Guys, I need to rant a bit.
I’m currently rereading Mark of Athena and specifically chapters 17-20. The second batch of Annabeth POV chapters.
Because me and my account here are so focused on Percy, I sometimes forget how much Annabeth’s writing also suffered in these books, which is especially sad since moa is supposed to be her book and since it’s the first time we’ve ever gotten chapters from her POV.
Like, this was supposed to be Annabeth’s Son of Neptune.
Instead, it became her…well, her Mark of Athena.
Because, wow, these four chapters can be really rough at times and remind me how Annabeth, who is my third favourite character if we go strictly by the PJO books, doesn’t even make my Top 5 overall Riordan verse characters and is only in my top ten because of how much I love her PJO portrayal. Simply Hoo Annabeth would probably not make it.
There are just so many things in these four chapters alone that (more or less) bother me about her general portrayal in hoo or are more minor examples of ongoing annoying trends in her writing.
I’m probably going to split this into multiple posts because this might take a while.
Annabeth's & Percy's relationship portrayal:
My first issue would be the way Percy’s and Annabeth’s relationship is handled. Something which sadly negatively reflects on their individual characters, and, in this specific case, more on Annabeth than Percy.
There is this trend in Heroes of Olympus and onwards, where various different characters imply that Annabeth needs to keep Percy in check, or that Percy is not as smart as Annabeth:
But she could see why Annabeth liked him, and she could definitely see why Percy needed Annabeth in his life. If anybody could keep a guy like that under control, it was Annabeth. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 10, Piper)
“Right,” Piper said. “Bacchus told us we should seek out…what was his name?” “Phorcys,” Percy said. Annabeth looked surprised, like she wasn’t used to her boyfriend having the answers. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 11, Piper)
‘Oh, obviously,’ Reyna said. ‘Without you, I doubt Percy could find his way out of a paper bag.’ ‘True,’ Annabeth agreed. (House of Hades, Chapter 76, Percy)
‘So this is why Annabeth is the brains of the operation, then?’ ‘Shut up, Grace.’ (Blood of Olympus, Chapter 25)
And while sentences like this are annoying enough on their own, they get worse when they’re from Annabeth’s POV. As is sadly the case in this chapter:
Annabeth shivered. She loved the architecture here. The houses and the gardens were very beautiful, very Roman. But she wondered why beautiful things had to be wrapped up with evil history. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the evil history made it necessary to build beautiful things, to mask the darker aspects. She shook her head. Percy would hate her getting so philosophical. If she tried to talk to him about stuff like that, his eyes glazed over. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 18, Annabeth)
Like, I’m sorry, but that is just such a gross mischaracterization of Percy and Annabeth and their relationship.
One of the main reasons why their relationship is so enjoyable and why I personally love their friendship in PJO is because they treat each other as equals. They fight sometimes, and can unintentionally hurt each other, but the trust and respect they have for each other is omnipresent and one of the cores of their relationship, whether platonic or romantic.
Yet, in Heroes of Olympus, Annabeth thinks Percy wouldn’t engage in philosophical conversations with her? That his eyes would glaze over over a topic as simple as “Are beautiful things wrapped up with evil history or are beautiful things used to mask evil history”?
That her boyfriend, a guy who listens to her ramble on about architecture, a topic he personally has no interest in, so much that he has a habit of remembering random facts about it, wouldn’t engage her in a question she’s interested in?:
“He modeled that after his mom,” I said, looking up at the statue. Clarisse frowned at me. “Who?” “Bartholdi,” I said. “The dude who made the Statue of liberty. He was a son of Athena, and he designed it to look like his mom. Annabeth told me, anyway.” Clarisse rolled her eyes. Annabeth was my best friend and a huge nut when it came to architecture and monuments. I guess her egghead facts rubbed off on me sometimes. (The Demigod Files: The Stolen Chariot)
"Seven hundred feet tall," I said. "Built in the 1930s." (…) Zoe stared at us. "How do you know all that?" "Annabeth," I said. "She liked architecture." (…) It seemed like cruel fate that we'd come to Hoover Dam, one of Annabeth's personal favorites, and she wasn't here to see it. (Titan’s Curse, Chapter 14)
The same guy who sometimes has thoughts like this?:
But Percy didn’t feel powerful. The more heroic stuff he did, the more he realized how limited he was. He felt like a fraud. I’m not as great as you think, he wanted to warn his friends. His failures, like tonight, seemed to prove it. Maybe that’s why he had started to fear suffocation. It wasn’t so much drowning in the earth or the sea, but the feeling that he was sinking into too many expectations, literally getting in over his head. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 31, Percy)
And the same guy who said this? :
"Hestia," I said, "I give this to you as an offering." The goddess tilted her head. "I am the least of the gods. Why would you trust me with this?" "You're the last Olympian," I said. "And the most important." "And why is that, Percy Jackson?" "Because Hope survives best at the hearth," I said. "Guard it for me, and I won't be tempted to give up again." The goddess smiled. (The Last Olympian, Chapter 17)
It makes Annabeth seem entirely ignorant to the type of person Percy is and makes it seem as if she has a really low opinion of him, which is such mischaracterization bs. That’s her best friend, the guy whom she has known since she was twelve and the guy with whom she has faced countless dangers. If there’s one person who should never underestimate or understate Percy’s intelligence it should be her (together with Grover, Sally, Rachel, etc. but this is not about them right now)
But regarding relationships this is not my only problem in these chapters.
Annabeth's other relationships:
Now, I really hope I’m phrasing this right and that I manage to get my point across clearly.
A pretty huge problem for Annabeth’s characterization throughout Heroes of Olmpus for me is that while her relationships with every single member of the seven except for Percy are incredibly shallow, the narrative still tries to pretend as if she is close to them without putting in the effort to make these relationships work.
There’s a lot of tell and don’t show in these books regarding that.
For example, we don’t really see Annabeth interact with Leo and Jason at all, but the narrative tells us that they highly respect her and accept her as their leader.
We don’t really see a lot of interactions between Piper and Annabeth, yet we are told they are best friends and incredibly close.
We barely see interactions between her and Frank and Hazel, yet the narrative tells us they 100% trust her and accept her as somewhat of a leader despite knowing her for only a day and despite the fact that up until a certain point, Annabeth hasn’t really done anything which would warrant this level of trust.
Now, please don’t get me wrong.
I obviously want Annabeth to have good and deep relationships with other characters, but I want them to feel earned. I want them to be real. I want them to mean something. I want to see them start and grow and develop.
I don’t want to just be told that they exist. I want to understand why and how they exist.
Annabeth especially is a character that thrives on her connections to other people. Her relationships to Percy and Luke respectively are two of the most important in the original five books. Also, some of her most emotionally powerful moments are triggered by her relationships and love to the people around her (her attacking Kronos in Luke’s body after Silena’s death and after he injured Chiron, her reaction to the Sirens, her reaction to Kronos using Luke’s body, etc.)
Compared to that, none of her new relationships (if you can even call them relationships) feel more than surface level.
Sometimes, I feel like as if Riordan simply wanted everyone to like, respect and get along with Annabeth, without putting in the effort to show why they would like, respect and get along with her. Which makes her new relationships seem incredibly cheap, unearned and surface level.
Two examples of that are in this chapter in the form of Frank and Nico.
Frank:
After Frank got stuck in the Chinese handcuffs in front of everyone, he goes to Annabeth to ask her to explain them to her:
“I don’t like being in the dark about this,” he muttered. “Could you show me the trick? I didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone else.” Annabeth processed his words with a slight delay. Wait…Frank was asking her for help? Then it dawned on her: of course, Frank was embarrassed. Leo had been razzing him pretty hard. Nobody liked being a laughingstock. Frank’s determined expression said he never wanted that to happen again. He wanted to understand the puzzle, without the iguana solution. Annabeth felt strangely honored. Frank trusted her not to make fun of him. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 17, Annabeth)
It’s admittedly a very small moment, however it exemplifies what I mean on a smaller scale. The narrative tries to tell us that Frank, a character who often heavily battles with insecurity, trusts Annabeth the most out of everyone else on the Argo II not to laugh at him, while giving us close to no reason why he would trust her more than the others.
Not only has he known her for only a single day, but, alongside everyone else, she already did laugh at him a couple minutes/ hours prior, exactly because of the handcuffs:
On the deck where he’d been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs. “Well done, Frank Zhang,” Leo said dryly, doing his impression of Chiron the centaur. “That is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas.” Everybody busted out laughing. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 17, Annabeth)
Also, before arriving back at the Argo II, Percy, a person Frank has grown to respect and trust over the course of son of Neptune, someone he sees as family, and someone who on multiple occasions comforted him, literally offered to teach him:
“Chinese handcuffs,” Percy said. Frank, who was Chinese Canadian, looked offended. “How is this Chinese?” “I don’t know,” Percy said. “That’s just what it’s called. It’s like a gag gift.” “Come along, boys!” Kate called from across the hall. “I’ll show you later,” Percy promised. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 15, Percy)
Frank could have easily asked Percy the next day if he could show him. So, it makes very little sense for him to specifically ask Annabeth.
And this could have been easily solved by making Annabeth the one to go to Frank and offer her help. That would have painted Annbeth as the compassionate and thoughtful character she actually is and also given Frank a reason to trust and like her on a personal scale.
But relationship wise, the Hoo narrative oftentimes simply gives Annabeth relationships without making her or the story work for them. Which is such a disservice for her as a character and makes moments like this, which could have been really sweet, seem cheap and relationships, which had the potential to be emotionally powerful and cute, unearned.
Just imagine for a second how much worse and more boring some of Percy’s relationships in PJO and Hoo would be if the characters would have trusted him with their worries and insecurities from the get-go, without him having to prove himself as a trustworthy person first. (Like in the case of Annabeth, Zoe, Thalia, Nico, Clarisse, Reyna etc. or even more minor characters like Bianca, Carter, the ophiotaurus, the naiad at the ranch, etc.)
It is somewhat similar with Nico.
Nico:
Granted, this is a criticism better suited for how their relationship is depicted in later books, however it somewhat works here too, I think. (I hope)
While being in Charleston with Piper and Hazel, Annabeth has these thoughts regarding Nico:
In less than four days, unless they found him and freed him, Nico would be dead. Annabeth felt that deadline weighing on her, too. She’d always had mixed feelings about Nico di Angelo. She suspected that he’d had a crush on her ever since they rescued him and his big sister Bianca from that military academy in Maine; but Annabeth had never felt any attraction to Nico. He was too young and too moody. There was a darkness in him that made her uneasy. Still, she felt responsible for him. (Mark of Athena, Chapter 18)
While this isn’t 100% a positive depiction of Nico, it implies something which the narrative wants to be true, but isn’t actually true in the PJO books:
That Nico and Annabeth had a relationship throughout PJO, or at the very least enough interactions for Annabeth to feel responsible for him, for her to logically draw the conclusion that he has a crush on her and for allowing her to make general statements regarding his personality.
Sadly, this isn’t exactly the case.
Throughout the entirety of the five Percy Jackson books and the various PJO short stories, Annabeth and Nico were at the same place for only four chapters during Battle of the Labyrinth and most of their interactions, if they ever took place, happened entirely off-screen. If my memory serves me right, they interact on page one single time, while on Geryon’s farm.
Which means that Nico has as many on screen interactions with Annabeth as he does with Juniper, which makes this thought process a bit shallow to me.
And what makes me mad is that instead of using Heroes of Olympus to actually build a relationship between them, or show them interacting in meaningful ways, the narrative simply pretends as if they already did. (Which admittedly becomes more obvious in Boo and afterwards. Not that obvious in mark of Athena, but I’m nitpicky because I already know the other books, these couple chapters piss me off a bit and I think they could have had a really sweet relationship if the story would have actually cared enough to build it.)
(Part 1 of, what do I know. Too many)
