The Son of Neptune

Rick Riordan

Genre:  Fantasy 

This series is a sequel to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. This book is in the Heroes of Olympus series. It is the second in the series and follows The Lost Hero. Mark of Athena will be the third release, and it comes out in the Fall of 2012.

By: Claire W.

The Son of Neptune is a thrilling tale about Percy Jackson and his friends Frank, Reyna, and Hazel at Camp Jupiter.  Percy and his friends are Greek and Roman demigods, which means they are the children of a god and a human.  Camp Jupiter is a camp where demigods go to take part in wargames and other activities that teach how to battle monsters and other beings. In this book, Percy loses his memory of being a half-blood, or demigod. He becomes confused and thinks he is Roman instead of Greek and is the son of Neptune instead of Poseidon. His quest in the book is to free Thanatos, the Greek god of Death. If Percy does not succeed, the half-bloods cannot permanently destroy the monsters that are running lose and terrorizing the world.

Riordan writes in the present tense using the third person omniscient perspective. Although it is mostly written in third person, dialog is used a lot in the book in conversation between the characters and as the characters think to themselves. Although the book has the potential to be confusing because of the plot and number of characters introduced, the author does a good job of making it easy to follow the plot and characters. Riordan's use of a lot of detail helps in this regard. The characters are very believable, although demigods, and the imagery is so vivid it is easy to imagine yourself standing next to Percy and fighting giants and other horrible creatures. Percy is made into a real hero and it is easy to identify with him.

One negative is that it can be frustrating that the Roman and Greek demigods spend a lot of time fighting amongst themselves instead of joining to fight against common enemies. They could help each other fight against all of the monsters that live in their world. It is not unusual in a book for a character to lose his memory, since the prequel to this book even used this with a different character. Still, this makes for an interesting story because it is fun to watch the character start regaining his memory and gradually remember his friends and about himself.

Fans of fantasies in which the hero usually wins will be very excited by The Son of Neptune and the entire series. The third book in this series, Mark of Athena, is planned for release in the Fall of 2012, and readers of the The Son of Neptune have a lot to anticipate. Hopefully, the rest will be as thrilling and and fun to read as Riordan's most recent work. It is an awesome series, and I can't wait!