I would like to intoduce you all to my assistant book reviewer and lovely daughter Ms. M Bookworm. I have asked her to take up the review of some of the YA books for me.
Narrated by four different demigods, The Mark of Athena is an unforgettable journey across land and sea to Rome, where important discoveries, surprising sacrifices, and unspeakable horrors await. Climb aboard the Argo II, if you dare...
Rick Riordan has mastered the fine art of suspense in the same way that a teenager has mastered parental manipulation. To say that I was eagerly awaiting this next installment would be an understatement: I've been reading Riordan's Olympian books for a long enough time that I was a good foot shorter and two cup sizes smaller when I started.
The book centers around gaggle of demigods that fight various monsters from Greek and Roman mythology with unique powers that they get from their various godly parents and a assortment of ancient weapons. The action scenes flow beautifully and are descriptive enough to allow you to picture the fight, you don't get bogged down under a pile of words words words woooords.
With seven heroes it would be easy to get lost, which is why Riordan should be commended for painting a clear picture. Shuffling between points of view between chapters, we get the chance to see a character admiring a comrades levelheaded-ness one moment,and the next we're finding out that said character is having a panic attack on the inside.
While the aforementioned monster battles are awesome, the relationships between characters manage to pull on your heartstrings and make you scream "Porque!" in frustration. The seven manage to interact with each other, not just their respective love interest, something that must be difficult, considering how rare it is in young adult books.
Now that the happy gushing of a fan is over, allow me to talk about what Riordan did wrong. With seven characters, we end up with enough loose ends that if it were a rug it would look like that cat had attacked it. Questions from past books go unanswered, and things pop up, previously unmentioned, and the crew acts as if it had always been so.
As I was reading a thrilling scene where the group succeeds in one of their many goals when tragedy strike then end book. I was shocked. Certain that I had skipped a forth of the content, I flicked through my kindle, gob wide open. So, the end is a cliff hanger.
Considering you would have had to have read the past seven books for this one to make any sense, I find it hard to believe that anyone needs persuading to read the next one Ricky. In spite of the near soap opera levels of drama and angst, Mark of Athena made me happier more then it annoyed me, and kept me enthralled enough that I barley noticed the hurricane that attacked.
No comments:
Post a Comment