“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: Leelynn’s Reviews
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
Matched – Book Review
There’s always something particular about dystopian societies in the future that make people keep coming back to read them. It doesn’t matter how many books out there in this genre, it will always remain one of the most popular types of books to read. It all depends on what makes each one different from the others.
The Society has been at peace for as long as they can remember. As long as its citizens follow the rules, there will be no trouble at all. Everyone has their place, everyone has their jobs to do, and everyone has a role in the survival of the human race. Some will bring in the next generation, and others will be Singles, where their use to the Society will not be involved in making more babies. In the Society, everything is perfect, and Cassia has no need to question how things are run.
Until one day when the perfect Society makes a mistake in her Match.
How can Cassia be matched with two different people? The Matching Ceremony told her that she was matched with her best friend Xander, someone she knew her entire life, someone who could she could feel safe with. But when she took a glance at Xander’s information card, another face popped up on the screen, someone else she knew from her life but someone she had never really seen until the Society told her to. From that moment, everything she knew about the Society changed. It wasn’t perfect like she grew up knowing it to be, and she couldn’t help but become more and more curious about Ky, the other face on the screen.
Would she have fallen in love with him if it wasn’t for that mistake? Was she meant to be matched with Ky in the first place? So many questions run through her mind, and it is in this journey that she discovers something powerful and dangerous about what the Society has been keeping from them, and it comes from the most unlikely of sources.
“Do not go gentle.”
I thought that this book was a really great read. This is actually my second time reading it, but I decided to review it this time around. It’s so interesting to see that there are those in dystopian societies that just accept things for the way they are. They don’t question whether the Government should be doing what they are doing, or even what is really going on behind the scenes. I love seeing the little acts of rebellion from Cassia’s grandfather, the one who basically helped her wake up to what was going on and make her think for herself. This is the first book in the trilogy, and I need to know if Cassia ever finds Ky again, if she ends up doing something so drastic that it makes the Society change their ways. I basically need to know if Cassia becomes the hero that I want her to be.
Rated: 5/5 Stars
Sometimes Leelynn Reads 