Saturday, October 6, 2012

The Mark of Athena, Reviewed

I finished reading The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan this morning. I'm still reeling about the end a bit.

But I'll get to that in a minute. Below is my spoiler-free review of the above book.

The Mark of Athena is the third installment of Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series.

Overall, I really liked The Mark of Athena.  The romance was mostly boring.  Why is it people are always going on about how handsome/beautiful their love interest is?  I mean, really, of all the things to go on about, they choose something as blah as that? 

Anyway.

The humor was fantastic, as usual with Mr. Riordan's writing.  The plot was good; full of action and monsters that alternate between being terrifying and as-funny-as-possible-while-trying-to-kill-everyone.  I love all the characters.  And the end was blinken brilliant.  Annoying, because of the humongous GAH-I-have-to-wait-a-year-for-the-next-one! cliffhanger, but brilliant.

Okay, that's the end of the spoiler-free zone. So, those of you who haven't read The Mark of Athena, DO NOT PROCEED!

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Random things I liked about The Mark of Athena:

I LOVED that Percy had a fear of drowning in this one.  I'm not sure I can explain why, but I loved it nonetheless.

One of the few parts of romance I liked was when Percy and Annabeth were reunited at the beginning, when they just sort of stare at each other for a minute and don't run to each other until after Reyna begins speaking. 

And the end. THE END! I was nearly in tears when I realized that Percy and Annabeth were going to fall.

So.  That's my pathetic excuse for a review.   I thought I'd be better that this.  Ah, well, I'll just have to keep practicing.  Have a nice day!

3 comments:

  1. I thought the ending was great, but it seemed a little sad that it was the only plot twist of its kind in the book. Yes, there were ones of similar scope, but they always happened in the middle of chapters, which irked me. I don't like it when the end of a chapter is where they solve the problem.

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    1. Sad indeed. I noticed that the plot twists happened in the middles of chapters. That didn't really bug me, but I do like it better when they're at the end. I like that feeling of not being able to put the book down. Most of the time anyway. Sometimes I like having a good stopping place.

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    2. The only good stopping place is when nothing else can possibly happen-- like when the characters go to sleep. That's a good place for the end of the chapter, and then you can start the next chapter with a nice plot twist to get things going again.

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