Rick Riordan is probably better known for the five book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. This series was based on Greek Mythology set in modern times. So naturally when the series concluded, he wrote a sequel series. Most fans were excited and ready for the new series. The sequel series is called The Heroes of Olympus and the first book in the series is called The Lost Hero.

For my rating system I use ten stars. I did enjoy the book, but there were minor gripes that had me drop the rating down to a eight star. The one I would consider major at all would be that it felt a little awkward with characters we didn’t know, and frankly no Percy Jackson.

Jason, Leo and Piper, the main characters, all have problems. Jason doesn’t know who he is, Piper has a secret, and Leo has self doubt. Percy Jackson is missing from Camp Half Blood and an ancient evil is awakening. It’s up to Jason, Leo, and Piper to figure out what is going on, while going on quest to save the goddess Hera after she has been captured.

The relationship betweens all the characters is smooth. They’re all pals and seem to never argue. There is one time that they have a conflict with each other, if you could even consider it one, they fight with each other because a scourcress influences them. With the last series there was some conflict with characters on the same side; it wasn’t a lot but they didn’t agree on everything. Another problem in my opinion is that the characters don’t do much changing. Piper has a little bit of an arc that she deals with in her head, but everyone is mostly static.

You will notice when reading this book that some characters aren’t there, have been replaced or maybe even both. I don’t think that this is intended to cut out the characters. I do think, however, that it probably is to introduce new characters and expand a little bit more, I also feel that it may make it easier, if it is someone’s first PJO (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) book.

Otherwise those are the only things I can really talk about without spoiling the story for anyone who hasn’t read the book.This is your warning from here on out that there will be spoilers.

Jason is someone who I was not too sure on when I read this book. He wasn’t a mean person, but he sure was an awkward character for a while. Not only that, but he would remind people that his dad was Jupiter and not Zeus, even though they are pretty much the same gods. The only thing making them different is their personalities. I found this a little annoying because I felt like it wasn’t that important to remind people. This is something that goes on multiple times in the series, so it’s not like it changes. I feel like he didn’t do all that much though, so that was a problem I had with him too. Being fair though, he did have amnesia nonetheless he was still able to do somethings.

Leo makes me laugh a lot in throughout the book. He was a sarcastic person who I could relate to. He would lighten the mood when it seemed dark at times. He was a silly character that came with his own problems, such as his mom dying in a fire when he was eight and people blaming him for it, even though it was the Earth goddess Gaea. Leo has had more trouble throughout his life than any of the other demigods. He also has a lot of self doubt which takes the book to places the PJO series hasn’t been to much before.

Piper will not mention her dad till near the middle or end of the book, and it’s a little annoying. All she has to do is tell the guys and then badabing badaboom there you go they can help fix it. When reading about Piper, I was happy that the book brought up the topic of racism. With the PJO series the only problems that occurred were really in the demigod world, there were no evils like racism or sexism. It’s nice to see the book series mature in more ways than one and still keep its young humor.

I fell in love with Festus the bronze dragon. The dragon could breathe fire so that of course made it awesome. Even though he was a machine, he felt alive. The way Rick wrote the dragon made him feel like more than just a machine. He has to be one of my favorite parts of this book. That is up until the part where Festus’s body is destroyed.

The part when you realize that Jason and Thalia are related is crazy. This part got me so hyped and I was so happy that we got a little more back story on Thalia and Jason Grace. Now we know why Thalia can be so ridiculous and react so badly sometimes. All we knew about her before was that she ran away from home when she was young and also we knew she was Zeus’s daughter.  Other than that I just thought she was an ill tempered Percy who shared nearly the same story as Annabeth but decided that she would get angry.

Going over the parts that I could recall, I have to say the book was good. While this was stated earlier, I want to remind people that I like the book overall. I like how it introduced more characters and some more diversity. I think that it was a good book for the opening of a new series. If you read the book and read this then we may need to have a talk. If you have not read the book, now that you have spoiled yourself, will you go read it now?