The Mark of Athena - review

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite fantasy reading! I never really notice it when i read the previous Riordan's works (Percy Jackson and the Olympians series) but the way Riordan tells his tale is wickedly hilarious. Every now and then i find myself laughing like a madwoman just from reading this novel. Hey, we can always use some good laugh, rite? :)

In this new series (The Heroes of Olympus), we can still meet Percy, Annabeth, and their friends from Camp Half-Blood, but the focus of the story moves to another demigod groups; Roman demigods. There are Jason, son of Jupiter (Roman name of Zeus), Hazel, daughter of Pluto (known also as Hades, finally Nico has another sister :D), Frank, son of Mars (a.k.a Ares the beefy guy) and many more. After the fall of Titan Lord Kronos, Olympus (and practically the world) is under threat of Gaea, the Earth Goddess, who can turn mountains into rumbles, which is the sorta thing  Earth Goddess do. Seven demigods, including Percy and Annabeth and some Roman demigods are destined to stop her from pulverizing the earth.

Actually the story is nearly as irrational as the first series (partly maybe because i dont buy the idea of multiple gods working together and bickering about how to run the world, partly because the idea of gods have kids with mortal is just freakinly mad) but i guess fantasy novels can fantasize all they want :D

Forget the irrationality, and you'll find quite an entertainment throughout the books. Riordan really knows how to make funny similes and sarcastic yet purely hilarious sentences. Each protagonist gets their fair share of publicity, because the book is written in their own individual point of view, one by one. That's better than the first-person POV Riordan uses in the previous series, because the thoughts and feelings of other characters is more deeply explored and described. and i found some descriptions he makes is just laugh-cracker :D

There are plotholes alright, like why the gods, despite their knowing everything and almighty powers, still are capture-able and jail-able. but it's no biggie since the main story is waaaay more engaging and interesting. Why fuss over small plotholes, then? xP



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