User blog comment:SayuriDarling/The Mark of Athena Official Discussion/@comment-68.11.161.173-20121007114332/@comment-202.156.11.11-20121008213408

It seems that nobody's been able to put up a decent argument on behalf of Piper. I'll give it a try.

Referring to the post above, I don't think people are being overly lenient with Piper on not trying to use her charmspeak hard enough, in comparison to Leo firing on New Rome. It seemed quite clear that there was nothing Piper could have done to calm down the angry Roman mob--the book says quite clearly that her charmspeak was useless against so many, and she was being unnecessarily hard on herself. On the other hand, at that point nobody knew yet why Leo had suddenly started firing on New Rome, so I think it's quite justified that some of the seven, especially those who don't know him, are judging him. So that's not a very good example of her being "protected" in some way.

In addition, lots of posters are talking about how Piper is obsessed and controlling with regards to Jason and keeps worrying about his old life, etc. But Annabeth actually does the same thing with Percy and his new friends--she gets jealous of Frank and Hazel when she meets them and wasn't there a part in the last series when Chiron says she's very possessive of her friends? Percy's known them for a much shorter time and it's clear there isn't anything between him and Hazel, while there really was something between Jason and Reyna before he disappeared. Besides, Piper never actually does anything possessive like making him promise stuff to her (he did that on his own) or demand that he cut off all contact with Reyna never return to CJ or anything like that. She doesn't charmspeak him unless he's possessed and about to kill someone, otherwise she does it by accident. She just worries about him a lot.

Which brings me to my next point. I think RR made her too privileged, the poor little rich girl given her effortless beauty and wealth and lack of real tragedy in her past--perhaps that's why he spends a bit too much time with her insecurities and fears for the future, which inadvertently makes her sound whiny, especially in comparison with the others. After all, the other female viewpoint you get is Annabeth and she's got a big quest to do alone in Rome, so she has something else to think about. Piper on the other hand is just hoping they'll all survive the quest, and particularly afraid of losing Jason.

Also I can see why RR wrote Piper this way. I think he's trying to uniquely define each of the seven in some way. So Annabeth is an intense genius who thirsts for knowledge, Hazel is defined by her experience with death and her curse, and Piper is driven by love and relationships (but you can't say she is Drew, because Drew just wants to break hearts to gratify her ego, nothing to do with love there). RR seems to be having problems differentiating between Jason and Percy though--hopefully that will be resolved in the next book.

Finally, I respect that for these reasons, Piper doesn't appeal to some fans, especially the kind of fans who're here discussing books in such detail:). All that power of love stuff sounds a bit too twilight-y maybe and any hint of that immediately has some people up in arms. Just saying, I think there's a place for Piper's viewpoint, but there are probably biases inherent among the posters here who identify much more easily with Annabeth. Just food for thought!