Summary: How do you punish an immortal?
By making him human.
After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour.
But Apollo has many enemies - gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go . . . an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood. (Summary and image from goodreads.com)
Review: Summer just demands a good, fun book from Rick Riordan, doesn’t it? Just me? I love his books. I love how accessible he makes the Greek myths, I love how intertwined all of his series are, I just enjoy his writing. Sometimes you just need fluff, hence the summertime need for a Riordan book. This is his newest series, delving back into the Camp Halfblood world from the perspective of a now-mortal Apollo.
Riordan hasn’t sacrificed his protagonist’s ego for his humanity, nor has he made human-Apollo entirely unlikeable. Part of this is the amnesia tool - since becoming human, Apollo can’t remember everything he did as a god - but part of it is the humility that Apollo must require to regain his immortality. While the stories themselves are relatively predictable, I don’t get the feeling that Riordan ever calls it in, and as such, these are always good books to turn to when you’re either in a rut, or when you’re trying to find something to entice a reluctant reader.
I would recommend reading the first two Camp Halfblood series first, as the events in them are heavily referenced. However, this series feels like it’s written for a younger audience than series number two.
Rating: Three and a half stars.
For the Sensitive Reader: Greek swears, references to adultery, betrayal.
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