Blood, Death, and Prophecies REVIEWING The Blood of Olympus

Welcome back to The Real World According To Sam!! Today is another Magic Monday post, for a Heroes of Olympus novel. More preciously, the series finale! 

This is still a part of the countdown to The Tower of Nero release, except the book's release was pushed back a week, into October, instead of on September 29th as I have been posting so far. This change was made in the last week or two, but I've not had a chance to backtrack and edit each post to reflect the change. I will though! The Tower of Nero releases October 6th!! 

We are 5 weeks and 1 day away from the release of The Tower of Nero (October 6, 2020)!

This is a The House of Hades SPOILER LAND, clearly, because this is a sequel. 

This review of The Blood of Olympus is completely spoiler free for this installment.

The Blood of Olympus

Author: Rick Riordan

Genre: YA Fantasy

Year: 2014

Synopsis:

Nico had warned them. Going through the House of Hades would stir the demigods' worst memories. Their ghosts would become restless. Nico may actually become a ghost if he has to shadow-travel with Reyna and Coach Hedge one more time. But that might be better than the alternative: allowing someone else to die, as Hades foretold. 

Jason's ghost is his mother, who abandoned him when he was little. He may not know how he is going to prove himself as a leader, but he does know that he will not break promises like she did. He will complete his line of the prophecy: To storm or fire the world must fall.

Reyna fears the ghosts of her ancestors, who radiate anger. But she can't allow them to distract her from getting the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood before war breaks out between the Romans and Greeks. Will she have enough strength to succeed, especially with a deadly hunter on her trail?

Leo fears that his plan won't work, that his friends might interfere. But there is no other way. All of them know that one of the Seven has to die in order to defeat Gaea, the Earth Mother. 

Piper must learn to give herself over to fear. Only then will she be able to do her part at the end: utter a single word. 

Heroes, gods, and monsters all have a role to play in the climactic fulfillment of the prophecy in The Blood of Olympus, the electrifying finale of the best-selling Heroes of Olympus series. 

Review:

Alright, this is definitely a ghastly one to cover. Every book in this series has led up to THIS point. All the adventure, all the struggles the characters have faced, all the reading hours, culminate to this one last book. It's a good culmination, I'll tell you that! As you can tell from the synopsis, there are a lot of ghosts and a lot of fear. This book is loaded with it. However, in typical Riordan fashion, it is also loaded with humor! 

This book opens with three members of the Argo II crew getting covered up with sneak magic to slip into the home of mythological legend, Odysseus. That's right, we're still way over in Greece. A bunch of ghouls are hanging around and we immediately get some personal haunting. Jason faces his ghost and gets wounded, in standard Jason fashion. Afterwards, we get some fun chatting with Artemis and Apollo. You know, just a pair of twins who have been banished by their all-powerful dad. The remaining crew members of the prophesized seven are trying to find Nike in order to get some more information. They get way more information than they bargained for. 

All of this is leading up to a big meeting with Gaea, mother of the Titans, who is waiting to awaken and only needs a bit of blood to do it. Why does she want to awaken? So she can lay waste to everything, because I guess sometimes that's just how Mother Nature is. She likes to watch the world burn...and flood....and shake....

It is up to our heroes to save the day, stop her, and also prevent a civil war between Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter. 

In this book, as in every other Riordan book I've reviewed here, we get lots of fun mythological cameos. These include Apollo and Nike, as already mentioned. It also includes Kymopoleia, Polybotes, Lycaon, and many others. We also get one of the biggest casts of demigods since The Last Olympian. There's Tyson, Will Solace, our main seven, Reyna, and Nico, among many others. There are familiar faces from both camps, some friends, some foes, and some who don't know what in the world is going on. It's chaotic and awesome. 

As usual, Uncle Rick likes to give us a few stabs in the heart, give us epic sequences, and laugh out loud. The characters are still awesome, the action doesn't stop, and we go from Greece back to America, with stops in between. This is a huge trip with really high stakes. Each character comes around in a full arc, after facing their various demons and fears, either in previous parts of the series, or in this book. We get more conflict between demigods and the gods of Olympus, because they just can't seem to see eye to eye. It isn't just because the gods are so much larger in terms of body proportion either! By the end, there may be some tears, there may be some smiles, but either way...its over now. This arc is closed and there are some serious consequences that come out of it. This one will definitely give you a nosebleed. 

With all that being said, I'm ready to give this book its rating. I give The Blood of Olympus a Lone Star rating of ✯✯✯✯. This one catapults the series to a new height and really comes with some explosive moments. If you've been reading this series, you have to read this one. Finish it up and see what you think. 

This concludes another review here at The Real World According To Sam where I bring the books right to your screen, and even throw in my own two cents about them!