Saturday, July 18, 2020

Apollo Book 4

I understood heartache a little better now. Each persons grief has its own life span. It needs to follow it own path.


Evil undead Emperor yelling at a cat. Made my day.

This installment of Trials of Apollo has us picking up from where we left off after the death of Jason Grace. This story seems to take its time and really focus on its characters. Apollo is even more humanized and we learn alot more about mistakes he's made and the consequences that follow him.

I can't say I saw alot of bad in this book. But it also didnt overly excite me. Riordan continues to grow from his "middle grade" books as this story covers alot of loss, stressful expectations and regret.

We spend almost the whole time in New Rome, which is of course an exciting throw back to the series we've loved and learned from. We have some returning characters, and some plot threads from the past series are even tied up here.

One of my favorite things about this series so far is successfully making this universe feel alive, diverse, and it doesn't come off as "scripted." The casual way characters we've read about come and go is really interesting. I also love this because it doesn't feel like Riordan is just throwing in characters for fan service. So many of them come and go too that at some point you run into your favorite again. Whether it's Percy, Grover, Jason, Frank, Hazel. etc they've found a very natural place in this story.

Another positive I want to bring up (that was a negative for the 3rd one) is that we are seeing Apollo come back into his powers more. I didnt like how after his revitalization of some of his abilities from book 2 (which I still think is the best so far) he seemed to have lost them in the 3rd installment. He shows alot more competence now and I appreciate his growth and recovery.

I am, however, ready to have Apollo accept that he has changed and just work toward winning. I didnt think we would be going into book 5 with Apollo still having alot of issues with his confidence. I would like him to have the confidence from his Godihood restored, just without the cockiness. I want to see him play his music with purpose and know its right, I want him to pick up his bow and loose an arrow knowing it will find its mark. (He did that quite a bit here but he always added how he was "surprised that he had hit his mark") Lastly, as a fan of the Sun aspect, I would like him to grow into some of those powers.

I am very hopeful of the finale! We are returning to New York, which means Camp Half-Blood and I'm excited to see Apollo complete his journey and see which friends we will run into along the way!

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