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Book review: Rick Riordan's 'The Mark of Athena' is a hit-and-miss affair


New York Times best-selling author Rick Riordan is back with the latest adventures of his most beloved character, Percy Jackson, and his demigod friends in “The Mark of Athena.”
 
When last we saw Percy in “The Son of Neptune,” he was suffering from forced amnesia courtesy of the goddess Hera and found himself among the Roman demigods of Camp Jupiter, which he eventually helped to defend against the malevolent forces of the earth goddess Gaea. In “The Mark of Athena,” Percy gets his memory back, and is reunited with Annabeth Chase. 
 
Together with Roman heroes Jason Grace (son of Jupiter), Hazel Levesque (daughter of Pluto), and Frank Zhang (son of Mars), and fellow Greek heroes Piper McLean (daughter of Aphrodite), and Leo Valdez (son of Hephaestus) they go on a quest to save Hazel’s brother Nico di Angelo from the clutches of the Giants. They also help Annabeth in her personal quest to learn more about the Mark of Athena and the legendary treasure to which it leads.
 
They grow up so fast
 
Percy Jackson’s alternate-Greek-mythology-in-the-modern-world story now spans seven books beginning from the first “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” series. We witnessed his journey from being a problematic 12-year-old kid who couldn’t settle down in one school long enough, to savior of both the realm of the Greek gods and the mortal world.
 
Percy and his peers are now well into their teens, and Riordan seems very aware of this because he’s seen fit to add more romantic interactions here compared to the first five Percy Jackson books. Of the seven demigods who are part of this book’s quest, six are paired up as boyfriend and girlfriend.  
 
Why Riordan saw the need to pair almost everyone up including Percy’s Cyclops half-brother, only he could really say, although I suspect it also has something to do with the series’ target audiences, which are primarily young adult readers. Perhaps this is an attempt to show that teenage demigods experience regular teenage problems too. And of course, every story needs some drama, right?
 
That’s all well and good because it’s great to see the characters grow up right before our eyes, but Riordan’s romantic touch is much too heavy-handed. The words “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” are bandied around more times than necessary to establish who is with whom, that I feel like Riordan drops a Relationship Anvil on my head every time I see those words.   
 
I also couldn’t help but want to hit the characters on the head with that same anvil every time they fixate on their relationships at inopportune times. At one point, Percy noticed that Annabeth was so distracted by the intricacies of her personal quest that she can’t even answer his questions straight. “She got like this sometimes,” he thought. “It was one of the challenges of dating an Athena girl.” Why did it have to be a challenge of dating a daughter of Athena as opposed to just being a challenge of being on a quest with one? Her distraction didn’t have anything to do with dating, after all. (Relationship Anvil! Ouch.)
 
It is a fundamental element of almost all young adult stories, of course, but what romance there is in “The Mark of Athena” was too in-your-face for even someone like me who reads mostly young adult books. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so acutely aware that I am not a particular book’s target audience.
 
Multiple personality disorder
 
Seeing Percy Jackson on a quest with six other demigods is both boon and bane for me. I like Percy, and his particular voice was what made the first five books such a hit, so I loved reading the chapters told from his point-of-view.  
 
The rest of “The Mark of Athena” features the points-of-view of three other characters, though, and while that was convenient for showing what was happening to other characters or to provide back story, it made me miss the kind of solid connection that focusing on the main character provides. And no matter how much time and how many chapters and side quests he devotes to the other characters, it’s obvious that Percy is still the star of this show.
 
Quest fatigue
 
After seven books set in the same world, the routine of going on smaller quests in every book to move the characters forward on the giant mythological chess board and into position to complete the over-arching quest can become tiresome. It’s too late to break this mold, though, and it’s a testament to Riordan’s skills that the books never end up being too boring and predictable except for one thing: all monsters have huge egos, and to defeat them, a hero must trick the monster by initiating a long, patronizing, sometimes sarcasm-laden conversation.
 
The quest formula also tends to reduce the overall suspense of the books because you know that most of the heroes will reasonably make it out of each one alive to fulfill the bigger prophecy. But Riordan manages to drop surprises along the way as he develops his characters and their relationships, so while I may not worry much about whether they will live or die, at least I can worry about how they will escape their predicament and how it will affect them as characters. 
 
Despite my relationship and point-of-view issues and quest fatigue, I can’t deny that Riordan has once again penned an exciting adventure. He does what he does best in “The Mark of Athena”: taking readers on a fun and often funny ride in a world where modern mortals exist side-by-side with creatures and elements from Greek and Roman mythology. He is also attuned to pop culture and what kids are into these days, and he manages to successfully incorporate those into his world.
 
One other thing Riordan does so well: cliff-hangers. “The Mark of Athena” ends with one, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next when “The House of Hades” is published next year. –KG, GMA News
 
Meann Ortiz is an engineer, freelance writer, and book blogger. An irrational fear of spiders and an online quiz claimed her as a daughter of Athena. You can find her other book reviews, tales of reading pursuits, and occasional fangirl posts about Korean TV shows and celebrities in The Girl Who Read and Other Stories. The views expressed in this review are solely her own.
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