User blog comment:SayuriDarling/The Blood of Olympus Official Discussion/@comment-1820614-20141013001729/@comment-1820614-20141016021245

What bothers me is the Giant's greatest strength, needing a demigod and god to kill them was not that difficult to overcome. Any god, and I presume a Titan, would do even if that god was the lowest of the low. Polybotes is taken out with ease under the ocean by a minor god of all things. And HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE ANTI-POSEIDON????? Percy didn't even need the Curse of Achilles to take him down. He at needed that to fight Hyperion and Kronos. And there were hundreds of demigods. All the Olympians needed to do was strike down the giants and have the demigod come by and finish them off.

I think you are right and the lack of deaths was a major reason for the disappointment. The only characters killed were either nameless or barely known. There was no real connection with any of them. And because the giants never accomplished anything on their own, defeated a "named" character, captured a god or anything on their own they came across as all talk.

And again, which is something I think a lot of people agree on is the ending felt rushed with plenty of loose ends and no real sense of closure.