Wednesday, February 29, 2012

the Son of Neptune Sinks....again.


NOTE: I was assigned to complete a book review for a contest. However, my English teacher made very specific qualifications for a good book review. Here is a more "appropriate" book review for the Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan. If it doesn't win because it's negative, the judges don't know what they're missing.



          In Rick Riordan’s newest novel, The Son of Neptune, once again we follow the storyline of Percy Jackson, demigod son of Poseidon, as he discovers a whole new realm of demigods, the New Roman haven of Camp Jupiter. He has been brainwashed by the goddess Juno, and can’t remember where he came from, or barely who he is. At Camp Jupiter he meets an old friend and some new ones, and wins the honor (somewhat) of a quest. But this quest isn’t just any old quest. No, it has to be to fulfill a deathly prophecy (Another one? The avid Riordan fans among us might wonder.)  This time, the journey takes Percy to Alaska along with Hazel, daughter of Pluto, and Frank, son of Neptune to stop Gaea, the evil earth goddess, from rising to power and turning the world into chaos with the help of the innumerable beasts stirring in Tartarus.
          Another elementary yet addicting installment in the Heroes of Olympus series brings heaps of suspense, humor and more than a few confusing plot twists into the world of junior fiction. This book was quite well written, and I recommend it with reservations to fans of Riordan’s writing style. If you are looking for another mythological fluff read, don’t hesitate to pick this one up and devour it as quickly as the enormous amount of pages will allow.
          However, I must say that as a teenager, I think this book was a little generic. The first five Percy Jackson books were amazing, deep, hilarious, and emotional. These long, 500-page monsters are getting a little tedious. Die-hard fans, however, just want to see Annabeth and Percy have their back-together-again kiss. But we will have to wait until October for that, when The Mark of Athena, the final book in the Heroes of Olympus trilogy, is released. I’m not sure where Riordan thinks he’s going with his mythology phase, because avid Percy fans are getting bored. I also don’t understand which age level the author is going for with this series. The characters in the book are in their mid-teens, but the Lexile rating of the Son of Neptune (660) is the amount late elementary-level novels usually receive. It was a good read, but in all fairness, it was dull. This book occasionally had its moments, but I would not recommend it for any avid mythology fan. They will most certainly be disappointed.

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