Riordan Retrospective: The Last Olympian

Well, we've made it.  The Riordan Retrospective is about to hit its first major milestone.  For those of you who haven't heard, this is my look back at the works of Rick Riordan.  That means Percy Jackson and the Olympians, it's sequel series and its spin-off series.  Last time, we took a look back at The Demigod Files.  This time we're looking back at The Last Olympian, Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 5.  As we have done in all of the previous retrospectives, we're going to kick things off with a brief summary.

Against all odds, Percy Jackson, demigod son of Poseidon, is almost sixteen-years-old.  The big moment has finally arrived, the war against the titans has officially begun.  The demigods of Camp Half-Blood are about to make their last stand against the armies of Kronos.  I really can't add much more than that, so let's jump into the commentary.

So, like I've already said, this book is the culmination of everything Percy Jackson and the Olympians has been building up towards.  As usual, there will be spoils ahoy beyond this point.  Turn back now if you don't like spoilers.  With that out of the way, let's continue.

I've been hinting at this in past retrospectives, but let's finally examine Luke, and what makes him such an effective villain.  Percy and Luke have a similar dynamic to them as Superman and Lex Luther, in that's they're mirror images of one another.  Percy is a son of Poseidon, one of the rarest demigods of all; while Luke is a son of Hermes, an utterly common garden variety demigod.  Percy is far from dumb, but he tends to rely more on fighting and raw power, rather than his brains.  Luke, by contrast, is a schemer and a master manipulator and tactician.

On the other hand, perhaps they aren't so different after all.  Back to the comic book comparison, it's often said that Batman's villains are a dark reflection of himself.  The same can be said of Luke's relationship with Percy.  Luke could be seen as a shadowy reflection of how Percy might have turned out if he'd made different decisions, or given into temptation.

One thing I find interesting about Luke is that he doesn't appear to have any close friends or confidants.  He clearly knows how to work a crowd, and drum-up support, but he doesn't seem to have anyone he's particularly close to.  Percy, by contrast, has plenty of friends and loved ones.  Annabeth, Grover, Mrs. Jackson, Paul, Tyson and Chiron are the most important, but everyone at Camp Half-Blood had an impact on him in one way or another.  It could be argued that, even though Percy was naturally good, his friends and loved ones played a major role in nurturing that inherent goodness.  I know I've been referencing comics a lot, but you should never forget the major impact Jonathan and Martha Kent had on how Superman turned out.  It really makes me wonder how Luke would have turned out if he'd had even one true friend by his side.

What makes Luke such and effective villain is that many of the points he raises have a fair degree of truth to them.  Granted, that doesn't completely excuse his actions.  If his plan had succeeded, Western society, and probably the world as a whole, would have crumbled.  Millions, possibly even billions, would have been killed, and the remaining world would be ruled by the iron fist of Kronos.  Having said all of that, Luke is right when he says that the gods are incredibly neglectful of their children, have a tendency to abuse their power, and that something should be done to fix this.  He's also shown to be sympathetic to the plight of children of the minor gods.  Luke's problem isn't what he's trying to change, but the way he proposes to bring about that change.

Let's now change gears and talk about Percy.  I've hinted at it in the past, but we are now going to discuss what is so significant about his name.  It's mentioned within the books that Mrs. Jackson named him Perseus because Perseus is one of the few Greek heroes with an unambiguously happy ending.  However, it goes a bit deeper than that.  In the myths, Perseus kills his grandfather, who had previously tried to kill him and his mother.  In this book, Percy plays a major role in helping to kill Kronos, his grandfather on Poseidon's side of the family.

Side note, I loved the scene where Percy battle Hyperion and creates his own mini-hurricane.  It's a pity he never did it again in any of the sequel series, but it's implied that it drains a lot of energy out him, so it must be used sparingly.  Hyperion being one of the villains was amusing in itself, since the books are published by Disney-Hyperion.  Relatedly, Rick Riordan seems to have struck up a deal with Scholastic Publishing to help distribute the books.  I think it is really great that Percy and the gang have become members of the Scholastic family.  I have many happy memories of attending Scholastic book fairs, and ordering from their book order catalogs.

Now let's talk about Beckendorf and Silena.  As I've mentioned in my previous retrospectives, I've always been incredibly fond of them, despite their status as minor characters.  So, as you can imagine, their deaths hit me hard.  I often wonder if it is because they died that I appreciate them that much more. Like the song says, sometimes you don't know what you got til it's gone.  I'm not sure why, but there was just something about them that made me always so fond of them.  At the time I read this book, I wondered how Beckendorf got killed in a fiery explosion if he was as son of Hephaestus, god of fire.  As the Heroes of Olympus later reveled, only a rare few Hephaestus kids get fire manipulation powers.  So, it stands to reason that Beckendorf was sadly not one of those lucky few.

Going back to the theme of history and mythology repeating, this time around we have not only the Titanomarchy, but also the Trojan War.  The way Silena rallies the Ares Cabin to join the war, by putting on armor and pretending to be Clarisse, parallels Patroclus leading the Greeks into battle while pretending to be Achilles.  That puts Silena and Clarisse's friendship in an...interesting light. Now, granted, Silena is very devoted to Beckendorf, and his death is a major blow she never quite recovers from.  Clarisse has a boyfriend as well, Chris Rodriguez, but I can't help but wonder if her feeling for Silena weren't entirely platonic.  The way she was just so devastated when Silena was killed by the dracon could have been because of a deep friendship...or maybe there was something more there.  Does all of that make the dracon Hector?  Who can say, but it is fun to speculate.

So, just who is the Last Olympian spoken of in the title?  Why, Hestia of course.  It's easy to miss, but the early books mention a girl tending the fire in the center of cabin row at Camp Half-Blood.  Turns out, that girl was Hestia, and her hearth provides the camp with magical protection.  She gets her name because she's the one who stays behind to tend the hearth while all the other Olympians are out to battle.

In hindsight, I find it strange that Percy never got to have a meeting with Demeter.  Sure, we get a brief scene of her in the Underworld with Persephone and Hades, but never a proper introduction.  Kind of seems like a glaring omission.  Was there really no way she could have been introduced in the previous books?  Demeter kind of came across like a stereotypical crabby old Jewish woman, which was...a tad odd, given that she's a pagan deity and all.  Also, in rather on the nose names, the head councilors of Demeter Cabin are named Katie Gardner and Miranda Gardiner.  Yes, their last names are pronounced the same, but spelled slightly differently.  Fun fact, one of Rick's former students was named Katie Gardner.

Speaking of meetings, I did enjoy that Percy finally got to meet Amphitrite and Triton.  I'd always wondered what they'd make of him.  From what we briefly glimpse, they try their best to be polite, but they're clearly very frosty towards him.  It was a nice scene and all, but I kind of wish it had gotten a bit deeper...well, it did take place at the bottom of the sea...oh, you know what I mean!  Anyway, when I read this book I wasn't entirely sure where the small of the back was, so as far as I was concerned, Percy's Curse of Achilles might as well have covered his whole body.

So, before the big battle, Morpheus puts all the mortals in Manhattan to sleep.  On the surface, not too bad, but then you start to really think about it.  How many people were cooking dinner, or in the middle of surgery, or any other manner of things that could get nasty if left unattended?  Yeah, The Mist probably had to work overtime to cover-up all the casualties that Morpheus caused.  That's not even getting into all the sleeping mortals who might have been eaten by monsters, or killed by stray arrows or Greek Fire.

The statues of New York coming to life to aid the demigods was really cool, especially when the Statue of Liberty joined the fight.  There a scene at the end where a statue of Susan B. Anthony strangles a statue of Frederick Douglas.  This might have been a clever historical joke on Riordan's part.  It could be a reference to how the 15th amendment granted black men the right to vote, but women of all races were denied the right to vote until the 19th amendment passed in 1920.  Riordan was a middle school social studies teacher before becoming an author, so you never know.

So we finally get a resolution to the Great Prophecy of the series, but not the way we expected.  Turns out it was Luke, not Percy, who was the hero of the prophecy.  By choosing to killed himself, while playing host to Kronos, he scatters Kronos' spirit for a long time, and brings and end to the war.  As I've mentioned above, Luke's a complex villain, and perhaps also a tragic one.  Greek Mythology is big on the concept of fate and predestination; he couldn't change the big picture any more than the other characters, but he could still change the details.  Of course, if that is the case, then it means that free will is an illusion, and that we're all little more than puppets acting out our roles.  One that note, we finally find out who's string The Fates cut way back in The Lightning Thief.  Turns out it was Luke's string all along.

There's that old saying that it's not how we fall, but how we chose to pick ourselves up, that truly speaks to who we are as people.  Perhaps it holds true for Luke as well.  It's the same for Silena; she was working as spy for Kronos, but only because Luke blackmailed her, and she did it to protect Beckendorf and her friends.  Given the sacrifice she made for the Half-Blood army, I'd say she more than redeemed herself in the end.

Well, that got surprisingly dark, let's lighten the mood a bit.  So, Percy and Annabeth officially become a couple in this book; as if there were ever any serious doubt.  Also, Rachel takes over as the new Oracle of Delphi just in time to set things up for the sequel series, but we'll get to that in our due time.  We also get an answer to a question that has long plagued fans: is it incest if two demigods get into a relationship?  Turns out, gods don't have DNA, so thankfully no.  It is mentioned that two campers from the same cabin dating is frowned upon, though this is hinted to be more of a cultural thing than anything else.

So despite all the trails and hardships, most of our heroes live, and get their rewards from the gods themselves.  I kind of wonder what would have happened if Percy had taken the gods up on their offer to become a god.  Obviously, he was going to say no so he could be with Annabeth, and remain available for the sequel series.  Still, I gotta wonder about what he'd be like as a god.  Sure, Percy is a good person at heart, but how well would he live up to his lofty ideals if he had access to godly powers?  You know what they say about absolute power, but just perhaps, he might prove to be a benevolent deity after all.  I can easily see him getting into epic battles with the other gods.

Of course, that's just speculation.  Percy instead uses his wish to get the gods to acknowledge their children, gives the minor gods much needed representation on Olympus and at Camp Half-Blood, free Calypso, and let's the Big Three gods have kids again; also, Annabeth gets to live her dream of redesigning Mount Olympus.  There a scene near the end where Poseidon hints that Percy has other siblings somewhere out there.  This appears to have been a red herring.

So, things are looking up for the demigods of Camp Half-Blood.  Still, gotta wonder about those who fought in Kronos' army.  I can't imagine they had a particularly warm welcome to camp, and you'd think there'd still be bad blood between them and the campers.  If nothing else, you'd think both sides would need time to get over the war and adjust to life in peace time.  We kind of get an explanation of this in The Demigod Diaries, but more on that when we get to it.  Still, I can live with the ending as it was.  I love a good happy ending.

Now it's time to analyze the book covers.  This time around, the covers are actually fairly similar.  They feature Percy flying on Blackjack next to the Empire State Building.  And, as all good Percy Jackson fans know, Mount Olympus is located on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building.  Blackjack, in the old cover, has been noticeably slimmed down since his last appearance on a book cover.  In the new cover, we can see Typhon lurking in the clouds.  I think it's kind of nice how the new cover pays homage to the old cover.

And now, as a special treat, I will so you what the new covers look like when they're all placed together.  I must say, it is quite the sight be behold.  Also, for one final time, I will give a shout-out to Jesse Bernstein's excellent narration of the audiobook version.

With that, we have officially completed our look back at Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  Ah, but the Riordan Retrospective shall continue.  We're moving onto The Kane Chronicles and The Heroes of Olympus next.  Since they occurred concurrently to each other, I'll alternate between reviewing a Kane book and reviewing a Heroes book.

So, all that having been said, I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for joining me on this look back at the works of Rick Riordan.  Join me again next time when we take a look back at The Red Pyramid.  I will see you all next time.