User blog comment:SayuriDarling/The Hidden Oracle Official Discussion/@comment-28377819-20160504124023

I finished it last night. Whole book in a day. Lord.

Anyway, I had mixed feelings!! I'll try to keep this as minimal on spoilers as possible.

The Good

- Apollo is hilarious. His vanity jokes get a little tired at some parts but in others they're page stoppers for how funny they are.

-Meg. We finally get a principal character who is a child of (SPOILER). I've been waiting for that one and had some suspicions that would show up here but I was very glad that she was not just a child of that olympian but was extremely kick-ass with a great backstory.

-homosexuality in a kids book. I don't mean to get it all political but there was such a cliffhanger of sorts from the last book regarding Nico that I was very content it not only got addressed in this book but another character is extremely vocal about romantic interests throughout the story. It's also done in such a funny way at times. wonderful.

-Focused. I loved Heroes of Olympus but you feel the difference here. Not just in the narration but in the pacing. Heroes of Olympus for the most part felt action driven and monster driven where this story feels immensely character driven. We stay in one place for the whole thing for crying out loud!

-The Bad Guys. I was wondering who they could possibly bring in to top Gaea or the Titans and though I don't think they necessarily "topped" them, they certainly have given us villains who in their own right are pretty intriguing. Of course they were retconned into the continuity, but hey, it worked in my opinion. Eager to see this move forward.

The BAD

-Stuck in one place... As much as I thought the pacing was great I would have liked to see the heroes go off into other areas. I know that will likely come (wink wink) but this has probably been the slowest opening to one of these books yet.

- Tough transition. The last series was about 7 demigods (Nico was pretty important too though. Wish he was part of that prophecy). This book, though there are four more to go, focuses on a duo. I was fine with that! But there were certain characters that did appear that I wish would have played a stronger role.

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