8 / 12
h
Critic's
Corner
Rick Riordan is back at it again
with another great twist on Greek and
Roman mythology. In
The Hidden
Oracle
, the sun god Apollo finds
himself in a dumpster. He doesn
’
t
remember anything that happened in
the past six months after the battle
against Gaea, and worse yet he
’
s now
a mortal teenage boy with acne.
Almost instantly, Apollo is set into
servitude of an annoying young
demigod named Meg. Now he must
juggle the pains of his new body, the
pains of this young child, and the
pains of reviving the oracle. As we
return to Camp Half-Blood and see
the return of many old characters and
meet some new ones, Apollo narrates
the whole things in the classic, highly
amusing, writing style everyone has
come to expect from Rick Riordan.
By Allyson Shoff
I
’
m sure a lot of people were
thinking the same thing I was when
this book was announced:
“
Hasn
’
t
Rick Riordan written enough? Is this
another case of Cassandra Clare
’
s
writing issues? I think he
’
s milked
this series enough.
”
Yeah. Guess
again. This book was great! Right
from the beginning,
The Hidden
Oracle
started with humor and action
expected in a book written by Mr.
Riordan. While all of his other books
have focused on demigods as the main
character, even his Norse mythology
book, this series features one of the
Greek gods as the centerpiece of
destruction. Apollo is a charming,
hilarious, and egotistic narrator that
amused me to no end throughout the
entire story. It wasn
’
t until the end of
the book that we actually started to
see a little of humanity bloom from
his mind and actually start to feel
sorry for the guy. His little
companion, Meg, while clearly
diabolical, was probably my favorite
character since Nico Di Angelo. Yeah,
Nico
’
s in this book too. He
’
s in it
quite a bit actually. Also, unlike most
of the stories,
The Hidden Oracle
didn
’
t venture out of Camp Half-
Blood very much and instead focused
on the forest surrounding it.
Any fans of Rick Riordan
’
s series
are sure to enjoy this great start to a
series. It
’
s a bit slower-paced than the
other books he
’
s written, but it
’
s also
not as thick as
Blood of Olympus
. I
would recommend any readers of
Riordan
’
s works to pick this up, and I
would recommend the entire Percy
Jackson series to any lovers of
fantasy.
Literature
Review of Rick Riordan's
The Trials of Apollo #1:
The Hidden Oracle