User blog comment:SayuriDarling/The Mark of Athena Official Discussion/@comment-3146930-20121030192421/@comment-5577244-20121107163210

I feel like Riordan is experimenting with dramatic build up. Its not something I, as a writer, am particularly fond of in bulk because its almost loses you audience. In this series its become a reoccuring thing that charecters ALWAYS reference things that arent in the books (and worse it in passing like, nbd though really this happened...), like past quests and stuff that we just dont get to know about. I think that RR is trying to add more dimensions to the charecters but almost going overboard on it. Another thing is that RR likes to have scenes build up and build up and build up and then right when its about to get to a climax, and someone is talking and about to say something intensly important- BAM he cut the scene off with some sort of outside distraction. I feel like the plot is getting nowhere because of this and that noone is getting important info.