Mark of Athena

Needless to say that there will be spoilers here.

SPOILER ALERTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is that clear enough? No?

SSSSSSSSSSSPPPPPPPPPPPPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way so that the people who read this...whoever you are (seriously, does anyone read this?) don't happen to come across spoilers for Mark of Athena, I am going to share some of my own thoughts about the book.

First off, what the hell was with that ending? Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the PJO series and HoO as well...but Rick Riordan cannot end a book. Son of Neptune ended with all of us there wishing we had ONE more chapter just so we could see the Percabeth reunion that felt promised to us...well, it did to a lot of people anyway. And now? Annabeth and Percy in Tartarus? What? Love the idea, hate it as an ending to a book.

Next, I'm going to do another list because I like lists. They help me organize my thoughts. So today I'm going to have two.

List No. 1: Specific Thoughts on Specific sections of MoA

1. Percabeth! It had to be number one because there is no better ship out there than Percabeth, even if there are better stories than Percy Jackson. Think about it. In PJO we had Percabeth and it was so obvious and so cute that nearly everyone in the fandom shipped it and sure there was Rachel Dare, who I do still love, and other obstacles but they get their happy ever after in the Last Olympian. Then we get HoO and Percy and Annabeth are STILL going strong, sure he's on the other side of America but they're still together and how many ships are canon and STAY canon! Being a Makorra shipper, I can honestly say that it could be a LOT worse. It was really nice and adorable to have Percabeth back in MoA.

2. Devaluing the minor(ish) characters. You've had a good point, now here's a bad one. As I've mentioned before, I really liked Piper in The Lost Hero. She was strong and awesome and I really liked her character and I thought we'd get to see more of that in Mark of Athena. Now, I don't know whether or not it was just me, but Piper's character in Mark of Athena seemed very...two dimensional. She was very bland, very boring and very not the Piper I remember. It was the exact same with Frank. Sure, Leo is amazing and if Frank was mentioned more Leo would be mentioned les and yada yada yada, but now that Frank has this shapeshifting ability, he seems very two dimensional as well. Sort of like his strong character has been replaced by his kickass ability and I really don't like it.

And even though it was short, I think that is all for list one. Sure, there are probably more things I could say...but I can't remember them now and besides, even though I did LOVE MoA, I don't really have that much to say about it.

List No. 2: My theories for the future

1. Think back on PARTS of PJO and basically EVERY mini quest in HoO. The main seven have not done at all bad for themselves when it comes to befriending powerful armies. First you have Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood, who will make up in the end, and then you have the two praetors of Rome having sisters who are leading the two feminist warrior groups: The Hunters of Artemis and the Amazons. Then you have Tyson and Grover, one the head of the Cyclops armies and one the leader of the nature spirits. Then we have the Party Ponies, the ichyocentaurs, the wolves at the wolf house and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. I think that these are all going to going together sometime in the future to fight Gaia and if that happens it is going to be AWESOME!

2. Luke is making a comeback. Yes, I am a bit of a Luke fangirl, but I also have my reasons for thinking this. It is NEVER mentioned (as far as I know, I will willingly accept a quote that proves me wrong) that Luke is given at least the Fields of Asphodel in the Underworld, he was never promised amnesty by the Gods after the Titan War, and Hades can hold a grudge. I bet he got sent to...Tartarus. Ok, maybe I am overexaggerating a little, but it COULD happen.

3. I don't think this is going to happen but I really really want it to. Leyna friendship moments.

There we go, maybe not as detailed as it could have been but hey, I'm tired and I really should be doing NaNoWriMo anyway.