The Lost Hero (Heroes of Olympus #1)

by Rick Riordan | Kindle edition |

Jason has a problem. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently, he has a girlfriend named Piper. His best friend is a kid named Leo, and they’re all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids”, as Leo puts it. What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea — except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret. Her father, a famous actor, has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he’s in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn’t recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools. His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What’s troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper’s gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god. [Goodreads]

My Review

This is another great story by Rick Riordan. It’s totally hooked me for the series, cemented me as a fan and definitely further inspired me as a writer.

We have some new heroes in Jason, Piper and Leo, along with some old favorites dropping in for the ride. The familiarity on Camp Half Blood eases us into the dawn of a new quest that will span the new series. It’s a clever idea to give us a new hero, Jason, who has no memories of where he is from or what he has done.

As the story unfolds, we learn about him at the same time that he learns about himself. Piper and Leo are a couple of teens with troubled pasts, who find themselves thrown together with other wayward teens at Wilderness School. Jason drops in, somehow, and he is mysteriously embedded in their memories, as if he’d been best friends with them for months. And so the tale of this trio starts.

Enemies soon surface and in all the mayhem, they are whisked off to a strange, distant place – Camp Half-Blood. They learn that they are different from normal teens and that they are in fact, Demigods. It’s certainly a lot for them to take in. So, the storyline develops (I’m not going into detail – I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who haven’t read the series) and they find themselves embarking on a dangerous quest. They each have different qualities and talents, but there are also hidden secrets.

It was interesting to watch the characters develop, and see how they reacted to situations, given their secrets. As friendship and bonds grow stronger throughout the journey, it causes plenty of angst, confusion and personal conflicts with their hidden agendas.

If there was anything in the book that troubled me, it was the gang’s uncanny knack of stumbling onto each place that they needed, although they didn’t really know where they were going. But, given that this is fiction, anything is possible, and that’s why I read – to escape reality, and believe in the extraordinary.

In a Nutshell

This is a great start to another series. I’m already engaged with the characters and I’m keen to see what they get up to next. I recommend this book to anyone who loves adventure laced with the magic of mythology and modern day settings. Rick Riordan fans won’t be disappointed.