The CHIEF October 2016

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Literature

Review of Rick Riordan's The Trials of Apollo #1: The Hidden Oracle

By Allyson Shoff

Rick Riordan is back at it again with another great twist on Greek and Roman mythology. In The Hidden Oracle , the sun god Apollo finds himself in a dumpster. He doesn ’ t remember anything that happened in the past six months after the battle against Gaea, and worse yet he ’ s now a mortal teenage boy with acne. Almost instantly, Apollo is set into servitude of an annoying young demigod named Meg. Now he must juggle the pains of his new body, the pains of this young child, and the pains of reviving the oracle. As we return to Camp Half-Blood and see the return of many old characters and meet some new ones, Apollo narrates the whole things in the classic, highly amusing, writing style everyone has come to expect from Rick Riordan.

I ’ m sure a lot of people were thinking the same thing I was when this book was announced: “ Hasn ’ t Rick Riordan written enough? Is this another case of Cassandra Clare ’ s writing issues? I think he ’ s milked this series enough. ” Yeah. Guess again. This book was great! Right from the beginning, The Hidden Oracle started with humor and action expected in a book written by Mr. Riordan. While all of his other books have focused on demigods as the main character, even his Norse mythology book, this series features one of the Greek gods as the centerpiece of destruction. Apollo is a charming, hilarious, and egotistic narrator that amused me to no end throughout the entire story. It wasn ’ t until the end of the book that we actually started to

see a little of humanity bloom from his mind and actually start to feel sorry for the guy. His little companion, Meg, while clearly diabolical, was probably my favorite character since Nico Di Angelo. Yeah, Nico ’ s in this book too. He ’ s in it quite a bit actually. Also, unlike most of the stories, The Hidden Oracle didn ’ t venture out of Camp Half- Blood very much and instead focused on the forest surrounding it. Any fans of Rick Riordan ’ s series are sure to enjoy this great start to a series. It ’ s a bit slower-paced than the other books he ’ s written, but it ’ s also not as thick as Blood of Olympus . I would recommend any readers of Riordan ’ s works to pick this up, and I would recommend the entire Percy Jackson series to any lovers of fantasy.