The Lost Hero was seriously awesome, and being the first book in a companion series to THE Percy Jackson series by THE Rick Riordan, I didn’t expect any less. Obviously I had high expectations for the sequel, “The Son of Neptune” which I impatiently awaited and narrowly avoided totally forgetting about. It was even better than the first though! Really good. So why did I like it?
The characters, as with the last one, were great. This one was told through three perspectives (as with the last one), each offering their own personalities with depth and history. That’s one of my favorite parts of the book, actually, there were a lot of flashbacks and back story to the new main characters (of the 7? You’ll find out) Frank and Hazel, from different families and *cough*times*cough*. Then, I’m brought to another of my favorite parts of the book, and this isn’t a spoiler because the first page opens with him, PERCY. Percy is back and we read a lot of the book (I’d be inclined to say the majority of the book is from his perspective, but I’m not sure) with him. I think everyone’s missed him since the end of ‘his’ series, or at least I have. He doesn’t totally hijack the story though, it’s still about the new heroes and it’s also in third person rather than in the Percy Jackson books where it was ALL from his perspective in first person.
Besides characters, the settings were epic, as they are in the rest of Riordan’s books. They cover a lot of ground in “The Son of Neptune”, always moving. There’s more mythology (duh.) as a lot of the book involves the Romans too as opposed to only the Greeks. The pace was quick too, the 520 pages passed lightning fast (get it? Lightning. Yeah…). The voices of the characters were fabulous, very different from each other which I was glad of, I can’t stand it when I can’t figure out who I’m reading as or forget.
I did have a few small disappointments, I wish we’d seen the characters we met in The Lost Hero; Leo, Piper, and Jason. I also wish that certain characters had been reunited (finish the book. You’ll know what I’m talking about.) but I realize that’s part of the cliffhanger thing. Overall though? I loved it and can’t wait for the next book installment of The Heroes of Olympus.