Trials of Apollo

Imagine being the God of Archery, with immortality, living on Olympus along side millions of other great gods, having glory and fame. Then, you are turned into an ordinary sixteen-year-old with the name of Lester Papadopoulos, kicked off Olympus and thrown into a dumpster, discarded like a piece of trash. You are stripped of your godly powers, looks and all you have is a wallet with $100. This is the story of Apollo.

In The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan, Apollo, the Greek God of Archery has just been banished from Olympus by his father Zeus, going from fame to lame. Lester, or Apollo, then meets Meg McCaffrey, a demigod who joins Apollo on the quest to save the demigods of Camp Half-Blood. Their goal is to prove to Zeus that he is worthy of living on Olympus once again.

Overall, I loved reading this book. One aspect that I enjoyed was that it was all told in the perspective of Apollo. His funny comments and his “I am the best” attitude had me laughing throughout the book. Some details that I liked that Rick put in the book were these historical remarks that Apollo would make about past bands like the Beatles, since he was the god of music as well.  An additional aspect that I admired was that Rick Riordan interpreted many modern day occurrences, such as recent social media websites like Snapchat and Instagram.  I thought that was clever to put that in there to interact with teens. I liked that Riordan included other characters from his previous books like Percy Jackson. One aspect that I didn’t like is that Meg didn’t seem like a main character, to me she was kind of a character that was in the shadows of Apollo. Another aspect that I didn’t like about the book is that the action scenes didn’t have that much detail for me to picture what was going on in my head. I loved the overall theme of Greek Mythology.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I would recommend this book to people who like Greek Mythology and fantasy books. If you have read this book and enjoyed it, I would recommend reading another one of Rick Riordan’s books like Percy Jackson and the Olympians because all of these books are tied into the same universe.