Ah, the time has finally arrived. A new Percy Jackson book has appeared and much is the rejoicing across the land.
Ok, that might be over egging it a bit but it is roughly how I feel. There's very little you can say about the series that is bad (as long as you don't mention the movie. Never mention the movie.) You have a bunch of teenagers who run around with swords and fight monsters. You have well told myths and legends as a background. You get Greek gods who appear occasionally and either help or muck everything up. It's brilliant.
And it's well done. That's the important thing. You can have any amount of myths and legends but usually they're just a few well known ones that still seem a bit dated, no matter when it's based. With the Percy Jackson series they're all given modern context and this allows you to engage with them at a whole new level.
I should probably stop rambling on about how great the series is in general and focus on the book. Obviously if you haven't read any of the books prior to 'The Mark of Athena,' then stop reading this review now, go out and buy them. There will be spoilers for them, which just makes sense, considering that this is the eighth in the series.
When last we left our heroes it was all about to kick off. Percy had just been proclaimed Praetor and the Greeks and Jason were coming in their flying battleship to parlay. The epic quest to journey to Greece was about to get underway.
In other words there was a lot of expectation for this book to live up to. And I think it mostly managed.
There are a few things that might cause people some problems. There are seven demigods on the quest but we only see from the perspective of four of them; Annabeth, Leo, Piper and Percy. In that order. Which means that we don't see things from Percy's viewpoint, the main character of the first five books, until page 152. We don't get to see anything from the point of view of Jason, Hazel and Frank. This is quite a shame as they're supposed to be the Romans and this is the journey that takes them to Rome. So we see Rome through Greek eyes. This is probably on purpose but I really doubt that we're getting a Romans only book next time.
I also didn't find it as upbeat as it usually is. The Percy Jackson series often has problems solved in frankly ridiculous way or some light humour thrown in, like the karpoi offering everyone grain. There was some of that but all in all it was a more serious book.
That's the only criticisms that I can think of and to be honest I'm not even sure that they're criticisms rather than observations. Annabeth was slightly annoying at the start when she was missing Percy but that was quickly solved. Honestly I think the only reason I have an objection to that is because, since reading 'Twilight,' almost any romance seems off to me. The plot was fast paced and there were no obvious holes. The Greek and Roman legends were again used to great effect. And the combat was interesting.
Best of all there's going to be a sequel. Once again I'd thought that this was going to be the last in a series and I've been proved wrong. I have no idea when the next book will come out but I'm really looking forward to it.
All in all, I'm giving this book a nine out of ten.
And if you want to buy it, which I would recommend, the Amazon link is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heroes-Olympus-The-Mark-Athena/dp/0141335742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349879642&sr=8-1
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