The Last Olympian ~ Rick Riordan

The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians – Book 5) ~ Rick Riordan

SPOILER ALERT! This book is part of a series. If you have not read The Lightning Thief, Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, and The Battle of the Labyrinth read on at your own risk!

The Olympians and the Titans are at war, therefore so are Percy Jackson and the rest of the heroes at Camp Half Blood. As the story begins Percy Jackson is out with Rachel Dare, a human who inexplicably has the ability to see through "The Mist" that guards most humans from knowing the truth about the Greek gods and monsters that walk among them. Percy is somewhat romantically interested in Rachel, but he also has a long-standing crush on Annabeth, a fellow hero. Percy may be confused about where his love life is going, but he knows for certain that he is going to be called to fight in the war against the Titans at any moment. That moment comes when a pegasus drops from the sky bearing another hero named Charles who has come to get Percy for a special mission. The mission goes awry and Percy is caught by the leader of the Titan army, Kronos. Kronos has possessed the body of an ex-Camp Half Blood Counselor named Luke. Luke was not happy with the way he was treated by his Olympian father, Hermes, and he felt that he was never given a chance to do anything truly heroic, so he fell under the influence of the dark Titan who has now risen from the depths of the underworld to take over the earth. Percy once again pulls off an amazing escape, but so does Luke/Kronos. It becomes apparent that Kronos is virtually indestructable. Percy's friend Nico, son of Hades, tells him that to beat Luke he must take the exact same steps Luke did and become invincible too. Percy and Nico travel to the underworld where Percy bathes in the river Styx, and it nearly costs him his life. But, of course, he survives and is able to go into battle virtually indestructable, just like Luke. Kronos/Luke as distracted the Olympians by unleashing Typhoon, a terrible monster capable of destroying whole cities in mere minutes. Typhoon is making his way slowly across the United States from the west coast. The Olympians band together to try to keep Typhoon at bay. Percy realizes that Typhoon is just a distraction, and that Kronos's plan is to attack New York (the home of Mount Olympus) while the Olympians are away. He tries to convince the Olympians to come to New York and fight Kronos, but they are much to busy fighting to pay attention to Percy. Percy rallies his fellow campers, and they prepare to fight the Titan army and try to save Mount Olympus themselves. A page-turning battle takes place, and in this last-book of the series, you don't discover until the very end whether or not Mount Olympus and Percy himself will survive.

This book is action-packed just like the four books that precede it in the series. And like the first four books in the series, it is filled with characters beating the unbeatable and escaping the inescapable. The first book was by far my favorite, and the second book was pretty good too. But I think my lack of excitement about this series is due to its predictability. I didn't really know what was going to happen plot-wise, which was great, but I knew no matter how impossible the narrator said the situation was, Percy and the other main characters were going to escape. I do credit the author for keeping me in suspense about Percy's survival in this last book. The prophecy Percy gets from The Oracle seems to indicate that he will have to die win or lose. And while I would have placed money on the chances that he would still survive somehow, I had a little doubt. That tiny doubt made the book much more interesting to read. Since this was the last book in the series, and the characters freely visit "The Underworld" all the time. I thought, "Well, he could die, but even if he does he will find a way back somehow." I guess as a young person reading the novel, I would take comfort in knowing that nothing truly horrible was going to happen to the main characters. But a warning to parents and teachers, like Harry Potter, this series does have some death in it. All in all, I was satisfied with the ending to this series, and I am interested to see what the next Camp Half Blood series will be about. But I think it is a good thing that the author ended the Percy Jackson story when he did. The last two books felt a little drawn out. I am reminded of the last thirty minutes or so of "Return of the King" where Frodo and the other characters are telling each other goodbye. In both cases I'm thinking, "All right , all right, enough already! This is the end of the story. We all know it. Let's move it along!"