Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan

Spoilers, lots of them, as always.

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Okay, if you're still reading, you're going to get spoiled.

I adore Rick Riordan's Greek mythverse, in case you haven't noticed by the number of reviews.  The man has an excellent grasp of the mythology, and he loves to throw in even more great tidbits as he learns them.  The books have a great sense of humor, and a lot of genuine heart, too.

The Trials of Apollo is the third and final quintology of the series, which began with Percy Jackson and the Olympians and continued the Heroes of Olympus.  Here, Riordan takes a fairly obscure pair of myths about Apollo being turned mortal as punishment from Zeus, and updates them into the contemporary world.  Apollo, in trouble for letting his oracle set a prophecy in motion, comes crashing down into a garbagey alley in New York, as a sixteen year old mortal boy with acne. He has no idea how to regain his godhood, so he asks for Percy's help to get to Camp Half-Blood, and there, quests for the Grove of Dodona (the titular Hidden Oracle), because it's the only place where a good prophecy might be found a the moment (Apollo is the god of prophecy, among many other things, and neglectfully let his oracles be taken by a hostile force).

I'm going to be blunt: The beginning is rough here.  The first several chapters had me doubting Riordan, as Apollo's voice is almost parodic, and the new character, Meg (a street urchin who protects him from bullies and then claims his service), is... well, irritating.  And not just in Apollo's point of view.  I was irritated at even being asked to care about this one.

But I stuck with it, because the first book of PJO started a little rough, too, and the series ultimately became quite good.   In this book, things take a turn for the better when Apollo reaches Camp  Half-Blood and begins to deal with his somewhat complicated relationship with his own half-blood children, now his own age or even older.  This is when he begins to develop his own voice, and it's actually quite winning.

If you're hoping for a lot of check-in with older characters, keep hoping.  Percy appears at a couple of key points, and Nico is a small presence throughout (he's dating Apollo's son).  Another member of the crew of the Argo II shows up at the end, with an implicit promise of more in the next book.  Everyone else is just name-checked.  Apollo lampshades it by wondering where the A-listers are, but it still feels a little bit of a cheat.

Elements.

Style:
It has the usual Riordan touches, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation and using sarcasm and wry humor to make it feel like, yes, this is how modern people would  react to these elements of Greek myth.  The chapter titles are done in deliberately bad haiku (god of poetry, of course).  The most dangerous of all prophecies are delivered as limericks, which we learn by the horrified reactions of Apollo and his oracle, Rachel Dare, to a limerick delivered by the Grove.  There's a talking arrow that gives Apollo instructions in Shakespeare-esque dialogue, and Rhea appears as a first wave feminist hippie who thinks the young goddesses coming up don't really understand the struggle, since they weren't asked to stand by their men while he ate their children.  Basically, Riordan gives good Riordan on the tropes of the 'verse.

Like I said, the beginning is off-kilter.  Apollo as a character in the earlier books had a certain grandiose way of talking, which is amusing in itself as dialogue, but as interior monologue, it's grating very quickly.  It's understandable that he'd still think of himself as a god who ought to be worshiped instead of tossed in garbage, but there's a kind of self-consciousness to the prose that makes me feel more like Riordan is making fun of his protag than that he's dealing with the protag as a character.  This starts to self-correct as Apollo becomes more human.

The interesting thing about it is that Apollo turns out to actually be a very decent guy, and the less he brags, the more apparent that becomes.  At first, he's talking about how awesome he is, but later, he decides that he's a terrible person, that he's not as worthy as his children, that he's nothing but a blowhard... but throughout the whole thing, we've seen him quite consistently doing the right thing, worrying about his children when they're taken, befriending his son Will (who he is happy to play second fiddle to as a healer), being deeply proud of his daughter Kayla and his son Austin (an archer and a musician, respectively), staying loyal to Meg even when her behavior is open to question, and generally being a good egg.  Like his inability to be a perfect archer or play  music perfectly, he is focused on his failings while the text makes clear that he's succeeding wildly.  It's a very good example of unreliable narration.

Setting:
A garbagey alley, Percy's apartment, an orchard on Long Island, and Camp Half-Blood.  This isn't a very setting-heavy book. The labyrinth is back, and will likely be more of a plot point later on.

Theme:
I'm not sure I can say, thematically, what it's all about, Alfie.   There's a lot of focus on destiny and on innate talents.  Maybe some notion of finding out what you're really good for, getting to that middle ground between "I'm the greatest god that ever was" and "I'm an unworthy worm."  But if I were to put a circle around  weakness in this particular story, it's that I feel like this first book doesn't know what it wants to be about.  The same was true of The Lightning Thief, except that the plot there had more urgency.  I could almost feel Riordan groping for a theme. I think it will come together more in subsequent books, because there were a few places where it was touching on something. I just can't quite put my finger on it.

Plot:
Eh.  There's a lot of exposition here, and the plot skips around a little bit. Meg rescues Apollo, then they're with Percy, then there's a problem at camp (kids disappearing into the woods), and there's a problem with prophecy and...

I'll get this over with. The new bad guys are semi-deified Roman emperors, led by Nero, who are trying to be a Triumvirate (Apollo reminds Nero that this never ends well).  They are the financiers behind the events of the other books, and I have to admit, I'm getting bad season six Buffy vibes from them.   Meg's connection to them is painfully obvious from the start, and Riordan still treated it like a big reveal.  Not loving this development.

Other than that, there's the search for the Grove, an encounter with giant ants, and a fight with a giant bronze statue of Apollo, which annoys him because it's got a neck beard.  Also, he finds himself irritated that it's not wearing underwear, even though he knows they almost never do. Because it's weird having a battle with a 50 foot tall naked bronze version of  yourself, I guess.

Finally, Apollo gets a prophecy to set him on the path to his next adventure, which is going to at least be started in the company of a crewman on the Argo, his girlfriend, and another bronze automaton.

Characters:
Since this largely exists to introduce the character situation, that's where the book spends most of its time.

Unfortunately, the old characters don't appear much, and the new characters are kind of duds.

Not good:
Meg McCaffrey is a twelve-year-old half-blood (daughter of Demeter, which for some reason was treated as a big deal to Apollo), who has been living on the streets with a protector.  (Three guesses.)  She's not actively unpleasant, but she's also just... not there.  We're asked to care about her immediately, and the character gives us no compelling reason for it.

Nero... I can't with this villain.  There is no point at which I care about what he's doing. Maybe that will change; I don't know.

Percy and Chiron: Are there. So is a pregnant Sally Jackson. None of them do anything particularly impressive.  Rachel is a smidge better (she's jealous when she finds out that Apollo has other oracles), but she doesn't do much.  She's largely been sublimated to Meg.  (What I would have done: Rachel's father or his business partner turns out to be one of the Triumvirate. She's the one who rescues Apollo and gets him to camp, with Percy's help, and goes on the adventure with him.)

Much better:
Will Solace, Apollo's healer son, started to come into focus at the end of The Blood of Olympus, when he starts flirting with Nico, and, more importantly, actually standing up to his Prince of Darkness routine and making him interact with the world. Here, Nico is a satellite while Will comes into his own.  He's head counselor to the Apollo cabin, which means he has to keep his head when things go wrong (which they always do), and he feels very responsible for the well being of his siblings and the camp as a whole.  He's a naturally good doctor, and he's the first one Apollo makes a real connection with.  His siblings, Kayla and Austin, are less prominent (they are mostly missing for the book, as pieces for Apollo to rescue), but all three of them turn out to be caring and generous kids, who are sympathetic to Apollo and immediately behave as real family to him, which isn't always a given. (Riordan is pretty frank about how badly the Greek gods treated their kids.)

It's in Apollo's interactions with his kids that he becomes a very interesting character.  He absolutely adores them.  He chastises himself for being a terrible father (I have a feeling that sometime in the series, we're going to get some information about this that will change perceptions), but he loves it when Will, like his other son Asclepius, surpasses his skill as a medic, and he is absolutely delighted by the others as well, calling Austin his beautiful son, and praising Kayla's archery skills.  He has to go on a quest, but he wants to stay with them, to be part of his cabin and part of life at camp.  It wasn't what I expected in the first book. I figured that would be part of the process of character development. But it's there at the start, and I'm very interested in where it goes.

In general, it's a shaky but promising start.  I trust Riordan to deliver on the rest of the series.