Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26468287-20150614010051/@comment-3389778-20150614155845

Phoenixfire232 wrote: I agree with you that Hazel is definitely  not the best character. In fact, besides Piper, she is probably my least favorite. She is lacking a personality, and a lot of her story has holes in it. I was frustrated that Rick Riordan created such a weak personality for a character, especially when he has been able to create powerful, complex characters in the past.

However, Hazel at least had her priorities straight. She freed death, even when it meant she might die again. That takes courage, something I felt that Piper didn't really have.

Like I said before, I felt like Riordan was struggling to include Piper in the plot. For example, I was extremely disappointed when Percy and Annabeth were captured by the giants in Rome. Seriously? Percy had defeated Kronos, found his way through Tartarus, etc. And yet he couldn't evade the giants? I felt like Riordan did that so he could make Piper appear useful and "save" Percy and Annabeth. I consider charging into battle with no prior battle experience or knowledge to fight alongside your friends and possibly die with them to be courage too. Trying to save your father from a Giant when only one of your teammates (Okay, two. Don't kill me Coach Hedge) is a good fighter is an act of courage too.

Just because a soldier survives one war, doesn't mean he'll survive the next. Demigods are constantly in danger- especially Percy and Annie because those two are basically danger magnets.

And yeah Percy fought Kronos- while affected by the Curse of Achilles and in the end it was Luke who actually stopped Kronos.

And yeah Percy found his way through Tartarus- with the help of Bob, Annabeth, Damasen and the use of Death Mist.

Unfortunately, Percy is not infallible. They didn't have that kind of help when they were caught by the Giants, so it's perfectly reasonable for them to be caught by the Giants.

And I can argue that giving Hazel mist control is RR's attempt to add Hazel in the plot too. This power comes out of left field (with the addition that Hazel's mom can apparently use it too- or had the potential for it. You would think that something this important would've been mentioned before this point) probably because Hazel's control of Minerals wasn't as useful as originally perceived and her ground based powers would be too OP. So RR needed to give her more useful powers later on.