the hidden oracle by Rick Riordan

66th book of 2021

First book in the Trials of Apollo series

Reading period: Aug 08th 2021 – Aug 10th 2021

Summary

How do you punish an immortal?

By making him human.

After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus’s favour.

But Apollo has many enemies – gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go . . . an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood.

Rating

Review

After finishing The Heroes of Olympus last month, I was a little worried about the next series of this verse. However, I am pleased by this first book.

In this one, you have only one pov, Apollo’s one. As Apollo changes from a god to a basic human, his poetry changes too, and you can see it in the “titles” of the chapters, even if sometimes it spoils the chapter. 

This character can be a little too much at the beginning. Still, you see him evolve, with difficulty, through his adventures. Yet, he is kind of the same; he still has room for him to continue his evolution. 

You have a good amount of mystery in this book. First, Meg, you don’t know anything about her, and each discovery is crumbs. Also, as said in the title and the last bits in The Blood of Olympus, you don’t have any oracle, which means no prophecy and usually no quest. This fact is strange as you follow Apollo on a journey without knowing where you are going, and you can’t cling to any sentence of prophecy to know anything.

In this book, you also have a lot of facts from the two previous series. You can’t read this series without reading the first two, as it feels like this one links the previous ones together, and some allusions or events confirmed it. 

I can’t wait to continue with the second book of the series. I just hope that we will see Will and Nico again.

Liz.