Oh, Percy Jackson. What will become of you and Camp Half-Blood?
At the end of the third book The Titan’s Curse they save the Great Huntress Artemis, the fight the titans on the top of Mount Tamalpais and win the day. They best Atlas. Thalia makes a shocking (well, not that shocking) decision and they still haven’t made any headway in talking Luke out of the terrible decisions he’s made that have put him on the path that he is on.
This book opens with Percy going to high school orientation at a school where his Mom’s boyfriend teaches English. There he once again meets his mortal friend Rachel Elizabeth Dare and they are attacked by a couple of empousai. Typical for Percy, not typical for Rachel, so before letting Percy run off to the safety of camp Half-Blood, she makes him promise to call her someday and explain. But, that’s only the beginning. Luke’s army may have been bested at the end of the last book, but it wasn’t beaten and they are still looking for a way into camp to take out all the heroes who won’t join their cause. Annabeth has an idea that the great labyrinth, you know, the one that was in Crete. Daedalus, who built the labyrinth was one of the greatest inventors of all time, and of course, his creation was invented to grow on its own. It has. And, it has an entrance into camp. Percy, Annabeth, Tyson and Grover (who is still looking for the Great God Pan) are given the task of finding Daedalus before Luke can and convincing him to give them Ariadne’s string instead of giving it to Luke. Once Luke and his army have the string, they’ll be able to use the labyrinth to navigate wherever they want. They would just pop out of the ground and attack and then be gone again. Bad news, friends.
There are adventures. There are touching moments. As always, there are battles. They find and work with Nico di Angelo again. They discover more secrets and make a little progress. They do well, but the great War still looms. Of the books so far, this book touched me the most. There were tears, I will admit. But, I can’t wait to read The Last Olympian
