Let’s talk about the Nico Adventures…
I just finished reading both of them. And though I usually wait to share my thoughts on books until the end of the month during my recap, I simply cannot wait with these two. Because there is so much wrong with them.
Before I continue, I want to make one thing very clear and that is that my issue with these books has little to do with Nico and Will as characters and as a couple. I actually love these two boys and they were the most redeeming quality of these two books. But my gods, most everything else was wrong with them (especially in the first one).
Most of my gripes with these books have to do with continuity issues and with pre-established lore that seems to have been thrown out the window. I do have some grievances about the writing but honestly, I could have dealt with them had it not been combined with the lore issues.
The Sun and the Star, Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro - 5/10
This book reads like fanfiction. Except it was mostly bad fanfiction. Before I start with the bad (which there is a lot of), I want to mention the good. Which is Nico and Will. I loved those flashbacks when they were telling stories about their relationship, how they met, their first date, their first kiss… it was amazing. I also loved the chapters with the troglodytes, which is ironic considering I hated those in Trials of Apollo. That alone should tell you how bad the rest of this book was.
The first thing I want to touch on is the marketing of this book. The blurb reads that Nico and Will are going to Tartarus. Expectation: they go to Tartarus at the beginning of the book, in the middle at the latest, and go through some trials there. Reality: out of the 462 pages of this book, only about 160 were actually spent in Tartarus.
The thing I also disliked about Tartarus is that their time there seemed so easy, especially considering that we know what it was like during House of Hades. This is not me saying that I want Nico and Will to suffer the way Percy and Annabeth did. Far from it actually. This book could have had any other storyline and it would have been better. But if they’re going to the deepest, darkest place in the universe, and they are totally fine? Whereas Percy and Annabeth nearly died? No thanks.
Speaking of Percy and Annabeth, I am so pissed about everything from their Tartarus story being thrown out the window or just forgotten. In House of Hades, Percy and Annabeth are dying in Tartarus, the very air they breathe is killing them. Annabeth finally realizes they should drink from the Phlegethon, which they do and this is what saves their lives. Will and Nico never drink from the Phlegethon. Which is weird, considering that Nico did tell his story about when he went to Tartarus for the first time, and he told everyone that he had to drink from the river in order to survive. So why did Nico and Will never drink from the river? They were just perfectly fine with some stale KitKats and each other?
Next, the way the two of them end up leaving Tartarus makes my blood boil. In House of Hades it is made very clear that they way to escape Tartarus is to find the Doors of Death and go through them. The difficult thing being that the Door leaves once someone goes through. This wasn’t an issue for Percy and Annabeth, as the Doors were chained in place, but they freed the Doors of Death in their book. So now anyone who wants to leave must first find the Doors’ new location. Except none of this matters because the rivers from the Underworld just flow back around in a loop so they could take a little boat to go back to Erebos? Could you imagine how short House of Hades would have been if the literal son of Poseidon would’ve had access to a boat? And this is what bothers me, why make Percy and Annabeth go through all that, only to retroactively go back and claim that there was a much easier way to close the Doors. “But the Doors had to be closed from the inside, they had no choice” you think Annabeth, daughter of Athena, wouldn’t have found a way if she weren’t in mortal danger and she could focus on such a puzzle? Please.
Again, this is not me saying that I wanted Nico and Will to suffer like Percy and Annabeth did. I just wanted this book to follow the pre-established lore.
Let’s also take a moment to talk about Camp Halfblood. It is very clear from the previous books that there are always campers there. Yes, most come in the summer, but there’s always a few year-rounders. Clarisse and Annabeth were year-rounders, though both of them are off to college. But what about Malcolm? Where was he? Where was any year-rounder in this book? Nico and Will were the only campers there. Which didn’t make any sense.
Then there’s Mr. D… who the hell was this man? Because it certainly was not the Mr. D I know. In the entire series, counting PJO, HOO and TOA, there has been only one instance of Mr. D being purposefully somewhat nice to the campers. Which is right after his son dies and he cures Chris Rodriguez’s madness after his time in the labyrinth. So why is he so nice to Nico and Will? Like seriously, it doesn’t make any sense. I understand that he wanted to help Nico and there was so much potential to watch him grow fond of him, but no. Instead we just get this whole new version of a character we have known for 15 books already. Make it make sense!
One of my biggest issues with this book is the same as I have with the senior year adventures, which is that Rick is writing these books as if they were taking place now. When Nico first appears in Titan’s Curse, he is 10 years old. This book takes place 4-5 years later, so he should be 14-15 years old. The original books were written between 2005-2009, with the HOO books taking place over the course of one year following PJO. Which would place this book, timeline wise, in the year 2010 or 2011. Yet Rick keeps making references to stuff from the 2020’s. And it may not be a big deal to some people, but I find it genuinely confusing, especially considering that Nico, being an orphan with no friends outside of camp and being a demigod with no access to phones or computers, shouldn’t even know these references!
Speaking of Nico’s age, I truly cannot comprehand how his relationship with Will was so… much. If you compare it to literally any of the other couples in the entire series, you’d immediately see the difference. Will and Nico are constantly kissing and being all lovey-dovey. Meanwhile Percy and Annabeth kissed like 3 times in the entire series and got reprimanded for falling asleep in the stables once. Hazel and Frank kissed like one time in the entire series. The romance was there and yes it was important to their characters, but it wasn’t the only thing about them. This book felt like “here are Nico and Will, they are boyfriends. Did you know they are boyfriends? Here, let them kiss so you’re sure they’re boyfriends. And don’t you forget that they’re boyfriends, look! They’re kissing and cuddling again! Because they’re boyfriends!” If I wanted to read an mlm romance, I would pick one up. One where the characters are not minors, preferably. A part of me feels like they were written like this because Rick, a straight man, didn’t know any other way to show that these characters were, in fact, boyfriends. But all of this felt so weird if you take Nico’s age into account.
Then there’s every singe conflict they have in their relationship, which was the same thing over and over again: “Will doesn’t understand that the darkness is part of me”. Every. Single. Time. It started to feel like all these moments of conflict between them were just there to make the book longer. And I understand that learning to accept this part of Nico was a big part of Will’s character arc, but the issues were the exact same every single time and it was exhausting.
You know what else was exhausting? Boyfriend. Do you have any idea how many times this word was used in this book? Neither do I because i didn’t count (I did count for COTD, more on that later) but it was so overdone. And this is once again due to Rick being straight, I’m sure. Percy doesn’t constantly refer to Annabeth as his girlfriend in his inner monologue. But they don’t have the issues of pronouns. If a chapter from Percy’s POV has the line “he takes her hand” we all know who he’s talking about. But from Nico’s POV that would be “he took his hand”. Those of us who are used to reading queer stories, understand that Nico isn’t taking his own hand. But Rick, a straight man, would probably think that it’s confusing and thus write it as “he took his boyfriend’s hand”. And this happened all the time, to the point that it made me very annoyed. A few times would be fine, but this was all the time, sometimes three times on the same page.
Of course, there is no way for me to be sure that this is the reason. For all I know Mark Oshiro was the one to write all these scenes. I don’t know their writing style, so I can’t be sure. But as someone who reads a lot of queer books written by queer authors, this immediately stood out to me and the only reason for this that I can think of is what I just described.
The Court of the Dead, Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro - 7/10
Where TSATS felt like bad fanfic, this most certainly did not. I think the adventure they went on in this book was much better and the first book should’ve had something more on this scale. I can understand that Rick does not want to make his only queer relationship as miserable as he did with Percy and Annabeth when they went to Tartarus. But he could have written a story that was more on this scale. Because this was nearly perfect.
First of all, I love that this took place at New Rome since we don’t have any story there in the other books. Sure, we have some moments in Son of Neptune and Apollo and Meg are also there in the Tyrant’s Tomb, but this was the first time we were there for the entire story and it felt like being a camper and learning everything about demigod life there. Which I loved.
The story itself was also good if you don’t think too much about it. It was also basically Zootropolis and I will die on that hill. A small group of people who are considered “dangerous” to the majority is trying to peacefully live in society with them, but the majority is distrusting of them due to prior events. And then that minority is going missing and an unlikely duo has to find out what’s going on. Am I describing Zootropolis, with the minority being the predators, the majority being the prey animals and the unlikely duo being a fox and a bunny? Or am I describing this book where the majority is the demigods, the minority is the mythics and the unlikely duo is a child of Hades and a child of Apollo? I rest my case.
This book was basically an allegory for racism and one that crumbles if you look too much into it. First of all there’s the whole thing with the term “monsters” being offensive and they prefer “mythics” which is just an allegory for the n-word. Which I would be completely behind were it not for the fact that any mythic who was not in the core group was still reffered to as a monster. That would come down to “you are not my friend so I will still call you the n-word” which is very much not the anti-racism statement that Rick and Mark tried to make in this book.
Then there’s also the fact that mythics have actively beein hunting and killing demigods for centuries, nay, millennia. Yet the Roman demigods are immediately painted as the bad guys for being distrusting of them. I can totally get behind the whole “we want to be different and leave the monster part of us behind us” thing, yes, I support you. But also let’s not forget the centuries, the millennia of you hunting them down. You can’t even make the argument of “well, it wasn’t them, it was their forefathers” because they literally just regenerate and come back.
Does that mean I didn’t like the mythics in this book? No, I actually did like them. I found them interesting and I found them very much like Rick characters. Because of course Asterion (the minotaur) would be into knitting. Of course there’s a griffin with flatulence issues. It’s the most Rick thing he could write, so it made sense.
As for the main plot, it was alright, except that it was nearly identical to the first book. Both plots basically come down to: “you are who you are and you should not change to be anything except what you were meant to be”. Nyx was like that to Nico because how dare a child of darkness be happy and the Court of the Dead was like that to mythics because how dare they refuse to kill demigods and be monsters?
Another thing I love is how Will is basically the Percy Jackson of the Apollo cabin. In the sense that he is very much overpowered, all the power he could get as an Apollo demigod, he has. Same as how Percy has all the power he could get as a Poseidon demigod. Where Percy has the amazing Sally Jackson as a mother, Will has Naomi Solace, who was absolutely fantastic and a fucking queen for the few moments she was there.
But then, there are some issues I have with the story and the writing.
As far as I’m concerned, there is only one major issue lore-wise. And that is Savannah. She is a new character and a legacy of Minerva. Which immediately I clocked as being wrong according to pre-established lore. Why? Well, my friend, I returned to the ancient texts (Mark of Athena) to show you why:
If there are no children of Minerva, there are no legacies of Minerva. It’s that easy. And the worst thing about this is that it could have been done so easily in a way that would make total sense. Savannah invented the Tessera, which is a very cool thing actually and of course the Romans came up with it. But she is so smart that she invented this, so she must be a child or a legacy of Minerva, is probably what Rick was thinking. Meanwhile Heaphaestus’s Roman counterpart Vulcan was RIGHT THERE! And that is what bothers me, there was such an easy way to include Savannah being a genius, inventing something amazing and still have it work with pre-established lore. But for that to work you’d have to know your own lore. Which Rick clearly does not.
As far as the writing is concerned, this book was a vast improvement. There were no useless conflicts between Nico and Will, which I was very happy about. The “boyfriend” thing was still an issue, so much so that I actually did count them in this book and so I can tell you that the word “boyfriend” appears 45 times total. I even put it into sections:
29 of these “boyfriend”s were also in the way I described above “Nico took his boyfriend’s hand” or something like that. Just pure inner monologue stuff. I do feel like this wasn’t as often as it was in the first book, but since I did not count those, i cannot be sure.
Some of the writing was also extremely cringe. There was a moment when Frank turned into a lion and Hazel, I kid you not, says “what a good kitty”.
There was also the whole consent thing, which I found hilarious. Okay, so, I understand the importance of asking for consent and I understand the importance of writing that in a book, especially one aimed at kids. But there were two moments of mythics doing this, I’ll just use one. Asterion and Hazel are trapped, she is very weak and so Asterion goes “Do I have your consent to carry you?” Which was just… nobody talks like that. “Is it okay if i carried you?” Is also asking for consent, it’s not as cringy and it’s much more realistic to say in an actual conversation. The whole thing just felt forced in there, like Rick and Mark were just like “Oh we have to do it like this” instead of thinking of literally any other way that would have worked better.
But honestly, this book was actually quite good (if you ignore just a few things). I loved Nico’s character arc a lot, the way he is learning to live with his emotions (the cocoa puffs were actually great, thank you very much).
Over all, both of these books sortof feel like a cashgrab. Of all the characters he could write about, he picked the only queer couple because he knew a lot of people would want to read it, myself included. And yes, I do agree that we need more Nico content, but at what cost? Rick clearly can’t write queer characters in a relationship properly (which I find weird because i remember Alex from the Magnus Chase books and they were awesome, yet this is so difficult for him?) I think Rick should reread his own books before writing any new ones because the issues with the lore just keep getting worse and worse. We could laugh these issues away when it was just something like Blackjack changing gender, but this is seriously getting out of hand. It feels like he doesn’t even care anymore to make good books, so long as he just puts out books in this franchise.
Another issue that is really affecting the quality of the newer books is Rick’s refusal to let his characters age. It’s really holding back the story. You know what I think would be absolutely amazing? A new story with new demigods going on new adventures. Percy, Annabeth, Nico and the whole gang are adults who appear as side characters and give advice, help them out. You know what it would be like? Like the Shadowhunter Chronicles. Hear me out on this one, but Clary and Jace and the whole gang have aged along with the original readers from 2009. Now they are adults who sometimes show up for the new generation. Because they aged. This means that there’s no continuity issues with the timeline, the story gets bigger because more characters, and there’s a lower chance of errors with pre-established lore because the characters this lore was based on are barely in the books anymore. Instead, Rick can’t let go of these characters and the books are really getting worse for it. Which is a shame, because to this day, the original two series remain some of the most important books to me.
