Just Finished Reading...

The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan

While I enjoyed last year's The Lost Hero starring Jason Grace as the Roman demigod and amnesiac, I felt there was something missing.  Leo is the only character who sticks out in my memory from my reading of the first installation of the new Heroes of Olympus series.  Maybe because he *SPOILER* appears in book two.  I didn't feel as invested with the characters as I had with Percy, Annabeth, and Grover from the first Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. 

The first two books are a set up for the new fight.  In PJatO, the fight was with Kronos, in HoO, the fight is with big, bad mamma Gaea.  The Greek and Roman camps are unaware of each other, but will now be forced to work with one another in order to fight the mother of creation. 

In Son of Neptune we find out where Percy's been the whole time Jason and his new gang were fighting wind gods and flying around on mechanical dragons on a quest to free Hera/Juno.  Percy wakes up from a long nap and finds himself at a camp for Roman demigods, Camp Jupiter.  He meets two campers, Hazel and Frank, who helped save his life but are of course not highly respected by the other campers.  I thought these characters were more richly drawn than the characters in the previous book, and so I cared more about their stories.  Hazel gets flashbacks that render her unconscious, and Frank, though big and beefy, doesn't think much of himself.  Percy is his usual self, even with losing his memory, full of wit, humor, and courage only a true hero possesses.  Their quest is to free the god of death, Thanatos (imprisoned somewhere in Alaska), defeat the king of giants, Alcyoneus and rush back to help defend Camp Jupiter from attack by the Feast of Fortuna.  No problem, right?  Actually, that's my only quip with these stories.  It seems too easy for these half-bloods to defeat these ancient (and usually stupid) monsters.  I would think the gods have to be on their sides for them to always be so victorious.

What I love about this new series is that (and I said this with the first book) it introduces the reader to Roman mythology.  The reader sees that not only do the names change of the gods, but that their personalities are altered as well.  We see this mainly with the character of Ares/Mars in book two. 

Riordan gives us more of what we love:  good battles, a tiny sliver of puppy love, lots of humor, and a world where fantasy and reality collide.  If you haven't read The Lost Hero, you could probably skip it and read The Son of Neptune without missing a beat. 

Oh, yes.  My only other problem with the book was that I bought it as a Nook book, and the spacing was jacked up throughout.  Slightly annoying.