In this final installment of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, the battle truly rages for New York, for Mount Olympus, and for the world. Titans are now fully reforming and the demigods/Heroes/half-bloods must fight to save everything. It is incredibly difficult as the gods of Olympus are facing attacks on multiple fronts from the Titans Oceanus and Typhon.
The book starts out with a covert attack on Luke and Kronos’ supposed command ship Princess Andromeda. This ends with Percy marooned on Calypso’s magical island Ogygia in order to recuperate. When he returns to camp, all hell breaks loose as they are facing a spy, an increasing number of opponents, and greater losses of life. Nico, son of Hades, made a suggestion to Percy of taking on Achilles curse, dipped in the River Styx and becoming invincible, to which Percy finally agrees.
Percy begins the journey which is both a physical and inner journey, but falls prey to a trap by Hades and ultimately does accomplish his goal, but is set back a few days. When he returns to the surface he is able to muster enough demigods/Heroes/half-bloods to make a last stand on Manhattan. They are able to delay things through battle for a while until they are joined by Artemis’ Huntresses. Percy convinces his father, Poseidon, to forgo his own palace defense to join his brethren in battling Typhon who is ultimately defeated. Meanwhile when it looks like Percy’s troops will be soundly defeated, they are joined by the Ares’ cabin (who were being stubborn), then Chiron and the Party Ponies, and at the very end by Hades and his troops. It’s also pretty awesome that Paul Blowfis and Percy’s mom begin to fight once they’ve awakened.
The final battle occurs in the Olympus throne room and it’s mostly an internal battle. I won’t say what it is, but it’s interesting and is eerily similar to the last Harry Potter battle, well has similar connections, but the archetypes of good and evil, what can yous say?
Clearly the ending is going to be happier than sad and ultimately the Heroes win the day. Grover is granted a position on the cloven council and is given a title of Lord of the Wild, Annabeth is named the architect of new Olympus, both Hades and Nico are thanked profusely (which is more than anyone expected), Tyson is granted command of all the Cyclops and will lead them in future battles, Thalia was promised help in filling the ranks of the hunters who were lost in battle and that those who were lost would achieve Elysium (Wikipedia link), and last, but definitely not least, Percy was granted one thing but chose something else. His reward was that all the children of all the gods would be claimed. There would be no more overrun Hermes Cabin and the minor gods would receive cabins as well, from Hecate and Janus to Morpheus and Nemesis.
That wasn’t the last chapter and the ones after I will leave to the reader as I enjoyed them and they made me smile. It was the quirky little chapters that made these books lovable, along with the interesting characters and the brilliant interweaving of modern day America and ancient Greece. Overall I definitely recommend them and I’m sure I will come back to them again and again when I want something quick and fun (but not necessarily light) to read.