On Starships and Dragonwings

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan is a strong start to another thrilling and fun series combing ancient Greek and Roman culture with the perils of being a teenager!

When I spotted The Heroes of Olympus series on the bookshelf of the new guy in my lab’s bookshelf, I new they were good people! 
Well, I knew that I would be great friends with his fiance, whose books they were ;-). It doesn’t hurt that she makes these really delicious chocolate desserts whenever she has people over, freaking fantastic! In any case, she was gracious enough to lend me The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan, making her possibly the coolest person ever :D.

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Title: The Lost Hero
Author: Rick Riordan
Pages: 553 (hardcover)
Genre-ish: YA Fantasy
Rating: ★★★★☆ - Light and fun
Setting: The Greek gods are real and periodically fall in love with mortals, producing demi-god children. These children have powers associated with their god parents, as well as the ability to speak ancient Greek, uncanny prowess with weapons and other helpful things. There are also all of those ancient Greek monsters, however, and they things demi-gods are tasty. We knew all this from the Percy Jackson novels, however. Now, it seems there may be more than just Greek heroes and gods, where did the Roman gods go after all?
Premise: Jason wakes up on a bus with no memories at all. He doesn’t know why he is holding this pretty girl’s hand, nor why an angry old man is yelling at him. His day proceeds to get worse as wind monsters attack him and his friends and they discover that they are actually demi-gods and things are pretty bad in the world right now. This is all par for the course though. The weird part is that everyone important keeps looking at Jason as if he, in particular, is a really really really bad omen, but they refuse to tell him why…. Oh well, before he can figure that out, they need to go save the world.

Strengths:

• Riordan can write! The Lost Hero is fast and fun, so that even though is is fairly long, you’ll have no trouble buzzing right through it. The writing is lightly descriptive (not too much, as we’ve all complained about before!) with plenty of humor thrown in.
• The three main characters are all good kids that care about each other despite the odd situation they are in, yet they all have their own personalities and weaknesses to deal with. The Lost Hero benefits from three points of view that switch each chapter, so we get a good idea of what is going on, and get the chance to follow three subplots that weave together throughout the book.
• It’s so interesting to start finding out about the Roman side of things! I won’t say more, since I don’t want to ruin anything (and because I don’t actually know that much yet), but I’m so excited to find out :D.

Weaknesses:

• I was super creeped out by the description of two of the female deity figures at first. Like, I had to turn the light on because the descriptions were so creepy! Isn’t this book supposed to be for younger-ish kids??
• There is only so far that you can push the epic “Omg something more horrible and all powerful is going to try to take over now” and I really am not sure that I’m convinced it’s going to work. The Percy Jackson books used up the Titans trying to take over, and so now Riordan has to go bigger, and while he seems to have found something bigger in the Greek myths, I’m just not quite convinced yet.
• The YA nature of The Lost Hero annoyed me at times, with big words being a little overused and then explained, or kids being just plain annoying.

Summary:
The Lost Hero was very similar to the Percy Jackson books, so if you liked those, you should definitely pick this one up! Riordan continues his light and fun style, while incorporating the Greek myths that so many of us were so interesting in in school :D. While The Lost Hero has the weaknesses that many YA books have for those of us that don’t read YA as much, anyone who reads and enjoys YA should definitely love The Lost Hero! I’m super excited to borrow the next book in the series *sneaks over to friend’s house*.