#as you can see i am a nico stan first a human being second

[ladynicte]

PJO text posts cuz I have issues

[greatneedtotakeanap]

i binge read

episode 5 - the last olympian

this one took me a bit longer than expected but BOY do I have some THOUGHTS.

I am legally obligated to always begin with Nico when applicable so I will. This boy’s perseverance was everything. Even after he sold Percy out, and Percy subsequently almost killed him - he never stopped trying to convince Hades, just followed him around like an annoying talkative shadow. We see glimpses of this through Percy’s dreams. He literally never stops talking, even after all three adults present make it clear they’re annoyed with him - and it works! Hades joins in at the end.

Also, I know this was kind of the point of the book, but the fact that forty teenagers (plus the Hunters) held down an entire city for that long, after repeated monster attacks, was incredible. It was simply fantastic to imagine. Manhattan isn’t small, too. They covered a lot of ground for such a tiny group of people, and they didn’t even have the Ares cabin.

(Side note on the Ares cabin. I think we can all agree that up until the very end Clarisse was being incredibly selfish - there is a WAR happening. People are dying and you’re worried about cabin recognition? You refuse to fight for your fellow campers’ lives because of CABIN RECOGNITION? It’s so childish I can’t even wrap my mind around this.)

Speaking of Ares - Silena Beauregard. She deserved better. It was genius, the way she dressed up as Clarisse to go against the drakon. Shame she had to die in the process. And speaking of Silena Beauregard, Charlie Beckendorf!! He was one of my favorite if not my favorite side character my first time reading the series. I cried when he died. It was the FIRST CHAPTER, just hit you out of nowhere. I get that was kind of the point, but still. Ouch.

Ethan Nakamura annoyed the hell out of me throughout both botl and this book, but I couldn’t help loving him at the end, even though the way he died was kind of stupid because he didn’t know where Kronos’ vulnerability point was so he just charged him for nothing lmao. Still. I couldn’t help feeling sad for him.

And now, the inevitable discussion of Luke Castellan. Half of this book, the quests Percy went on to May’s house and the dreams he had, was to humanize Luke. The point was to make the reader sympathize with him, and hooo boy did it work. I never liked Luke, not really, but I always pitied him. May makes me very sad though. Her story, the very specific way she went insane... it’s tragic. And the way it affected Hermes was well portrayed. He knew the whole time, but was forbidden to interfere. Luke did the right thing in the end, which was great I guess, and the way the prophecy came true was genius. I probably would have been a pretty hardcore Luke stan if it wasn’t for the whole Lukabeth side plotline. I know it’s been said, but their age gap heavily grosses me out. Like at the end while he was dying and he asked Annabeth if she loved him I was recoiling, because... why?? Brought the whole rating down a LOT.

Of course, I can’t talk about The Last Olympian without talking about Percabeth, so let’s get into it. Firstly - the scene at the River Styx. (Side note - is Percy still invincible?? He never reversed the curse.) But anyways. The thing I love most about Percabeth is that it’s a slow burn done right. In their every interaction you can see exactly how they feel about each other, from friendly banter in tlt to mutual comfort in som, to Percy going BALLISTIC in ttc while she was gone, etc etc. And I think it all came to a t in this scene in the River Styx. He had to hold one to the one thing that made him mortal, and he didn’t choose Annabeth. He didn’t specifically think of her before he went in - but she found him anyway. And this is the moment that I think he realizes exactly how he feels about her. This is a theme that comes back in this book (yay!), Annabeth being the thing tying him down to the mortal world, at the end when he makes the decision to give up immortality. That part is fairly obvious. She’s literally the thing keeping him there. The best part about the ending of this book, for me, was that I could see it in my head. Every single second. I could see them eating cake, their conversation, the kiss and everyone jumping them afterwards, Percy making a bubble at the bottom of the lake. It was all just so adorable. I know, I know, we all love Percabeth - but for good reason.

One last thing I just realized - the kids from hoo? Piper and Leo (and Hazel I think but I can’t quite remember)? They were unclaimed kids who never found their way to camp. They got to Camp Half-Blood as a DIRECT result of Percy’s decision at the end of this book. I didn’t even realize that until I read the scene where he gives up immortality over again. Pretty interesting.

First series is done. Two more series to go. Wish me luck!