Hey everyone! How's it going? Well I ended up finishing the final Percy Jackson book while I was sitting outside this morning, so here I am to talk about it. Like my previous Percy Jackson reviews, there will be spoilers, so be aware of that when you go to read this review if you've never read this book before. So let's get into it.
The Last Olympian is probably the most satisfying ending to a series that I have ever read. Apart from Harry Potter and Animorphs most of the book series that I read growing up didn't really have an ending. For example Bruno & Boots ended but it didn't really have an ending. Even The Hardy Boys didn't even really have an ending. It just went on to the next version of those characters without really wrapping things up.
Story wise I don't really have a whole lot to say for this book because the majority of it was various battles between the Olympians and the Titans with Percy, Annabeth, and Grover being at the forefront of pretty much every battle. The remaining plotlines that weren't resolved in The Battle of the Labyrinth were resolved here. We finally find out who the prophecy was talking about and it wasn't Percy OR Nico as the books made it seem like it could be. It ended up being about Luke, which I didn't expect at all. Normally prophecies like this are about the protagonist not the antagonist. Apart from Darth Vader in the Star Wars films of course. Actually for a little while I thought the prophecy might be about Rachel because she was able to do stuff that Mortals usually aren't able to do. It wasn't about her, but still for a second I thought it might be.
The battles in this book are insane. They actually remind me more of the Battle of New York from The Avengers with the same type of open warfare and a small force facing down a seemingly unbeatable army. Of course the battles take place in New York City, so that contributes to that too. I also like that they were smaller battles rather than one large one like in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It just made the story flow a bit better in my opinion.
My favourite part of this book was at the very end, once Kronos had been defeated and the gods are once again at Mt. Olympus. Percy just goes for it and basically tells the gods what to do for once. Which is kind of great. I mean it's happened in other books like this including the Harry Potter books with the Wizard's Council, but it felt more satisfying here since the gods had been jerking Percy around for five books now and he saved them from destruction at the hand of their greatest enemy.
Normally I don't like extended endings, but it works here because Rachel's destiny is revealed at the end and is actually foreshadowed earlier in the book with Luke's mom. Plus seeing where all these characters are going after the war is over is pretty cool. Especially since three books of tension finally ends between Percy and Annabeth when they get together at the end. Which actually leads me into the thing I don't like about this book.
I'm so tired of books, movies and TV shows where a guy and a girl get mad at each other for liking someone else. Like, okay, I get that Annabeth has abandonment issues because of her past, but what's Percy's excuse? Like he was jealous of Annabeth because of her continued support of Luke, despite the fact that Luke has done absolutely everything to prove that he's evil and not being mind controlled by Kronos. Plus, Annabeth had a bit of a crush on Luke when they were younger, it's not like they actually dated or anything. I mean in real life if someone has romantic feelings for another person, they do one of three things. They either tell them directly and whether they get together or not depends on whether or not the other person reciprocates, or they leave little hints and the other person either figures it out or they don't, OR they don't do or say anything and don't get mad at them when the other person starts dating someone else. Like, okay, I was sixteen once too, and it was pretty scary exposing your feelings for another person. It still is. But our entertainment has a habit of including unnecessary drama by having characters get jealous of each other when they start dating someone else because they weren't brave enough to tell them how they feel about that person. I just think it's a trope that needs to stop at this point.
The minor characters are great in this book. You have such a large cast this time around since it's the finale. And all of them do an extremely good job. My favourites are probably Charles Beckendorf and Silena Beauregard. I think that's because they've been in the books since The Sea of Monsters and have actually had more screentime than Clarisse since then. Beckendorf's death at the beginning of the book hit me hard. Though not as hard as the revelation that Silena was Kronos's spy at Camp Half-Blood since The Lightning Thief, which threw me for a loop. I mean, unlike with Erisi Dlarit in the Star Wars: X-Wing novels, there was no indication at all that Silena was the spy. Not even a hint. I don't know if that's because Rick Riordan wrote it that way on purpose, or if it's because the books are from Percy's point of view only and as we saw in the rest of the series, Percy has a REALLY hard time seeing what's right in front of his face when it comes to girls hitting on him and when it comes to spies.
I was so over Clarisse by the time she pulled the Ares cabin out of the war simply because of a petty argument with the Apollo cabin because of a chariot that the Apollo cabin took during a raid led by Clarisse and the Ares cabin. Over the last few books I was starting to like Clarisse more and more, because she seemed to be growing as a character, but here she just slipped right back into who she was back in The Lightning Thief. Even her return during the final battle didn't do anything to change my mind about her.
Overall I thought The Last Olympian was a fantastic finale to a fantastic series. The Titan's Curse is still my favourite Percy Jackson book, but that's the thing about this series. There aren't any outright bad books in the series. Yes, The Sea of Monsters is the weakest of the series in my opinion, but none of the books are bad. They're all extremely enjoyable and I had such a fun time reading the series. I'm looking forward to eventually tracking down the books in The Heroes of Olympus and reading them. Honestly I don't know how Riordan managed to write consistently good novels in a series with one book coming out a year. It's incredible.
Alrighty, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Tuesday with a special movie review. Since I'm going to be reviewing Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle on Friday, I thought I'd go back and review the 1995 original film, Jumanji, on Tuesday since I haven't seen it in about 25 years or so. So that'll be interesting. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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