The Trials of Apollo: The Dark Prophecy by: Rick Riordan

 

When I set out to read the mythological works of Rick Riordan, I intended to be finished before the release of the final installment in The Trials of Apollo.  That clearly didn’t happen as by that point I had only made it into The Kane Chronicles, so here I am over half a year later in the middle of The Trials of Apollo and feeling the slow burn of the series.  The Hidden Oracle was actually a great start to the series and gave some interesting characters with an interesting premise, but The Dark Prophecy kind of takes a turn for the worse.  The series set itself on an exploration of what happens when a god has to become mortal which it did incredibly well, so it becomes a surprise when The Dark Prophecy kind of leaves that out of Apollo’s motivation as a character.  Sure, Meg being missing is an important motivation and works, but Riordan doesn’t allow more than one thought to be put in Apollo’s head at a time which feels like the entire story just isn’t nearly as cohesive.  Yes there is the great step of limiting setting to one or two places and making this feel like a series where each installment does lead right into another, but the Waystation doesn’t quite work as Riordan intended.  The intent is to cause friction between Apollo and Artemis, however, Artemis doesn’t actually appear so it’s only the Hunters and inhabitants of the Waystation which provide that friction.  These are all essentially new characters, including some of the exes of Apollo which is where the book gets the closest to meeting the character dynamics of previous books.  Riordan almost introduces too many characters in this book while trying to appease fans by including characters like Leo and Calypso, implying that the New Rome characters will be in the next book, and a final appearance of Grover Underwood.

 

Emperor Commodus is this book’s villain, and honestly he and his underlings really aren’t that interesting.  He’s power mad, we’ve seen that before, and Riordan really is making this book feel like it was aimed at a younger audience.  There’s an evil character who gets redeemed from The Heroes of Olympus which kind of happens only because the plot demands it, though it was a minor character in The Lost Hero so that isn’t exactly the worst thing to happen.  There’s also this indulgence in snake imagery in lieu of using Python as a villain.  There is at least two “couples” which work really well, Apollo and Meg in the second half having some great moments though tainted by the step backward in exploration, and Leo and Calypso.  Leo and Calypso’s relationship is one that just seems like it’s built on care and worry, both kind of being flawed characters which is a glimmer of the previous Riordan books shining through because of that.  There is a great moment when Leo goes on ahead right after the end of the book which is great and brilliant.  Also The Dark Prophecy doesn’t actually really appear until the very end of the book making the title seem worthless.

 

Overall, this book is the weakest I’ve read from Riordan thus far and honestly is one that feels like it can be skipped.  Fans may like it for some of the cameos and there is some great setup and the occasional character work, but really it’s one that drags on far too long.  It took way too long to actually get going and once it gets going it doesn’t actually go anywhere resulting in an experience which is very meh.  5/10.