Throughout my reading, I wondered when the main story of Jason, Leo, and Piper would intersect with the search for Percy. I wish I’d caught on earlier to the larger picture, but I did manage to put it together before the big reveal toward the end.

Never during this adventure did I think it would be a self-contained story. Despite knowing it’s a five book series, just the text itself makes it clear this is an introduction to new main characters, and they need their own story to avoid being overshadowed by those characters we know and love already.

The new prophecy tells us we’ll be balancing between seven major heroes. Obviously, our new three plus Percy and Annabeth make five, but who will the final two be? Thalia? Grover? Nicco? Someone new? That’s a lot of characters to keep up with. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the follow-up books are as good as this one.

I’m not a big fan of the lost memory trope, but in the larger scope of the series, it plays an integral part in bringing characters together, so I really admire Riordan’s use of it here. And, even at the end, I’m wondering what we’ll discover about Jason that he’s just now remembering.

Finally, I love how Riordan is using the Greek and Roman aspects of the gods, their differences, and even how those differences have created Earthly conflict. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this series, and if he does something similar with the Egyptian and Norse gods, I might continue with the other series.

This is a great start to a series.