Book Review: Heroes of Olympus- The Blood of Olympus

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I prebooked the Kindle edition of way back in February and have been waiting for it ever since. The previous installments of the Heroes of Olympus were pretty great and Riordan had built up the momentum beautifully. It wasn’t as gripping as the Percy Jackson series but it was pretty damn captivating none the less.

Anyhow moving onto the grand finale of this series…I guess I had hyped up the extent of the excitement in my own head and the book by itself fell flat. I was far more kicked about seeing the book get downloaded on my Kindle on its own rather than the actual sequence of events that unfolded.

I will say this though- barring the Illiad no other book has ever got me this enthused about the Greek or Roman myths. Riordan brings to life the parallel universe of the Greek gods, their Roman counterparts, their foibles and their personalities in a humorous and at times emotional manner.

This isn’t just a book for children or people who love fantasy. I would recommend this body of work to anyone who likes to sink their teeth into a great narrative punch-full of imagination, strife, romance, twists in the tale and whatnots.

This book fell short on the following points-

• the humor felt a bit forced and not as fluid as it normally is with Percy’s wisecracks and Leo’s overall irreverent attitude towards life.
• the actually awakening of Gaia.
• the interaction between the Gods and their offspring during the showdown with the giants.

All this isn’t to say that this might not go down well with the rest of Riordan’s huge reader base out there but I guess in the balance between expectation vs reality expectation battered down reality.

Sadly a fantastic series of books comes to an end. Awaiting the next gem from Riordan.

Write away Mythmagic Man! Your books have provided a helluva lot of good times over the last year.