REVIEW: The Trials of Apollo, Book 1: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan
B Reviews / B Reviews CategoryAction/Adventure / greek mythology / YA8 Comments
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 disoriented, 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 favor.
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.
Review:
Dear Rick Riordan,
I enjoyed your Percy Jackson series, which I picked up when I was looking for another Harry Potter story and which seemed to follow a similar formula (a seemingly ordinary boy discovers that he has to follow an extraordinary destiny and save the world). The character seemed cool and his adventures were based on Greek mythology, which I have loved since I was a kid. I kind of got tired of the never-ending adventure, and I fell couple of books behind in the “Heroes of Olympus” books, where Percy played one of the main roles alongside other kids/teenaged demigods (for those who do not know – child of God and mortal). I had every intention of finishing the series but never did.
But then I came across this book and I saw the name of Apollo, one of my favorite Greek Gods, in the title. I started reading reviews and saw that some readers were shocked, *shocked* that Rick Riordan’s narrator in this book (who is Apollo himself, never mind that he is temporarily turned into a mortal teenager by Zeus) is bisexual. Apollo being bisexual means that he fondly remembers that he loved Daphne *and* Hyacinthus and many other women and men, not that he is engaged in sex with anyone right now, mind you. There was also reader outrage about Nico getting a boyfriend. Remember Nico, who admitted to crushing on Percy in “Heroes of Olympus”? Yes, it was the same Nico, son of Hades and a kid for whom I wanted happiness so badly.
So of course I bought the book. I am always delighted to see when mainstream books feature LGBT couple and I was even more delighted that LGBT kids who like reading about Greek gods in modern times have the chance to see a character who reminds them of themselves in some ways.
As the blurb indicates, we meet Apollo when he appears in New York, weak and disoriented, not quite remembering why Zeus cast him out or what he needs to do to get back in daddy’s favor.
I have been very impressed, throughout this series, by how well Rick Riordan handles Greek Gods and the whole Greek mythos while transferring it to modern times. The Gods retain their personalities while adjusting to living in modern days in most hilarious ways, and the familiar characters from Greek mythos somehow seem quite at home in modern America.
Take Apollo, for example. He has always been vain and selfish (of course, he is not the only Olympian who has these character traits in abundance, but Apollo stands out for me as one of the most memorable ones).
Apollo retains that vanity when we meet him in this book:
“Even for a god of poetry such as myself, it is difficult to describe how I felt. How could you – a mere mortal – possibly understand?”
After getting into a dangerous fight on the streets of New York and after getting unexpected help from a stranger, Apollo realizes that he needs to go and see Percy Jackson, [the star of the previous series] who has so far played a small role in this book, I do not know if his role will increase in the next installments, but looks like this is mostly Apollo’s quest so far.
I think readers can start here without having read the previous books in the series. It seems to be deliberately written so that you can treat this as a standalone, but the author tempts you to go back and reread. Past events are mentioned and quite a few characters from past books are present, but even though I was a couple of books behind I was not confused.
“If I didn’t know how much Percy Jackson adored me, I would have sworn he was about to punch me in my already – broken nose”
Percy helps Apollo and his friend get to Camp Half Blood, but of course their problems do not stop once they get in the camp. There are many dangerous things happening in the Camp and of course Apollo finds himself right in the middle of those things. Apollo is used to other people doing work for him, but him taking direct action the situation will not improve. And we also learn about new/old villains lurking in the darkness.
I liked the adventure, the humor, the pages packed with references to Greek mythology, which all were somehow relevant to the story, but I was the most impressed with Apollo’s character growth. He expresses regret and guilt and even some generosity of spirit, but his vanity does not disappear and I was happy about that, because he still needs to be recognizable as Apollo.
And another aside, Nico and his boyfriend were adorable.
B
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Thanks for this review! My son loved the Percy Jackson books, so I think I’ll buy him this one for Christmas. Even better that it has LGBT characters in it.
@Eliza: Thank you! Shhhh, don’t tell anybody – his Norse mythology based series feature gender-queer character now (and second book in the series just had been out couple months ago) and it looks like (fingers crossed many many times!) could be main character’s love interest.
Believe me, I enjoyed Percy Jackson from the very beginning way before we hear that Nico had a crush on Percy (I am not revealing any huge plot spoilers by revealing this) and likely continued to read and like it and recommend to kids, etc. However I know that his books are formulaic in a sense – you know, young person awakens to their destiny amongst old Gods in modern times. They are fun adventures, and he knows his mythology extremely well IMO (I am only basing it on my knowledge of Greek mythology. My knowledge of Norse one is still extremely poor and I am a little embarrassed to admit that I learned some basics from his book I had no idea bout), but they are not extremely sophisticated or original IMO.
But when I read some of the reviews of this one or Norse books – basically HOW DARE he to include gay kids, gender queer kid, etc, how dare he – must be an agenda, it makes me so very annoyed. Hey, he can’t just want to offer LGBT kids some representation in the books because they do exist in the real world and may want to see some role models or something. Oh no.
Anyway, enough with my ramble, hope your son will enjoy this one too.
This looks fun. I read the first Percy Jackson book (borrowed from one of my nephews) but didn’t read the rest of the series. Thanks Sirius.
My middle just turned 14 and *loves* the Apollo series. Not so much the new Magnus Chase series, which surprises even her since she’s a HUGE Percy Jackson fan.
And @Sirius, I’m not positive, but I think the Percy/Annabeth romance really took off in the final books of the series. I know my daughter and her friends were all big shippers of Percybeth. lol
More Nico, this is a good thing. Picking this up for holiday reading.
Hi Variel Nico was there when they arrived in the camp and we see him and his boyfriend , but I would not say there was a lot of him just wanted to be clear . Maybe his role will increase in the future books I am not sure .
Cheryl Percy mentioned Annabeth as his girlfriend in this book so I think you are right , I really should finish those series .
I also wonder now because when I gave first book of Marcus Chase to my niece a year ago she claimed to really like it , so I bought the second one, read it and gave it to her . Recently she complained she has nothing to read ( translation – auntie buy me something new). When I asked her if she read Marcus yet she said no she does not want to. So maybe she did not like the first one as much as she claimed ? Not sure.
Any amount of Nico is a good thing. He disappeared for a while there, with good reason, but its hard to have a favourite missing.