By Rick Riordan

This is the fourth book in this wonderful series and without anything let’s begin.

“Honestly, blowing up another school was the last thing I wanted to do.

As the son of a Greek god, I’ve had my share of near-death disasters, and now my arch-enemy Luke wants to invade our camp via an ancient labyrinth.

If he succeeds, thousands of bloodthirsty monsters will attack. So it’s goodbye, sunshine, hello darkness as four of us descend into the terrifying underground and beyond….”

My spoiler-free review is this: This book is funny, but it is also extremely hard-hitting. If you liked the rest of the series, you will like this one. But also, a warning: As the second-to-last book, things will get serious. Reader be warned.

Before we dive into the present, I would like to talk about the past.

Throughout the Titans Curse, there is a shadow of The Great Prophecy. The only thing we know about The Great Prophecy is that it involves a child of the big three turning 16. The day before Thalia turns 16, she joins the Hunters of Artemis, meaning that she will never age a day thus passing The Great Prophesy on to Percy without a second thought. This is especially important because Percy swears to do anything to ensure The Great Prophesy will not fall on Nico.

The next thing I want to talk about, the God’s vote on whether to kill Percy Jackson to “keep the world safe”. This is completely idiotic because they had done nothing but be loyal to the Gods. It is so completely short-sighted. Imagine if they had killed, how many demigods would have gone over to Kronos?

Finally I want to talk about Zoe and Hercules. As I said in the last blog post, there are examples of Percy completing the labours of Hercules or encountering the same issues. The Titans Curse has three. He fights the Nemean lion, he subdues and rides the Caledonian boar, and while he doesn’t steal any golden apples of Hesperides, he does reach the garden and he holds the sky up and convinces Atlas to take it back.

But the interesting fact is in the connection between Zoe Nightingale and Hercules. The fact that Hercules used Zoe, and her life was ruined for it, hits the line “don’t meet your heroes” on the head. especially with Percy going out of his way to say he’s not like Hercules.

I have four things I would like to talk about.

Firstly, the Labyrinth and Annabeth. This girl has longed to lead a quest, and she gets this one. On the one hand, this is a great quest for her because she is an admirer of Daedalus and she got the chance to connect to him. On the other hand, the labyrinth seems to actively fight against logic.

Secondly, we need to talk about Nico di Angelo. This should have gone in the last blog, but he blooms in this book. I want to hug this boy and tell him everything is going to be ok. First, he loses his sister to the Hunters of Artemis, then she goes on a quest only for him to lose her again. This boy has grown up far too fast and when he is given any chance to get her back, he jumps at it with only a slight hesitation at the thought of murder.

Thirdly, Percy Jackson’s love life. Ok, cards on the table, I am aromantic. This has the effect that when reading I will be the last person to see the romance in the books. For example, I had no idea why Annabeth was angry at Rachel writing her number on Percy’s arm. I know now. In the previous book, Aphrodite tells Percy that she would make his love life interesting, and from Annabeth, Calypso and Rachel Elizabeth Dare, it is interesting.

Fourthly, Pan. Throughout the last three books, Grover’s main dream and hope is to find Pan so he can fix the damage that humans have done to the world. This was not what anyone expected. The fact is that the only thing keeping Pan alive is the belief of the satyrs. We as people want to believe that someone else will save the environment. But like Pan says, we need to take responsibility for fixing things.

I have more I want to talk about but that’s all I can say without spoiling the ending, so all I can say is.

Happy reading to all and to all a good night.