Heroes of Olympus part 5 The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

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The reflection for me as a reader and writer based on the conclusion to this story is that you must count the cost of completing your narrative before you accomplish the work. Riordan sets up an explosive finale over the course of four books, but is not able to stick the landing having set the bar so high for himself. This led to main characters being sidelined for large portions of the final book, plot holes littering the final chapters and a rushed climax and resolution.

This book being the conclusion to the five part series, fell flat for me. For as strong as each book of the Heroes of Olympus is, it is next to impossible to write a satisfying conclusion for a story this big. there are so many plot threads that need to get tied up that there just isn’t enough time to give all of them release. Jason, Reyna, and Nico get satisfying conclusions, but everyone else gets put on the back burner, which makes me sad. 

Here is a rant about the climax and other miscellaneous thoughts:

The climax is really dumb and it feels like the author rushed to finish the book and keep it a reasonable length. 

• The power levels of the Giants doesn’t make sense, because the demigods/gods steam roll them in a matter of five pages
• Zeus throwing the Argo II across the planet, like a softball is really stupid
  • The ship/crew surviving this is nuts 
• Leo’s plan to have the ship transform into a dragon like a Dino bot is a disappointing reveal because it’s been foreshadowed for 300 pages and it doesn’t make sense
• Leo’s sacrifice is made void, because Octavian also kills himself, and perhaps deals the death blow to Gaea
• The fact that Leo has an extra life with the “physicians cure” is also dumb

I get it, it’s cute that Leo gets to be with calypso in the end but this climax is a colander.

The B plot in this book is Hedge, Nico and Reyna periodically Misty-stepping with a big ass statue of Athena,from Greece to Long Island. It is established that Nico is able to teleport each of them and the statue a few hundred miles at a time, however for no other reason, other than the fact that the book must to find a way to get them across the ocean. Nico somehow has no problem teleporting them 3700 miles across the ocean in one shot and this is never explained other than Nico gets sleepy.

After the fight with the Giants ends, with a brief interaction with the gods (who up until now have been completely incapacitated) the gang needs to somehow make their way back to camp to fight Gaea. Zeus picks up the ship and throws it across the planet, and somehow the ship is still able to transform into a dragon. This was Leo’s plan the entire time. This plan is really dumb and doesn’t make sense. Leo has been foreshadowing this plan for hundreds of pages and this is the best you could come up with.