“Not again!” yells one of the three protagonists at one point in Rick Riordan’s first installment of his second five-book series that fuses Classical mythology with everyday teen angst. Readers may be forgiven if they’ve been feeling déjà vu from page one of this overlong and underedited retread.
The three protagonists in question are Leo Valdez, son of a mechanic and the god Hephaestus, Piper McLean, daughter of a Cherokee movie star and the goddess Aphrodite, and Jason, son of Jupiter—come again? Yes, Riordan mixes it up between the Romans and the Greeks, playing further on his central, winning conceit that the gods have moved west over the centuries with the center of civilization. Jason has a serious identity crisis. In addition to speaking Latin instead of Greek and bearing the Imperial “SPQR” tattoo, he really has no idea who he is. Readers will know where he is, though. In not-short-enough order, Jason, Piper and Leo end up at Camp Half-Blood, learn, more or less, their identities and the quest begins. This exposition takes more than 100 pages to unspool with formulaic predictability. There are high points. Incidental details that bring the gods into the story often shine, as they have before. Argus, the camp’s head of security, is distressed at the imprisonment of his creator, Hera, and weeps from all his eyes, causing him to “[wipe] the tears from his elbow.” Boreas (who has taken up residence in Québec City, spawning a pretty great cover image) displays a classically godlike disregard for humans: “We are to crush your little mortal faces.” Between these moments, however, are far too many pages of stretched-out action, telling not showing and awkward dialogue. Riordan has set himself an ambitious schedule of two books per year, alternating between The Kane Family Chronicles in the spring and The Heroes of Olympus in the fall, and the compressed timetable shows in an overall flabbiness of construction. The Greek-vs.-Roman tension tantalizes, but only after the lengthy denouement does it begin to take real shape, making this feel more like very long exposition than a complete novel. Throughout, both key secondary characters and the author play the irritating we-know-more-than-you-do game readers will remember from Percy Jackson, but here, rather than ratcheting up the suspense, it serves to emphasize the sense of a foregone conclusion. In a line of clunky, all-too-typical dialogue, Chiron tells Jason, “The last chapter approaches, just as it did before.” Die-hard fans will probably be happy with this for a time, but unless Riordan tightens things up considerably by number five, they may find themselves hoping that it does not end with a third Great Prophecy.
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4231-1339-3
Page Count: 570
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unforgettably quirky, fast-paced fun.
In a race against their enemies, the Porch girls must find a peculiar pearl in order to foil a fiendish plot.
After defeating a monstrous Kyrgalops in The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (2024), Gertrude, Eugenia, and Dee-Dee Porch find themselves (after a series of madcap events) at Lake Kagloopy’s Purple Pearl Hotel with their mentor, Millicent Quibb. Quibb informs the trio that they must find the titular pearl before the members of their evil mad-scientist rivals, the KRA, do. If they fail, the KRA (whose members include the malevolent mayor, Majestina DeWeen, and her slimy sycophantic lawyer, Ashley Cookie) plans to use the gem to bestow the Gift of Endless Vibrancy on the villainous Talon Sharktūth. Hilarity ensues as the Porches attend the annual Shrimp Ball, encounter Umbrella Turkeys, search for Cloudite (floating cloud rocks), and don invisible but smelly woolen coats. Jokes aside, the girls’ story is intriguing, offering more clues to their mysterious backgrounds and tantalizing tidbits promising later adventures. McKinnon offers bountiful backstory (alongside a running joke to encourage readers to pick up the preceding volume) and enough guffaw-inducing jokes, zany footnotes, and creative jargon to enthrall readers both new and old with her delightful sophomore effort. Mixing humor, found family, and well-wrought worldbuilding, this sequel is a certain crowd pleaser. Final art not seen; in the previous book, the grayscale illustrations showed the girls with varying skin tones.
Unforgettably quirky, fast-paced fun. (appendices) (Adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780316555296
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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