Review: The Blood of Olympus (HOO #5)

Le sang de l'Olympe by Rick Riordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not going to lie: given how much I liked PJO, and given that Nico’s storyline was the only reason I didn’t give House of Hades a five stars rating, I’m a little disappointed that this is only a four star, and it’s due mostly to the multiple romance-oriented endings.

The story remains gripping for most of the book, the stakes of saving the world are still as high and well-felt as ever, and the way the prophecies unfold is clever and well thought-out in my opinion. Likewise, the characters are still strong and well written for the most part–I say for the most part because 1) I don’t like the fact that Leo remains a macho throughout the series and 2) the argument that it’s Nico’s fault for being set aside from the other demigods is bullshit, especially when confronted with at least a series and a half worth of eidence that people did, in fact, steer clear of Nico until they either witnessed his coming out & self hatred (Jason) or were forced to spend extended period of times with him and witnessed Nico’s self loathing and pain (Reyna). I’m not fond of how that was handled at all, tbh, as I think it’s a pretty toxic way of dealing with the topic and contributes to bullying culture.

And, as I said at the beginning, the multiple endings bugged me.
There’s nothing particularly bad in the way they’re written, honestly, it’s just that they don’t serve a real purpose outside of showcasing the romances. All the rest–building new temples, sending the romans back home, even Percy and Annabeth’s projected move to Camp Jupiter–could have been dealt with in a single epilogue.
Multiple endings can work well, and are sometimes even necessary. This is the case, for example, in the The Return of the King movie, because The Two Towers introduces separate plotlines that all have to be resolved. This is not the case here, as every separate quest converged to the same single objective: beating Gaïa.

The result is that the romances (which, despite getting more screentime here than they did in PJO, were a background thing) are suddenly pushed forward for no particular reason, which is frustrating at best.
Especially when the last thing we get is Leo going back to Calypso only to say ‘I’m here and now we’ll leave’ when we could have pieced that together at least four chapters ago.

It’s a pity, too, because it’s otherwise a strong ending to a strong series, but the tacked-on romances kind of spoil the ending, in my opinion.