ending in a poor fate, and yes the pansexual nature of the character is present, though Riordan’s rather odd it’s okay to be LGBT aside early on does feel really out of place and very tell instead of showing (which he then shows anyway with Will and Nico being in a happy relationship making the need to tell us this feel even more off).  Will and Nico’s relationship is also finally given some exploration, and having someone outside of Nico’s perspective definitely helps the audience see just how weird he actually is about himself and his happiness.  Chiron also ships it.

 

Overall, The Hidden Oracle is definitely good and is helped by having one setting, however, as an introduction it almost tells a complete story and leaves a lot to be desired in the end.  A lot happens in this book, even if the book is kind of short.  The character work is great, but things move quite a bit too fast before anything else can really be setup, while having a writing style that occasionally tries to tackle something incredibly adult while in the guise of a children’s book.  8/10.