Surprised that I liked this one so much less than the first book but I think I just didn't like the new characters as much. I wish more of the book was in Percy's POV and the chapters that were, seemed watered down. The quest moved too slowly for me in this one but so happy to get a bit of Tyson.

I love you Percy Jackson.

"So what will it be? Safety, or a future of pain and possibility?" (p. 25).

I couldn’t put this book down, I loved it so much! The return of Percy Jackson (finally) made me so happy and I just loved pretty much everything about it. The only thing I didn’t like

was that we still don’t know the entire prophecy at the end of the book

but who knows, maybe we’ll know in the new book(s) of the series
Also I’m kinda sad

we didn’t get to see Sally Jackson hear the news of her son, even if it was in a dream or something

Back to Percy in this one, with all the action you expect in a Percy Jackson book. Again, I do think this could have been on the shorter side, but Riordan is trying to pack a lot into this series. 7 demigods going on a quest! Things are bound to get a little tricky.

Even though we know what's going on because of book 1, there's still the suspense of Percy remembering who he was and connecting back with his Camp Half-Blood friends. We do get some fun new characters though, and the inclusion of someone we already know. The ending definitely came back to me once I read this, and it really was a great weekend read!

 

Nice! I'm still really enjoying the humor of HoO. The conflict set-up is crazy; it's insane how dark some of the backstories get. I will say that I'm struggling a bit with getting invested, as I don't find any of the new characters being introduced to be that interesting (personality-wise). I liked that Nico was in this book, since he's a very interesting character imo. Leo and Percy are definitely my favorite perspectives. The plot is extremely interesting. But the characters are a bit weak, since a lot of them are super similar (again, personality-wise). Interesting characters is a huge make-or-break for me, so as of now I like the original PJO series more. But we'll see how it goes - for the record, this book has very interesting side characters and some older characters, so I'm not complaining.

(One note: There's so much romance in HoO - I'm struggling to think of a prominent character that doesn't have a romantic interest. Sometimes I definitely appreciate it; but it certainly felt repetitive with this book, having to watch a very similar romance unfold again [

Jason and Piper vs. Frank and Hazel - the age difference with the latter is also ?!!

]. Yeah, this point is extremely nitpicky. But it's just something that generally annoys me.)

I keep hearing great things about the next two books, so I'm excited!

RANKING
[1] PJO: The Last Olympian
[2] HoO: The House of Hades
[3] HoO: The Mark of Athena
[4] PJO: The Lightning Thief
[5] PJO: The Titan's Curse
[6] HoO: The Son of Neptune
[7] PJO: The Battle of the Labyrinth
[8] HoO: The Lost Hero
[9] PJO: The Sea of Monsters
[10] HoO: The Blood of Olympus