“Even before he got electrocuted, Jason was having a rotten day.”

It hasn’t even been a year since the second Titan war. Percy Jackson and the rest of Camp Half-Blood did everything they could to defeat Kronos and stop the Titans from taking over the world. Despite the Gods winning this war again, not everything has been peaceful, and the demigods suffered quite a few casualties. It shook the balance of everyone at Camp Half-Blood, and things got serious even more than they were before. Their friends were dead, or badly injured, and the looming thought of another Great Prophecy over their heads meant that this wasn’t over. And it definitely wasn’t.

Fast forward a few weeks, and we come across three new teens that will begin their journey just like any other kid with a godly parent: being attacked by monsters.

Meet Jason, a guy with a serious case of amnesia. He doesn’t even remember who he really is, only that his name is Jason and that something is terribly wrong. For some reason, everyone around him in the bus that he magically wakes up has it in their head that he’s been one of their classmates for three months or so, even though Jason has no idea what they are talking about. He apparently has a girlfriend named Piper too, who may or may not have been a little heartbroken when he didn’t recognize her.

Speaking of Piper, she turns out to be a pretty important character to the story too. And not just because she thought she was Jason’s girlfriend either. Jason, Piper, and their comedic friend Leo all have their lives turned on their heads and are forced to find solace and refuge in a camp for demigods. What are demigods? Well, they are the children of Greek gods that decided to come down to Earth and have a little fun with the mortals. A little gross when one could have many siblings in close age, like the children of Aphrodite and Hermes for example, but still pretty cool. Piper finds out that she’s the daughter of Aphrodite, and Leo is claimed by Hephaestus. But what about Jason? He has the powers of a child of Zeus, and yet for some reason that doesn’t seem right to him. Even Chiron saw him and said he was supposed to be dead.

In this book, a story separated from the first epic adventure of Percy Jackson still has those drama-filled gods trying to get their children to do their dirty work for them. It wasn’t enough that they had to kick ass against the Titans just a few months ago. No, now there are more dangerous and evil creatures stirring beneath the Earth, and it doesn’t look like the gods will be able to win this time. What makes it even worse, is that for some reason the gods seem to possess multiple personalities, their Greek personas and their more warlike Roman counterparts. We end up finding out what happened to the other Titans while Percy and the Greek demigods were busy fighting Kronos. The others didn’t just decide to retreat after that. Oh no. It was so much more complicated than that.

For those who have read the Percy Jackson series, I feel like this is a very exciting follow up. It’s not really a sequel, especially if you’re counting on hearing the story from Percy’s perspective. Don’t expect that in the first book, because you will be disappointed. But don’t knock it until you try it, because from what Jason, Piper and Leo have to go through in this book alone, you can already guess that this new prophecy is going to be so much darker and so much more challenging than the first one. If you thought the Titans were bad, think again. This was the perfect first book to another exciting series, bringing Roman mythology into the mix perfectly balancing out the Greek mythology we came to love with the first series. I’m already on the edge of my seat in anticipation.

Rated: 5/5 Stars