Book Review - The dark prophecy by rick riordan

Hey, everyone! I hope y'all are having a great day, and today I'll be reviewing The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan, the second book in his Trials of Apollo series. This series is about Zeus turning Apollo into a mortal as punishment and in order to regain his immortality, Apollo has to go through a series of tasks. So I read the first book in the series, The Hidden Oracle, about the time that it came out, and I'll link the review down in the pants in case you want to check it out, and honestly, I wasn't all that impressed. I wasn't that big of a fan of The Hidden Oracle and so I wasn't super excited to read The Dark Prophecy, but of course, it's Rick Riordan, so obviously I was going to read it eventually. And so here we are. I really enjoyed The Dark Prophecy. Like, it surprised me how much I enjoyed reading this book. Yeah, I just wasn't expecting to really enjoy it because I didn't really like the first book, and I just read The Hammer of Thor, which is the second Magnus Chase book, like a week or two ago and I wasn't super impressed with that one either. But The Dark Prophecy! I found it so engaging, so funny, and so charming, actually. I thought Apollo was a little irritating in the first book, but in this book, I found him really endearing because he was hilarious and also surprisingly thoughtful. Like, let's be real, he's been a god for millennia. That's not going to change all that quickly. So he's still very conceited and ditzy, but we're gradually seeing more of his humanity and that's what's endearing. I thought this was a excellent installment in terms of the arc of the series. It's only the second book of a five book series and stuff is already hitting the fan. Things are getting so big, the conflict is getting so broad, it's implicating so much more than our original cast of characters. Rick Riordan is doing a great job of raising the stakes of the series. We get to meet a really, really great new cast of characters in this book. There's a new location; it's the very exciting Indianapolis, and in Indianapolis, we get a very, very cool group of characters who are very compelling to read about. As usual, as I mentioned in my Hammer of Thor review, I feel like Rick Riordan does his best to increase the diversity of his characters with every new release and this book is no exception. So a few examples of that from The Dark Prophecy include a really great lesbian couple, as well as a Yoruba demigod, which is very interesting for many reasons, but most importantly, I think, it's the fact that he's the first demigod that we see who's not of Greek, Roman, or Norse "descendance" or whatever. Descent. The word is descent. I'm smart, I promise. This book was so much fun, it really captured my attention, I never found it dull or repetitive or boring, and I think a lot of that has to do with Apollo being our narrator. I find him such an entertaining narrator. He's very chatty, he's just so obnoxiously self-involved, and his background of being a god for millennia gives him so many stories and experiences that he can incorporate into his narration. I think that's all say in this non-spoiler section, so if you haven't read The Dark Prophecy and you don't want to be spoiled, I would advise leaving in 3... 2... 1... Bye! Bye, bye, bye, bye! Okay, now random aside: I have never craved bread more while reading a book than while I read The Dark Prophecy. I craved bread so much. Every time they were at the Waystation and they talked about freshly baked bread, I was like mouth-watering. I'm also reading a book called Why You Eat What You Eat, or something like that, and in that book, they say that there's a study--there was a study done in the UK that showed that the most appealing, like universally appealing, scent is the smell of baked bread followed by the scent of bacon. But anyway, while reading this book, I wanted bread so badly. The Waystation was such a cool place. I loved that it was alive and that it was very protective. It was like a sentient building, but not in a malicious way like we've seen with the Labyrinth. I loved the Waystation, I loved Emmie and Josephine, they were so devoted to Georgina. Georgina was interesting and I don't think that she is the daughter of Apollo. There's just something about it, like I just don't feel like she is. And Georgina is still such a mystery, and I don't know if Rick Riordan plans on incorporating her in a bigger role later on in this five book story arc, or if that's, like, the most that we'll see of her. I legitimately thought that Calypso and Leo were going to split. Like, I thought this was leading to Rick Riordan saying, "Look, sometimes the first relationship you jump into isn't the one that lasts forever. Sometimes the person that you thought you loved so much isn't the one for you in the long run." I was like, that is such a big deal for Rick Riordan to say that, because we have Percy and Annabeth, and Jason and Piper, and Hazel and Frank, and Grover and Juniper and it just feels like a lot of "this first relationship is my only relationship," like, "this one relationship that we focused on in the series is going to last forever," and that's not always the case. So I thought that Rick Riordan was putting in this really mature element of seeing a couple get together and then separate, but that wasn't what it was. I thought Calypso was going to be like, "Listen, I have spent so long on this island by myself and I just jumped at the chance to be with you, and maybe that was the wrong decision. Like, I need some time to figure out me, you know? So I'm just going to do my own thing for a while," but that wasn't what it was. Nah, instead, they're just deciding to go to high school together. But I support that decision. Listen, I support these heroes so much, and I think they desperately deserve a break. Like, any sense of normalcy that they can get, I support that. The development of the relationship between Apollo and Meg was so well done in this book. The moment that we saw into both of their minds in the cave and we saw that each character was living to help each other--that was just a very heartwarming moment. I think I teared up actually. Like, their main motivation is to be there for each other and I just love that despite the fact that they drive each other crazy, they're so devoted to one another. And that devotion without any fragrance of romance was so refreshing to read about. Meg felt a lot more likable in this book to me than in the previous one. I touched on this before, but I just want to reiterate it, but I think Rick Riordan is doing a great job of showing Apollo's grand character arc for this series. We're not seeing a complete upheaval of the attitude that he's had for an eternity, but we are seeing glimpses of genuine care and compassion and that's very exciting to read about. With the reveal of the dark prophecy at the end, Rick Riordan's doing a great job of raising the stakes of the conflict of the series, as well as setting up the plot for the future books. We see that this series is really much bigger than just Lester earning his mortality, it's this entire emperor thing that's expanding across the entire continent and involving all these different demigods. In what's becoming a classic Riordan move, we're seeing characters from different series start to overlap. For example, at the end of this book, we know that our guide is Grover Underwood, Percy Jackson's best friend and noteworthy satyr. Grover can be kind of annoying, a little useless, so, you know, we'll see how that goes. And yeah, despite the fact that I enjoyed this book so much, I actually don't really have that much to say about it. I thought it was really fun, I thought the character development was especially excellent, I loved seeing the Hunters again--that was really fun--I liked seeing Lityerses's allegiance change, and most of all, which was really surprising for me, was that I really enjoyed being in Apollo's head. Yeah, I have really high hopes for the rest of this series. I'm like very excited about it now. So if you've read this book, please, please let me know your thoughts. Also, let me know any theories or guesses or hopes that you have for any of the future books in the Trials of Apollo series. I'd really, really love to hear them. But yeah, thank you so much for watching, I hope y'all have a fantastic day, and happy reading! Bye! [outro music: "Summer Moments" by Del]