So I woke up at 9 this morning, and thanks to checking this little website, I realized that the book released today. It had totally slipped my mind beforehand thanks to the overwhelming stress of finals.

Queue a marathon read of Trials of Apollo in about 4-ish hours (a bit longer than my marathon read of The Blood of Olympus, actually).

Now it's time to talk about what I thought of it.

My original thoughts on the idea of Trials of Apollo (pre-reading):

I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to like it, if we're being totally honest. I love Rick and all (I've only been reading his books for the past, oh, 7-ish years), but the idea didn't really sell me. I was more excited over the fact that a legitimate new Greek/Roman series would bring closure to a lot of post-BoO plot points (Leo/Calypso, Solangelo, that kind of thing) than I was over a new conflict.

The entire idea felt the tiniest bit fanfictiony to me (and that's not meant as an insult). There's a mythological precedent for Apollo being turned mortal, and the whole punishment for the war with Gaea thing was a sound reason for it to happen, but it just seemed weird. Especially when you look at how Apollo had been characterized before. He was kind of a douche, y'know? And it's really hard to make the main character of your book a total self-absorbed douche and still have people enjoy him.

Thoughts on new developments from old favorites

To be honest, one of my favorite things was the absolute canon conformation of Solangelo. I know it was heavily implied (and I'm not sure if Rick ever actually confirmed it outside the end of BoO), but the moments between the two were pretty great. They retained that bickering/banter kind of relationship that a lot of people had written them with, so they definitely met expectations on that front. I hope to see more of them as time goes on (and please, I want to know what Hazel thinks of them dating?!)

Another thing that was really nice relating to Solangelo is Apollo's inner monologue after he first saw the two together. It totally confirmed the whole the gods don't really discriminate when it comes to lovers things, especially when it comes to Apollo. And also...we got a little tidbit on Kayla's parentage...she has two dads? Like she magically sprung from a relationship with Apollo and a mortal boyfriend of his (which in hindsight does make a bit of sense, and I actually saw it in something Takara Phoenix wrote with Pipabeth). I thought that was a really neat little addition, and it opens up a lot of different options for, like, the creation of OCs and stuff like that.

On to Percy...what can I say man? He's wonderful as always, and I hope to see more of him even though he likely won't participate in the action all that much (which is definitely warranted, he deserves a break!) He saved the day, once again.

Also, Sally's pregnant! I wasn't expecting that, but alright! I'm in; I like it; it's totally adorable. If the events of this series drag on long enough, we might get to meet Percy's little sister. I think he'd make a great big brother, obviously.

Leo and Calypso are back too, finally! I confess; I've never been a huge fan of Leo myself, but it's good to have him back around. Calypso is going to be interesting too, if Rick decides to expand on her mortalness.

No Jason, Piper, Reyna, Hazel, or Frank yet, but surely they'll appear soon enough.

The Story

The story is pretty decent, in my mind. Oracle stuff is cool, delving into more of the ancient stuff (like, Rhea level ancient) is cool. I'm just glad that it doesn't seem to be playing it like there's going to be a straight up war, because we've already had two of those. It seems more of battle against a group of antagonist than an army based kind of thing.

There were plenty of more quiet moments, and plenty of more action-based fight scenes. The climax was pretty wicked and heart pounding. The ending was perhaps a little predictable. It was that kind of moment where you were pretty convinced that Rick wasn't really going to destroy all of Camp Half-Blood.

The story wasn't my favorite part, I suppose. It was good enough and kept me compelled through slow reveals of plot details, but I always enjoy characters more.

Thoughts on Apollo

I wasn't convinced this was going to go over well.

Apollo is a douche. He's self-absorbed with a shitty sense of humor. He's got to confidence and overwhelming vanity only a god could possess.

Except maybe he doesn't?

Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of cringeworthy moments where you just read what he said and think...what a asshole. A lot of the first part of the book, when he's making introductions as the new mortalized Apollo are full of the remarks you'd expect to come from, say, someone rich that's just been thrown into the slums.

But there was a surprising amount of development from him. He still tends to retain his personality, but you can tell there's a lot more there than you'd previously have thought. I particularly enjoyed the passage dealing with either of his previous great loves: Daphne and Hyacinthus. There were a lot of really powerful emotions of sadness, guilt, etc. there, so kudos to Rick for delving into the emotional depth of Apollo. He also grew a lot personally, in my opinion. He hasn't been mortal for long, but that just means there's more room for growth.

Surprisingly, I look forward to more from him.

Meg- Daughter of Demeter

In the beginning, I kind of didn't know what to make of her. She was a total mystery, and definitely meant to be that way until the climax of the novel.

Her personality was interesting. Kind of sassy, kind of animalistic, with a deep tension going on behind all that.

Her parentage was pretty predictable after the introduction of Peaches, her karpos friend. Remember those grain spirits from the Son of Neptune, well, they're back again. After that, it was pretty obvious who her mom was and just a matter of time before she was actually claimed.

Her choice of weapons a first made zero sense, and functioned to enhance that sense of mystery. How did a 12-ish year old Greek demigod (presumably living on the streets) find twin Imperial Gold swords that also collapsed into rings? How did a Greek demigod even get their hands on Imperial Gold, especially in a time where the existence of the Romans was unknown to the Greeks? How did she master a fighting technique that even Apollo professed to be difficult?

But all of that makes sense give what we find out about her stepfather...

The Antagonist(s)

This was yet another moment where I was totally unconvinced if any of this worked for me.

We were first introduced to our new antagonists as "Triumvirate Holding", some corporation that's supposedly been sneaking around New York and doing nasty shit. Well, they were sneaking around and doing bad demigod shit.

They're responsible for funding Luke's outlandish purchases, like the Princess Andromeda. They helped Octavian build the onagers. Just a lot of shady shit that plays into things that've happened in previous books.

It sounded silly to me at first. I don't know why, but it did.

And the main antagonist (I think?), the guy behind it all...

Fucking Nero, man.

Now that...that sold me on it.

A little background for the uninitiated. Nero was the last Julio-Claudian emperor (meaning he could trace lineage back to Ceasar). It's complicated, but he's regarded as a pretty terrible guy. He's rumored to have tortured Christians, set fire to Rome in order to clear space for his massive palace, etc. etc. So from a historical perspective, it works perhaps a little bit better than Kronos or Gaea. There's a big precedent for the vilification of Nero.

So basically Rick has him existing in the 21st century by saying he never died because he ascended to Godhood. He was supposedly so worshipped that he became one, citing that gods gain their power from worship.

Alright then. So Nero and two other previous Roman emperors are still alive and kicking, and have been waiting for centuries to turn the land of the gods into their own personal domain. Now they're going to try to take over America.

As a whole, I found Nero to be a really good antagonist. He was creepy, manipulative, and pretty mean.

I found his manipulation to be the most interesting part. See, he "adopted" Meg and is basically her stepfather. She's been taught that "Nero" is a good guy that cares about her. But she's also been taught that there's "the Beast" that comes out whenever Nero's angered. So Meg can't really see that it's Nero that's the evil one, she's totally split good Nero and bad Beast into two separate entities.

His influence on Meg is so strong that she betrayed Apollo.

Now, we've seen manipulation before, with Luke and Ethan and Nico (with Minos). It'll be interesting to see how this goes, and despite all the betrayal, Meg is still a good person deep down (at least I think).

All in all

I liked this a lot more than I thought I would, actually. I mostly sat down to read it because I really wanted those closure moments with my favorite heroes; I didn't want to miss out on new details.

But I like Apollo. I like Meg. I like Nero.

So what did you think? Did you dislike any characters? Find the plot contrived? Wish there was more of this character or that character?

Let's start a dialogue about this people!

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Also...how long until the next book?