My Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
I unfortunately found The Titan’s Curse to be
slightly less fun and interesting to read than the first two books, though this
by no means means that it is a bad book or that I did not enjoy it.
The story starts off by Percy and Annabeth responding to a
distress call that Grover has sent out while looking for new half-bloods to
recruit for Camp Half-Blood. He has discovered two half-bloods: twins named Bianca
and Nico di Angelo. A lot of shit goes down which leads to Annabeth disappearing
and thus a new quest begins for Percy and Grover, joined by the Hunters – young
maidens who are sworn into Artemis’s service – to find Annabeth and also slay a
monster that is threatening to overpower Olympus.
Percy was just a tad too annoying for my taste in this book,
if I’m being honest. He was incredibly not understanding of the choices that
for example Bianca made in deciding to join the Hunt, he was also quite whiny
and all-around not very friendly to the people around him. And while his
behavior is quite accurate considering his age (teenager with raging hormones)
and the kind of shit he has already been put through, it did make him a
slightly more difficult protagonist compared to the previous two books.
Right from the start when we meet the di Angelo twins, I
knew that something was slightly off about them and their powers when they
began to manifest. I honestly however was not expecting them to be Hades’s
children. That reveal has definitely added and will add major depth into the
already-complicated prophecy that might either be about Percy or Thalia, and
now also includes the twins (or rather, Nico).
What I enjoyed about this book was that we got to see a lot
more of the Olympian gods in this book. In particular, Apollo was incredibly
funny with his haikus and slightly unnerving underage chaperoning. I also found
Artemis to be a very interesting goddess and would actually quite love to read more
about the Hunt and the maidens and their lives as her sworn hunters. This book
also gives a more in-depth glimpse into Olympus and the Council and their
decision making, which as a huge mythology fan in books, I found really awesome.
Zoe dying was definitely a very heart-wrenching moment of the
book. While we didn’t really get to read much about her, besides some backstory
involving Hercules and Anaklusmos, I found her a multi-dimensional side-character
with a rather complex past. If she hadn’t passed so soon, I would have actually
loved to have read more about her.
Now, I loved Bessy the cute underwater cow and am generally
happy that she is going to stay alive. However. I do think that from an
objective point of view, not killing her was definitely an incredibly dumb move
on the gods’ part since now the LITERAL POWER TO DESTROY THE GODS is just lying
around for Luke or Kronos or Atlas to grab or something. And I’m calling it
right now, this will end badly.
Thalia’s decision to join the Hunt was unquestionably the
most interesting and unexpected plot twist of the book. She certainly had a
moment when she seemed to be very tempted to sacrifice Ophiotaurus herself to
gain the power to destroy Olympus. I wonder whether that is foreshadowing
something that might pop up again in the future, or whether by joining the Hunt
she now really has cut herself off from any danger of being the person in the
prophecy. My gut feeling kind of says that she probably might still end up
breaking her oath and then turning sixteen, but I guess we’ll see!
As for my speculations for the upcoming books. I definitely
think that we will see Rachel Elizabeth Dare – the mortal girl who helped Percy
and could see through the Mist – again. I also think that Nico will probably end
up joining Kronos or do something else that is going to have bad consequences. If
there’s anything someone can learn from books, it’s that promises and breaking
them is not something that is taken lightly by authors (rightly so!) and therefore
I feel that Percy breaking his oath to Nico is definitely a bad, bad omen.
On a more positive note though: Tyson ended up making 2741
magic swords in his internship and I could not be prouder.
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