User blog comment:SayuriDarling/The Mark of Athena Official Discussion/@comment-4649443-20121016204645/@comment-4531192-20121019133429

Hyperborean's grades for The Mark of Athena characters:

• Percy: 4/5 - Despite the fact that he had a point of view, I feel like he was downplayed in the book. He didn't seem like the (arguably) most powerful demigod we had seen in The Son of Neptune. He also seems like a shadow of what he used to be; like a tired hero. The Percy from Percy Jackson and the Olympians would not have let go of that cliff.

• Annabeth: 4.25/5 - I guess her point of view wasn't what I had expected. She was very emotional at times and a lot of her thoughts were were about Percy &mdash; understandable for someone who had lost her boyfriend for months, of course. However, I wanted to see more of the intelligent, almost engineer-like Annabeth, whose mind is always racing and thinking about strategies and ways for the demigods to stay alive. On the other hand, her suicide quest for Athena Parthenos was my favorite part of the book.

• Jason: 3.5/5 - What can I say? He was downplayed even more than Percy. It seems like Rick Riordan consciously made the two way less powerful than what we saw in the last two books. This probably had to be done to not outshine other characters like Leo and Piper, but it irritated me. I mean, Jason did pretty much all the fighting in The Lost Hero and is the reason Leo and Piper are still alive. In The Mark of Athena, not so much.

• Leo: 4.75/5 - Probably the character I enjoyed the most in The Mark of Athena. His chapters outshone all the other point of views in the book. The only thing I disliked about Leo in this book was him always picking Frank as the target of his jokes. Sure Frank kind of sets himself up to be the victim, but things are already awkward between the two &mdash; why make it worse?

• Piper: 2.5/5 - Much better compared to The Lost Hero, but a lot of improvement still needs to be done here. This character is not believable. Her obsession over Jason is what is the most sinister thing in the series &mdash; not Gaea's uprising.

• Frank: 3.5/5 - If I had to summarize Frank in this book in one word, it would be "annoying." Why is he acting so jealous towards Leo? Leo didn't even show any interest for Hazel. It was Hazel who approached him first. And why does he always have to set himself up to be the victim? I kind of feel bad for him, but not really. I liked him much more in The Son of Neptune.

• Hazel: 4/5 - I feel like she was a lot less in the spotlight than some other characters in this book; understandable seeing how she didn't have any chapters written from her point of view, but by the end of the book I had forgotten what she had done during the last 52 chapters...oh right, she didn't do much. It seems to me like she was just there to make things awkward between Leo and Frank.