the lost hero by Rick Riordan

22nd book of 2021

First book in The Heroes of Olympus series

Reading period: Mar 08th 2021 – Mar 15th 2021

Summary

JASON HAS A PROBLEM. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up in a bus full of kids on a field trip. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper, and his best friend is a guy named Leo. They’re all students at the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids,” as Leo puts it. What did Jason do to end up here? And where is here, exactly? Jason doesn’t know anything—except that everything seems very wrong.

PIPER HAS A SECRET. Her father has been missing for three days, ever since she had that terrifying nightmare about his being in trouble. Piper doesn’t understand her dream, or why her boyfriend suddenly doesn’t recognize her. When a freak storm hits during the school trip, unleashing strange creatures and whisking her, Jason, and Leo away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood, she has a feeling she’s going to find out, whether she wants to or not.

LEO HAS A WAY WITH TOOLS. When he sees his cabin at Camp Half-Blood, filled with power tools and machine parts, he feels right at home. But there’s weird stuff, too—like the curse everyone keeps talking about, and some camper who’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist that each of them—including Leo—is related to a god. Does this have anything to do with Jason’s amnesia, or the fact that Leo keeps seeing ghosts?

Rating

Review

This book is four stars without being one.

I was happy to discover new characters, even if I was surprised by the multiple POVs, as it wasn’t like that in the Percy Jackson series. However, after a chapter or two, I liked it a lot as the three main characters have a lot to communicate to the reader. It’s the fairest way to do it. I liked the three of them, but I can say that Piper is the best.

The plot was also intriguing; it was sometimes difficult to know where it was going, but the end and the revelations were worth it. You are as lost as the characters, and it’s refreshing—the way the link between greek mythology and the roman one is well done. Rick is the best to create a world that is understandable and logical even if it mixed element.

Two elements make me struggle to devour the book: the pace and the dynamic of the story. I found it slow for the speed at the beginning, which I don’t mind, and not fast enough for the rest of the book as they don’t have a ton of time, but it feels like they took their time to do the quest. For the story’s dynamic, I found it less fluid and more jerky, and that as my main problem with the story. Because of those two elements, I didn’t read that book as fast as I thought.

Despite that, I will continue to read this series as I want to know what is happening. I am on a new adventure with new elements, a new quest and a mixture of new and old characters. I cannot wait!

Liz.