S.W. Lothian – Author

THE LAST OLYMPIAN (Percy Jackson #5)
by Rick Riordan ***** 5 Stars

Goodreads Blurb

Climactic battles rage on New York streets in the final book of Rick Riordan’s large-scale Olympian series. As Kronos’ massive offensive towards its ultimate goal, Percy Jackson struggles to comprehend the full meaning of a long-awaited prophecy. A momentous fantasy cycle rumbles to its ominous conclusion.

My Review

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian is the final instalment in the great Percy Jackson series.  I have enjoyed this series a great deal and will no doubt read the other Rick Riordan series. My feelings were that each book was better than the one before, I suspect that this could be due to my growing familiarity with the characters. When I read, I try not to over-analyse it too much.  My reasons for reading are not to dissect the book and look for faults, but rather to take it at face value and get into the story that’s being told.The crisis is at a climax.  The final instalment of the series’ overarching story, the survival of Olympus, is the focus of this book.  By the time we get to this one there are loads of sub-plots which have been introduced in other books along the way.  I found that in some parts it was a bit tricky to remember all of the sub-plot details.  But, with a bit of brain power and memory jogging it wasn’t really too hard to keep track of everything.  Riordan did a great job of tidying up all of these storylines.

During the book before this one I had formed some definite opinions on who I couldn’t trust, but as I’m no Sherlock Holmes, my mystery solving weakness showed up and some of them ended up being wrong.  I had also formed an opinion of Nico in the previous book (I didn’t like him – I don’t really know why) and even with the outcome of his story, I still didn’t like him.

Most of the characters were great to get to know, they each had their own story which evolved and climaxed along the way.  One thing though, I didn’t really ‘get’ what Percy’s mum’s new friend Paul added to the story, or why he was even in there –  maybe I missed something. I guess it’s these sorts of personal reactions to books and their characters that make books so interesting. Each reader is free to form their own opinion and interpretation.  In a nutshell, the main aim of books is to entertain and provide an escape from our daily lives, the PJ series was successful in enabling this to happen.

I would recommend the whole Percy Jackson series to readers who love adventure and action.  It has some great humour threaded through it that makes it so relatable to our own modern world.

http://www.rickriordan.com/home.aspx

Related articles

• My review of Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson #3) (swlothian.wordpress.com)
• My review of The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson #4) (swlothian.wordpress.com)