The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan

The Hidden Oracle

Apollo has been kicked out of Olympus and sent to New York as a mortal boy named Lester Papadopulous. Oh the shame! Before he even makes it out of the alley he lands in, he finds himself bound to a young demigod, Meg. Once the two get to Camp Halfblood, he learns that all the oracles have gone silent, several campers are missing, and all forms of communication between demigods no longer work. In order to find out whats going on, Apollo and Meg will have to find out why the monster Python is back at Delphi and find the most ancient of oracles, the Grove of Dodanna.

So this series will be tying up loose ends of all the characters from the last two series and the consequences of Apollo not keeping an eye on the various oracles. It also starts to shine a light on who was funding Luke and the other Rogue demigods during the Second Titan War.

While it was easy to spot that Meg was obviously a daughter of Demeter with her controlling fruit and veg, just how powerful she is for not being a child of the big three was a bit surprising. She was clearly hiding something though and has a much more complicated past than the other demigods we’ve met so far. It will be interesting to see how her story plays out and the role she has to play in the series and the world.

The Dark Prophecy

Apollo, the newly returned Leo Valdez and Calypso are off to the Midwest to find the Cave of Trophonius, another ancient oracle once inhabited by one of Apollo’s children. Known as the Dark Oracle, this one is dangerous, people go mad when they receive their prophecy. The three find themselves beset by minions of another Roman Emperor, and he’s determined to stop them. With the help of aging former hunters who are the keepers of the Waystation they mean to defend Indianapolis, find the Cave, receive the next prophecy, and defeat the Emperor.

I really liked the concept of the Waystation as a safe haven and home for demigods and other mythology connected people who can’t make it to Camp Halfblood or need a refuge on their journey.

This one was more connected to Apollo’s past actions as it introduced an aging hunter who he had saved and granted immortality, Hemithea, and one of his children, Trophonius. Trophonius had pleaded with his father to save his half-brother after the two had stolen from a king, and then became the Dark Oracle. Apollo must come to terms with Hemithea’s decision to give up her immortality, which he sees as a waste at first, and his own actions ignoring Trophonius’s plea and what became of this son. There’s also Hemithea’ (Emmie) and her partner Jo’s (a daughter of Hecate who specializes in magical construction) adopted daughter, brought to them by the headless spirit of Trophonius’s brother who may or may not be Apollo’s daughter. The young girl was able to activate the Cave and receive a prophecy, and her connection to the cave, but Apollo can’t remember if he fathered her, which makes him uneasy that he has ignored some of his children.

The Burning Maze

Meg and Apollo continue on their journey to the Southern California with Grover as their guide. They learn that another Roman Emperor has control of the area and the wildfires and heat waves are because of the magic he’s hiding in the labyrinth. If they don’t find the oracle he’s hidden in the maze too and stop the Emperor’s plan to drain Apollo of his power and combine it with the dregs of Helios’s power, the whole area will burn.

This book gives us Meg’s history as she literally gets in touch with her roots, as the prophecy says she must. The dryads working with Grover have been hiding out at the ruin of a an old house on land powerful with nature magic, that just happens to be Meg’s family home. Destroyed by Caligula to force them into Nero’s hands and to destroy the family’s centuries of work, she has to find what’s hidden there and connect with her past to help them save the area.

The prophecy in this one is given in crossword clues, which is kind of genius. Apollo has to confront his past with this Emperor and how his actions in the past are affecting the present.

The Tyrant’s Tomb

Meg and Apollo make it Camp Jupiter with Jason Grace’s body. They’re in time to warn praetor’s Reyna and Frank, but the camp has already been decimated by the earlier attack. It will take a lot to defend the coming attack by Caligula and Commodus. With the help of Reyna, Apollo and Meg continue on their quest to stop the emperors. They have to find the god of silence and defeat him before the emperors arrive in order to summon godly help. But just who is the god of silence? And will any god actually come to the rescue?

Again, we deal with more of Apollo’s past actions coming back to haunt him. Not only with the Sybil who wrote the Sybilene books, but with the god of silence. A remorseful Apollo apologizes for his actions, but at first only one of them is willing to forgive.

The god of silence turns out to be an obscure Ptolemeic from when the Greeks took over Egypt and misinterpreted a statue of Horus. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Greek/Egyptian god in this universe. There’s a series of short stories that have the Kane siblings and Percy and Annabeth teaming up. Of course, as I suspected as the story progressed, this has something to do with the downed demigod communications.

The Tower of Nero

Apollo and Meg head back to New York to confront Nero once and for all. They receive their prophecy as they go in stanzas of tirza rima, a style created by Dante. Nero gives Apollo an ultimatum,he and Meg surrender or he burns the city with enough Greek Fire to turn everything and everyone to ashes. With the help of a Gaul, Lu, who works for Nero and trained Meg they begin to make a plan. It’s then off to Camp Halfblood to pick up Will, Nico, even Rachel, to convince Nico’s new friends the troglodytes to tunnel under the city and disable the hidden vats of Greek Fire. But will their surrender be enough to distract Nero and stall him long enough for Nico and the others to do their thing? Can they take on Nero and then Python without loosing more people? Or will Apollo die once and for all in the process?

This was a great conclusion to the series. We checked in with all our previous heroes, even if we did loose one of them along the way. Percy and Anabeth are moving on to college and hopefully a more peaceful life together, Leo has found his place teaching others mechanics and a surrogate family, Reyna has found herself and come to terms with her asexuality and Aphrodite’s “curse”, and Nico is on the way to finding his place and self (more on that in the next review).

Apollo learns to love his friends and children for who they are and trust and love them as his true family. He truly becomes less selfish and narcissistic, even feeling uncomfortable in his old godly skin when he is reinstated. He visits his new family as Lester to check in on everyone and vows to continue to do so, which I think he will if there are more books.

There is also several references to other pantheons, including the other series in this book and throughout this sub series. Chiron is stated to be at a meeting with a cat and a severed head by Dionysus, and Chiron reveals they were representatives of other pantheons – obviously Bast from the Kane Chronicles and Mimir from Magnus Chase- and that Apollo doesn’t want to know what the meeting was about, but that there was more than one crisis going on. These books take place, start to finish, during the Magnus Chase books as Anabeth is stated to be in Boston on family business in The Hidden Oracle (and she pops up in Sword of Summer). Rachel, who lives in Brooklyn, can see a mysterious mansion with strange things going on with her Clear Sight that the others can’t see through the mist, this is Brooklyn House and the Egyptian Magicians. Apollo and crew are also helped in Indianapolis by a college age demigod who defects from Comodus who is from Africa and possibly the son of a yoruba god (he produces lightning that is noted to be different in color and summoning from Jason and Zeus). I’d love an epic crossover now where it takes representatives of all the known existing pantheons to defeat the “bad guys”.

Overall I give this series Four Lightsabers.