Book Review: The House of Hades

Book: The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus book #4) by Rick Riordan

Rating: 5 stars

Review:

This fourth book weaves two interconnecting stories: the first follows Percy and Annabeth doing their best to survive in the underworld as they make their way to the Doors of Death. Everywhere they went their lives were in peril but along the way they got some help from the Titan Bob, well long story short, after Iapetus got into a fight with Percy (in a previous story) he lost his memory after falling into the River Lethe. He was then given the new name Bob by Percy.

The second story line follows the crew of the Argo II (Jason, Hazel, Frank, Leo, Nico, Coach Hedge, and Piper) on their way to rescue Percy and Annabeth but their efforts are constantly being sidelined by Gaea's minions which makes their travel even more delayed and dangerous.

I like this, it was fast paced and exciting to read but it was also a bit subdue with Hazel, Leo, Frank (and Jason to some extent) gaining new understanding about themselves. The story also gave you insight into what made Nico tick and why he chose to exclude himself for so long from everyone including his sister Hazel. One more thing that I really liked about this book was that the author kept two of my least favorite characters (Jason and Piper) to a minimum. They are truly two of the most useless characters in this series. I'm glad Reyna showed up in this and it looks like she may get more scenes in the finale book with the way the story is heading.

I would say that similar to how The Mark of Athena was Annabeth centric, The House of Hades was Hazel centric. Which is good since Hazel is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters (like Annabeth)

I'm really looking forward to reading the last book because the war with Gaea is probably going to be a real page turner.