Come to think of it, Nico, a teenager with pretty serious clinical depression (very deep trauma and likely other mental illnesses as well) having a healer boyfriend and being perfectly fine 6 months later (in the Hidden Oracle, ToA) reeks very strongly of ableism, and the atrocious idea that romance fixes all your issues…
It will always annoy me how Nico’s acceptance arc was undone/retconned, because not only did it come to a very satisfying conclusion where Rick should have just moved on with a different conflict at that point or not written more books, but the more I think about it, he could have actually kept the ball rolling for that arc in an interesting way that wouldn’t have retconned anything.
Think about the aftermath of the war. Nico is accepted at camp. He is hailed as a hero - and maybe it’s a little too much. Now, everyone wants to be friends with him. Everyone wants him on their team for capture the flag. Everyone wants to talk to him now, and maybe he’s socially exhausted. Maybe when he finally gets his own cabin, people start crowding outside his door so he can contact their dead friends and family members, and he’s like “get out of my swamp”. Maybe he feels like people idolize him and only want to be friends with him now because of his powers or what he did in the Titan War. That people accept him for his parentage, but don’t truly see him for who he is - but things are still a lot better than they were
If you still want Nico to have a coming out arc - have him realize it later. He still ran away/didn’t feel accepted because he was the son of Hades, not because he was gay or [insert queer identity you want to give Nico]. Now that things are finally better in his life, he’s able to sit with those feelings. He thought he felt different because he was a demigod, then because he was the son of Hades, but then he realizes maybe there really is something else. Maybe he’s afraid because he doesn’t want to lose the acceptance he has already gained and fought so hard for. He already had to deal with being the Hades kid and is in denial, not necessarily because of internalized queerphobia, but because he refuses to have to deal with another thing that makes him different.
It’s not that he isn’t accepted. He is accepted, and it’s all too much, but at the same time, he’s afraid of losing it.
I wish we would stop giving Riordan praise and credits for the bare minimum "representation" with "oh he tried", "atleast it's diverse".
Hon, he's been "trying" since The Lost Hero first came out. Yet, so many books later, he still hasn't learnt from his mistakes. Heck! He can't even represent well a fundamental-of-representation group: Women.
Nor can he represent any aspects of Hellenistic culture, something his books are quite literally built on. Piper and Leo's writing received flack for the racist undertones, but Hazel and Frank are hardly better a book later.
You'd think he would learn by the time House of Hades rolls up, but even then, his first queer character (Nico di Angelo) has his story built on pain and trauma, with a bunch of outdated cliches on the side.
Fast forward to ToA, his a-spec character (Reyna) existed almost out of sheer spite for a sapphic fan-couple (Theyna), and never gets to state her identity on-page.
Please, I'm begging you, just stop overselling his representation.
what's your opinion on the trials of apollo series? (if you already have a post like this, you could link it below, i just haven't seen it if so)
I think it has an interesting concept and introduces some interesting worldbuilding, plus some nice new characters, but overall it's not executed well and is an unnecessary third series. A lot of TOA kind of ends up breaking the theses of the first series by creating a premise that basically every character involved needs to be retconned to be able to fit within. It also focuses way too heavily on unnecessary cameos and retcons/overcorrecting previous mistakes. Not to mention how much new stuff it introduces that is... not great. Altogether it's kind of a mess. But I can see promise in some of the core concepts.
My two main sort of main "takes" on how I think TOA could be improved is either:
a.) remove Calypso from HoO and instead have her be re-introduced in TOA as a tritagonist in a trio with Apollo and Meg, with the focal point of the trio's dynamic being the intersection of their experiences and how they relate to one another - with a lot of emphasis on Calypso being a mirror to Apollo in both being stripped of their immortality and thrown into the mortal world and having been unfairly punished. Then have Calypso join the Hunt in approximately TTT (essentially her way of taking control of her own life again and regaining her immortality) so the finale is Meg and Apollo on their own and Calypso's absence is naturally felt because we're used to trio dynamics in the franchise. It'd be a great way to break the convention of the series while also playing with this feeling of loss but also hope leading up to the final fight in a meaningful way without having to lean so heavily on unnecessary (and poorly executed) character death. Calypso is gone because she got her happy ending, and now it's Meg and Apollo's turn.
or b.) - and this is apparently controversial - instead of having the protagonist be Apollo, have it be Ares. Otherwise the overarching plot is the same. This way you can keep the plot structure but not have to entirely retcon Apollo's character to fit the story concept. It also finally ties up that loose thread about Ares never seeing repercussions for his actions and allowing him to have a positive character arc that way more naturally touches upon events from the previous series. As a bonus it also allows for bringing PJO!Ares closer to how he's mythologically portrayed and examining some of his mythological themes and what exactly he's the god of. Mars is an agricultural god! Having his deuteragonist being a daughter of Demeter would be really fun to highlight that! Mythologically he's usually portrayed as a really good father! Let's allow him to have some character development where he stops being such a jerk!
One of my core problems with TOA is Apollo's character is retconned entirely for TOA to even begin, he doesn't have any actual true flaws that he needs to work on throughout his character arc, and by the end he's literally just back where he started with his characterization in PJatO. It's a total net-zero. Why? Having Ares be the protagonist instead would be a great opportunity to take his currently very stagnant character from PJatO (and the very little he shows up in HoO) and have him change dramatically for the better. Doing so would also fit way more with the themes of the first series.
Rick had SO MUCH potential with jasiper oh my lord. Like I get it queer representation is important im literally queer but damn you could’ve done anything else 💔💔 aroace Leo bisexual Piper and Jason or maybe just maybe you could’ve shown the Theyna development in book or maybe Nico meets a guy on his quest and actually bonds with him so there’s an actually naturally progressing queer relationship (besides Beatrice I love you bbgs) or literally anything but break up Jasiper come on. It would’ve been better if Jasiper just wasn’t canon at all period and Jason woke up holding Leo’s hand and then we could have aroace PIPER (*writes that down* mhh scrumptious hc) OR LITERALLY ANYTHING besides break up Jasiper and just shove in Shel. I mean Shelper is cute and all but that just wasn’t the way to add the representation you’re desperately trying to add Rick 💔💔💔
"I can go into why i dislike ToA (especially Tyrant's Tomb is. a book that exists) but box of pandora. Once open good luck shutting me up" (source: your tags)
Now that you said that, i'm geniunely curious. Open the box. I dare you
This should be obvious but @ the people who really enjoyed ToA, this post is not for you. I’m not sure I’ll even tag it because this is mostly me venting into the void because two people asked and not me wanting to ruin other people’s fun. These are just my personal opinions.
I also apologize if I get any details wrong, I did recheck a lot of the things mentioned but it’s been a minute since I read ToA and might not remember everything 100% correctly. Also, obvious spoiler warning.
*claps hands together* Okay, you asked for this but heads up, it’s going to be long. Maybe grab a snack and a glass of water beforehand.
My beef with ToA can be summarized into a few key points that I’ll elaborate on below but basically:
-It tries to wrap up character arcs for some of the seven (and Reyna) but does this through the eyes of someone with zero context and also treats these characters arcs as unimportant footnotes in the larger story
-Jason’s death and everything surrounding it was handled extremely poorly.
-I cannot remember any demigods staying mad at Apollo. Redemption arcs should not mean everyone has to forgive this character for all the shit they’ve done in the past.
-The death toll. This is not helped by the fact that a lot of the deaths feel like they exist solely for the purpose of making Apollo learn death sucks over and over again (Jason is the worst example of this, but there are others)
More grievances I have but don’t have enough to say about to justify a longer explanation:
-There are a whole bunch of new minor characters on top of the old ones already struggling for screen time. I don’t remember much about any of them, which is a shame because the idea behind some of them is really compelling.
-The story is centered around the Triumvirate as antagonists, with Python as a final boss, but book four just dumps an additional antagonist on you out of nowhere? Why?
-Reyna rejecting Apollo is nice and all but I still had to put up with him crushing on her and was very uncomfortable the whole time.
-Chiron sends a bunch of new demigods into what’s potentially a death battle and tells them it’s a fun field trip (what the fuck)
-This is a personal grievance more than anything but it took me ages (book five) until I really got attached to Meg. I feel like that could have been fixed if she at least got a few POV chapters.
-Dishonorable mention to the punch line joke. Two whole camps of people lining up to hit the canonically abused kid that saved them is not funny.
Details under the cut (Pandora’s box, I did warn you)
Character arcs:
The books really do try to tell meaningful stories for people whose arcs weren’t finished in Heroes of Olympus. With some of them, you can even tell the ideas behind wrapping up those arcs were solid. But the books also tells those stories through the eyes of a character who doesn’t know these people’s pasts and quite frankly doesn’t care a lot of the time. People will voice/do something that is huge for their character and instead of going into that it’s followed up with some random Apollo anecdote that’s only tangentially related at best.
Taking Leo as an example: Apollo has no idea why Leo settling down and finding a home somewhere after everything he’s been through is meaningful. That’s a story that could have been the focus of an entire book of its own, but instead it’s just a side plot to a completely different story. And that story really should have been told through Leo’s eyes, or at least through the eyes of someone like Jason or Piper who realize why this is huge for him.
Apollo also does not care why Leo and Calypso are fighting, so it’s not something that’s properly explored. Leo’s fights with Calypso are mainly mentioned/witnessed. You get some guesses as to how they started but they never mention the exact reasons. They both say they care about each other, but only to Apollo, when the other person isn’t present. When they sort things out it happens largely off-screen. I was also not a fan of the way many of their issues ended up being pinned on Leo being sexist when it was actually way more than that.
ToA does this a lot. It gives arcs to characters who honestly deserved to be explored more, but those arcs are barely footnotes in a larger story where these characters just cameo for a hundred or so pages.
The cameo stuff works okay for Percy and Solangelo because the books are very aware they’re cameos and they get to have fun but this is not their story. But the characters the series tries to give proper plots to are all over the place.
It’s said that Jason and Thalia are really close but they never interact in the books. Jason had a bit of a chance at a normal life finally but that’s barely gone into. (More on Jason later because my god did how the books handled him piss me off massively)
Piper’s struggles with her queerness get the random Apollo anecdote treatment. There’s some stuff about her reconnecting with her dad and her heritage but that’s not explored a ton either.
Frank’s firewood burns up and he’s fine, which is just sort of hand-waved and doesn’t feel meaningful, especially because I think the fireproof pouch was already a fine solution? Congrats on being free of this, now you can get stabbed to death like all the other characters, I guess.
Reyna gets a sort of arc but it feels really weird because it happens almost entirely off-screen. She spends a large fraction of the book chiding Lavinia for leaving her post, then gets her leg broken, is off-screen for a while and then just DIPS with the Hunters after her home suffered huge casualties.
I also think her joining the Hunters is a super lame way to resolve her arc in general (she just lays down one responsibility to sign up for the next, and a character not wanting romance/not wanting romance right now should be allowed to exist without having to join the eternal maiden’s club, but that problem isn’t isolated to Reyna and could honestly be a whole post of its own)
This also comes down to the fact that I’m here mainly for the demigods. I care about these kids having good arcs and good lives. I care significantly less about Apollo having to learn really obvious shit like “murdering my pregnant girlfriend was perhaps a little messed up”
Jason’s death and everything surrounding it
Killing off a major character (especially one whose arc isn’t finished) can be a plot twist that works at times. But it has to be handled well. Doing it to a character that’s suffered horrifically and is starting to heal is also a hugely shitty move, but I understand you want meaningful deaths for the plot sometimes.
But you cannot do it the way Rick did it with Jason’s death. If he was going to kill off one of the seven, he should have done it in Heroes of Olympus, with that character narrating and their friends getting to deal with the aftermath and grieve.
Instead, Jason dies in a book that he appears in for like. A hundred pages iirc? Two-hundred at most? You get Apollo narration on it, and sure, he’s big sad about it, but he also knew this guy for two days.
Piper gets a few pages to deal with his death, then disappears from the book and comes back for a heroic rescue later. Leo gets like two pages to deal with the fact that his best friend is dead. They then proceed to fuck off to Oklahoma instead of going to the funeral. For what reason? No idea. The book doesn’t bother to explain it.
Jason gets a Camp Jupiter funeral, with none of his Camp Half-Blood friends present, because fuck the fact that him belonging to both camps was a huge part of his arc, right?
Piper and Leo know Jason is dead but they cannot be there because they’d already used up their time as ToA side characters, I guess. Percy and Annabeth can’t come, they don’t find out due to demigod communication issues until the end of the series. Thalia also doesn’t get to go to her brother’s funeral. She doesn’t find out until the funeral is already over. We don’t even really get to see her grieving, her finding out Jason died happens off-screen too.
Because this is the Apollo show, Apollo is the guy who leads the funeral procession instead of, like, Reyna, who knew Jason for years.
Also, for some reason, the person avenging Jason is Frank? Absolutely no offense to Frank, he’s a great guy and I’m sure he cared about Jason, but that choice still feels deeply comedic considering I can remember exactly one meaningful interaction him and Jason had in HoO (Jason giving Frank praetor position at the end of HoH) and not a single conversation they had beyond that. If Rick had to write Leo and Piper out of the plot, why not at least have Reyna avenge him?
Jason dies specifically because Apollo broke a stupid oath he made on the River Styx. We’re told that people around him will keep dying because of this. He dies as a chess piece in a stupid game between gods, for the sake of Apollo’s character development. He dies so he can be brought up every hundred pages for Apollo to waffle about how sad his death was but how he’d also definitely not want to be brought back (I get it, we cannot revive people constantly, but having Apollo make this point when, again, he knew the guy for two days, is still really stupid. Nico also gets to make the same point at the end just in case the reader didn’t understand before that we’re not bringing Jason back)
Apollo is forgiven by everyone
Related to the above point. Like I said, we’re outright told that Jason dying is a direct consequence of Apollo’s oath. Apollo also knew taking them along on the mission would get Jason or Piper killed and he did it anyway.
Piper gets to be mad at him very briefly, but when he tries to apologize at the end of the book, she interrupts him and tells him “it’s fine” (her voice is described as “no anger, just natural heat”)
Thalia doesn’t get to be mad at him at all. Her baby brother died and she just pats Apollo on the back and tells him “it’s fine, Jason made his own choices. That’s what heroes do.” And then it’s made about how Artemis lost Apollo when he got transformed into a human instead of. Like. The fact that Thalia just lost her baby brother for the second time in her life.
IT’S FINE?? THAT’S ALL ANYONE HAS TO SAY ABOUT THIS??
Hell, Apollo even has a sort of dream hallucination of Jason’s ghost so that ghost can forgive him too.
Was that really necessary? Why do people think that a character learning to be better means absolutely everyone has to forgive them? Wouldn’t it have been a better sticking point for a god to learn people are allowed to stay mad at you?
The death toll
A lot of people die in these books. People dying in pjo books has always been a thing, but it’s never felt this pointless or this much like it was solely happening for a single person’s character development.
Jason is the most pointed example of this, but there are more. Starting with the fact that two of Apollo’s kids almost get torched in front of his face in the first book (Austin and Kayla) and somehow that is not a sticking point. I don’t think it’s ever brought up again afterwards.
Other characters that die so Apollo can learn death sucks:
-Several Dryads die saving the grove of Dodonna
-Heloise the Griffin
-One random unnamed demigod in Dark Prophecy (mentioning them because that’s where it occurs to Apollo demigod deaths also suck)
-Money Maker (Dryad)
-Crest
-Harpocrates and the Sybil of Cumae
The death toll in Tyrant’s Tomb is completely ridiculous. Like, “feels worse than Last Olympian despite not even being the final battle”-ridiculous. And unlike how Percy at least gets to use that tragic battle to change things in a fundamental way, the Camp Jupiter demigods don’t win anything significant. Their home is only almost completely destroyed. Some of them aren’t dead. That’s it.
If you remember the name of any side character Camp Jupiter demigod from HoO, there’s a very high chance they die in this book.
We don’t get exact numbers for how many people die. The book actually explicitly refuses to give numbers, stating “We didn’t count the dead. They weren’t numbers. They were people we had know, friends we had fought with.” (Which gets even more ironic due to the fact that, again, we barely have any named CJ demigods to begin with)
The closest thing we get to numbers are that 25 demigod members of the legion died in the battle before the book started, and towards the end there are fourteen total demigods still standing of the first to third cohort combined. Even if half the missing demigods are “just” so severely wounded that they can’t fight anymore, that’s still 60 dead kids! The pre-book battle was mentioned to have been hardest on the civilians. We don’t know how many of them died, and losses among the fourth and fifth cohort are also unknown, but that is a ridiculous amount of losses. Why are there so many dead kids in this book and why are we all just supposed to be okay with this?
Jupiter explicitly forbids the other gods to intervene. The only one who does is Diana, after an offering, and she takes her sweet time to get there. That camp is named after the guy! That’s people’s kids down there! I know the gods not helping their kids isn’t exactly new, but this is on a whole other level.
There are funerals but those are largely skipped over, and Frank announces that they’ll resolve this by asking Lupa to bring in more demigods so they’ll come back stronger, which. Baffling statement. Let’s just fix the dead people by replacing them.
TL;DR: Good on Apollo for learning to be better, but I really didn’t like how it was done. There were a handful of things I liked in almost all the books, not including Tyrant’s Tomb which wins the award for rrverse book I most wanted to chuck out of a window. Some of the ideas were good. I think the first and last book are mostly solid (largely due to the fact that those don’t try to shove in entire side character arcs). But the things I did enjoy just get very heavily outweighed by everything that annoyed and upset me.
I really wish ToA had been mostly new characters with maybe some minor cameos, and other people’s arcs had been saved for different books. I also think splitting the perspective between Apollo, Meg and maybe the HoO character who was trying to have an arc in that specific book would have helped.
