Book Review: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan (Trials of Apollo #1)

Hey guys!
I’m currently catching up with Rick Riordan’s latest publications. After the Percy Jackson series and the Heroes of Olympus series Riordan created another story related to Greek mythology. The Trials of Apollo will also feature some of your favorite characters from the aforementioned books!

The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan (Cover from Goodreads)

The Plot:
The God Apollo fucked up. Big Time. Zeus is pissed and decide to do what every parent would do: punish the kid and hope they’ll do better next time. Only, punishment isn’t that easy when all the involved parties are immortal. So, Zeus does the most extrem him he could come up with: Apollo is turned into a mortal teenager. As Lester Papadopoulos. While trying to adjust to his new life, Lester/Apollo runs into the rather irritating young demi-God Meg. Oh, and of course there is always a world to save!

The Rating:
As my regular reader will know, I love Rick Riordan’s novels. However, with this one I had my problems at first. The name of each chapter is a bad haiku, as Apollo loves to come up with those. Often. At times this is mildly annoying but mostly funny. Apollo himself turns out to be a self-centered prick who could spend the whole day going on about how super duper wonderful and good-looking he is. While reading the first couple of chapter, I kept thinking “I’ll throw this book out the window, if it goes on like that!” Well, the good news: very soon you’ll get used to Apollo and you will actually grow fond of him! I honestly hadn’t expected that but by the end of the book I liked Apollo/Lester and couldn’t wait for the next one to come out.
As usual, Rick Riordan composed a funny book based on lots of Greek myths. Some of them pretty famous, others relatively unknown. So even if you fancy Greek mythology (like I do), you will still learn something new. I honestly don’t know how Riordan manages to come up with all this hilarious stuff he somehow condenses out of tons of old Greek tales. However, it is absolutely worth to pick up the book. Riordan has a way of really making the story come to life. Throughout the novel I kept thinking “I’d love to see this as movie!”, just to see what all the weird creatures he mentions would look like. But after seeing how the Percy Jackson films turned out, I ditched that thought immediately.
Furthermore, it’s nice that some of the characters we already know make guest appearances. Rick Riordan inserted that at just the right amount. It’s easy to overdo this but he really has a talent for composition!

So you can see, my love for Rick Riordan’s books is still going strong. The Hidden Oracle is another addition to an already great collection of novel. Can’t wait for the next one!

Did you read the book? Let me know in the comments what you think!

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