“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
Tag: AMMP:BCRC16
Red Queen – Book Review
“Anyone can betray anyone.”
The world will always have a chance to rebuild itself, if there are enough people that want to make it happen. That’s the beauty of living in the future, in a world that isn’t tainted with the realities of our lives. Sure, it may seem like this entire story takes place in the past, but this is a whole new kind of ballgame, and it’s not to be taken lightly. In this world, people are divided by the color of their blood, literally. There are the Red masses, the poor ones of the new society who have to serve the higher powered Silvers. It’s like the color of their blood is what makes them special, as only the Silvers have powers that make them so much more ruthless than their Red counterparts. Only the Silvers have what it takes to take what is theirs, without risking any permanent damage to themselves. When there are monthly matches between Silvers just to see who is the strongest, and they never have to fight to the death, it’s easy to see that they flaunt their power of the Reds, showing them that they are better than the rest.
So if only Silvers have special powers, then why doesn’t Mare die when she falls face first into a lightning shield?
That’s the question that begins Mare Barrow’s journey into the world of the Silvers. Mare, born with Red blood in her veins, forced to work in the Palace after she is responsible for making her sister lose her source of income. She just so happened to start on one of the most exciting days in the Silver world: Queenstrial. This event is where the most eligible maidens have the opportunity to prove why they should be the next Queen. It’s not all fashion shows and Miss Universe waving though. The Queenstrial is one of the most brutal shows of force that Mare has ever seen, and it’s when one of the girls uses her immense power to tilt the stadium that all of the noble Silver families are in that Mare should have fallen to her death on the lightning shield. It was there that she discovered that she’s special, maybe even more special than a Silver.
Mare is then hidden from the world in plain sight, with the royal family telling a lie for the public to believe: that she is a lost Silver Princess named Mareena, whose parents were killed in the war when she was a baby and she was living with a Red family this whole time, not knowing of her true heritage. Somehow, the public believes it, even if it seems highly unlikely. Of course, there are some that start to get suspicious of Mare, and for good reason, but for the most part Mare has to assume her new identity if she is to stay alive in enemy territory. She does everything she can to survive, and to make sure that her real family doesn’t become a target of the royal family for her mistakes. It may seem like the two Princes, Cal and Maven are there to help her, and maybe they have some feelings towards her, but she just needs to make sure that she can fool the rest of the world without revealing the lie that she is living.
But, of course, joining with a group who’s sole purpose is to bring the Silvers down is probably not the best way of ensuring her safety.
Mare’s thoughts are prominent throughout the book, distinct with the use of italic font. I personally loved that she was so snarky, even though she was basically fighting for her life. She stayed true to herself as much as she could, and she was able to learn more about her powers and harness them to her advantage. Especially for someone who had no idea they had powers over electricity, to be able to learn how to control them in such a short amount of time is an impressive feat in and of itself. I’m proud of her for that.
Be warned though. The book doesn’t have a happy ending, as is expected for books with sequels still in the making. The betrayal that Mare faces towards the end of the book is enough to make anyone want to bawl their eyes out or throw the book across the room by what happened. I was at the edge of my seat the whole time, from the Parting Ball and what happened there, to the very end of the book. I honestly can’t wait until I am able to read Glass Sword, the second installment of this trilogy. I could barely put this book down!
Rated: 5/5 Stars
The Siren – Book Review
“There’s always room for love, even if it’s as small as a crack in a door.”
Mermaids are the creatures of the deep, the ones that every little girl has always wanted to be. Even now, as those girls grow up, there’s still some part of them that yearns for their own tail and clam shell top, exploring the depths of the ocean to parts unknown. It’s a fantasy that we can only wish was real life. But, while many little girls think about being mermaids, there’s another mythical creature that lives in the sea, one that is similar to the beautiful mermaids but so much deadlier to those around them. For this creature is said to lure the lives of sailors to their death by calling them to the Ocean with their beautiful voices, singing a song that has no choice but to kill those who hear it.
These creatures are Sirens, and they are so different from their mermaid counterparts.
As we have learned in this book, there are never too many sirens in the world at one time. In fact, the most number of sirens at one time is 5, for any more than that could risk exposure of their kind. In order for sirens to become what they are, the Ocean has to save them from drowning, and when that happens, they are to serve Her for 100 years. No more, no less. It is with this information that this story begins, with Kahlen making the difficult choice of becoming a siren.
Fast forward 80 years, and the story really begins.
Sirens have come and gone, with new ones coming to take the place of those whose times have already passed. Two of the three Sirens that were there when Kahlen’s new life began have already left her, and her oldest friend is Aisling. Her time is almost up, it’s just a matter of months now. Kahlen lives with her two other siren sisters, Elizabeth and Miaka, two party girls that live a completely different life from Kahlen, who is content with people watching around the university that they live near. It’s on one of those excursions, in the library where her silence will not go noticed, that her life changes. She meets a boy, Akinli, who comes to terms with the fact that she can’t talk and still manages to have a full and wonderful conversation with her anyway. Their interactions are short for the most part, especially considering that Kahlen is already 80 years into her sentence, but for some reason, she is so infatuated by him, to the point of falling in love with him. But with her being a siren, she can’t afford to fall in love with a human. The Ocean wouldn’t let her, or any of her daughters of the sea.
But Aisling, right before her time is up and she turns back into a human, confides a great secret in Kahlen, making everything that seemed impossible. Aisling was able to hide her love for her family, from the daughter that she left behind to her great-granddaughter who is already grown up. She was able to hide the fact that she was keeping tabs on her family the whole time she was a Siren, and one of the main rules that the Ocean said was that mothers can never be sirens because they wouldn’t be able to take the lives of children away. Yet, Aisling was able to do her job with no hesitation, and it changes everything that Kahlen was brought to believe. She could love, and still do what she needed to do to serve her time. But when she accidentally speaks in front of Akinli, and he finds himself succumbing to the Ocean’s power, Kahlen begs for Her to spare his life, and leaving him in the process.
This was a wonderful love story, one where it shows that even the act of kindness and friendship without expecting anything from it can lead to the most beautiful kind of love. Kahlen and Akinli couldn’t communicate normally, and yet that didn’t deter them from having a wonderful friendship. Akinli was the boy that Kahlen needed in her life, to show her that love does exist, even from the most unexpected source. Their love was so pure, so strong, that with them far apart from one another, they would have died together. Sirens aren’t supposed to be able to die, but Kahlen almost did, and so did Akinli. With the help of the Ocean, even though She didn’t want to let go of the one Siren that loved her unconditionally, helped Kahlen to get back to the life that she needed to lead, and heal her heart in a way that the Ocean could never do on Her own.
Rated: 5/5 Stars
Sometimes Leelynn Reads 