Riordan Retrospective: The Dark Prophecy

Welcome once again to the Riordan Retrospective.  For those of you just joining the fun, this is my look back at the works of Rick Riordan.  That means we're taking a look at Percy Jackson, its sequel series and its spin-off series.  This is less of a formal review, and more of a look back, along with my thoughts and observations.  Last time we took a look back at The Hammer of Thor, the absolute rock bottom of both the Magnus Chase series and Rick Riordan's writing career.  This time, we're returning to The Trials of Apollo for a much, much better written book.  We're taking a look back at The Dark Prophecy, The Trials of Apollo book 2.  Let's kick things off with a brief summary.

Apollo is on a quest to restore his godhood by restoring the sources of prophecy.  He and his companions Leo Valdez and Calypso have arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Apollo needs to restore the Oracle of Trophonius, but that's easier said than done.  Our trio of heroes will find danger around every corner as they try to outsmart the second member of the Triumvirate.  However, they'll also find new friends and allies in unexpected places.  Being a depowered god isn't easy, but Apollo will get by with a little help from his friends.

As per usual, there will be spoilers beyond this point, so turn back now if you don't want any of that.  

As I've mentioned before, it really feels like The Trials of Apollo was written to address the criticisms of The Heroes of Olympus.  For starters, Leo is far less annoying and overall it feels like he's been considerably toned down.  It almost redeemed him to me.  Almost, but not quite.  I also like how Leo and Calypso's relationship felt a bit more realistic.  They get into more fights and disagreements, and it was always a joy to reading about Calypso hitting Leo.  One of the big causes of friction with Calypso and Leo is that Calypso has lost her magic after leaving Ogygia.  Yeah, I'd probably be pissed too in that situation.  Though, I will say I have to take issue with Calypso's dream of going to high school.  

Seriously?  After thousands of years Calypso is finally free, the world is her oyster, and her big dream is to go to high school?  She seems to forget high school is...well, school.  There's test, grades, projects and shit.  You don't spend all day goofing around with your friends.  Also, high schools have bullies, just saying.  Something tells me that she's going to be thinking "you know, comparatively speaking, this shithole is more of a prison that Ogygia ever was." 

Yeah, Calypso clearly has an overly romanticized view of high school.  Let's put a pin in that concept, it will be important when we get to The Burning Maze.  Anyway, continuing on with the theme of minimalism, this book is set entirely in the city of Indianapolis.  Once again, Riordan tells a compelling story without it ever feeling claustrophobic.  I also really loved that we finally get some older demigods playing a role in the story.  Well, technically speaking, Hemithea is a legacy of Dionysus and a former minor goddess, but the point still stands.  Hey, Josephine is a daughter of Hecate, which is nice in itself.  Good to see the children of the minor gods getting more representation.   Emmie and Jo live in a magical building called the Waystation, a refuge for demigods and other magical beings.  The Waystation is bigger on the inside than outside, and thus we must conclude that Emmie and Jo are Time Lords, and Waystation is their TARDIS...nah, I'm just being silly. 

On a more serious note, Emmie and Jo also teach us quite a bit about how the Hunters of Artemis work.  Apparently, when Artemis said no romance, she meant it.  Gay romance is just as off-limits as straight romance in the Hunters. Well, that's the opposite of what I figured.  I always pegged the Hunters as the type to have nightly lesbian orgies, but I guess I was wrong.  It also appears that, upon leaving the Hunters, the former Hunters resuming aging at a normal rate.  Their clocks become unpaused, as it were.  I'll add that one thing I liked about Jo is that she shows the potential creativity and flexibility demigods have with their powers.  She's a daughter of Hecate, but her specialty is magical technology.  As such, she makes all kinds of lovely magical machines to rival anything a child of Hephaestus might craft. 

Also, Emmie and Jo are well written LGBT characters, unlike a certain green-haired sociopath hailing from the Magnus Chase series.  I'm just saying, it's pretty clear that Rick knows how to write gay and bisexual characters, but he's pretty clueless about transgender characters.  Also, just a thought, but Rick says that the reason his leads tend to be dudes are because he's a dude, and that's his experience.  Now consider that Apollo is a bisexual...hey, Uncle Rick?  Is there something you'd like to share with the class?  On the other hand, Rick isn't black like Carter, or a girl like Sadie, so I suppose that pokes a hole in that theory.  

Among notable monsters, this book sees the blemmyae make an appearance.  They're those creatures that look like people with faces in the center of their chests.  I found the way they were described amusing, as Apollo make them sound like monsters off of an episode of Power Rangers.  Marco Polo claimed to have encountered blemmyae on his famous journey to China.  Hmm, I wonder if Marco Polo was a demigod in the Riordanverse?  

Among the new gods to appear, Britimartis was interesting.  She used to be the Minoan goddess of the hunt, but now is the Greek goddess of nets and traps.  There are scholars who believe that Britimartis was a pre-existing goddess who got incorporated into the Greek Pantheon.  Of course, we know basically nothing about the Minoans, since we have no Minoan version of the Rosetta Stone, so who knows?  Headless Agamethus and his magic eight ball were fun too. 

Now let's talk about the second member of the Triumvirate.  We know that Nero is emperor one, and pretty much everyone called Caligula as emperor number three, but there was a lot of speculation about emperor two.  I'd floated around the idea that it might be Commodus, and it appears I was right.  I'd actually been a bit hesitant about pinning Commodus as number two.  Few would argue that Commodus wasn't an incompetent emperor, but it might be a bit of stretch to say he was as evil as Nero and Caligula.  Commodus was, basically, a spoiled trust-fund kid.  He was more interested in living it up and partying than he was in governing Rome.  He also loved to dress us as Hercules, hence his nickname The New Hercules.  To put it into perspective how ridiculous that is, imagine if the president of the Untied States insisted on giving speeches while dressed as Superman or Captain America. 

I will say that I give props to Riordan for including how Commodus died.  He was indeed drowned in a bath.  Though, in the Riordanverse, it was his lover Apollo that did him in.  That's one of the things the film Gladiator gets wrong, though to be fair, it would be hard to make that an emotionally dramatic scene.  Also, Commodus did not kill his father Marcus Aurelius, and there was no movement to make Rome a republic again.  Gladiator plays fast and loss with history, but it's still an enjoyable and well-made film.  While not completely historically accurate, it captures the feeling of what it was like to live in the Roman Empire well.  Perhaps I'll give it a proper review at some point.  Well, that aside over, back to the retrospective.

You know, it gets me thinking, what if there's a good counterpart to Triumvirate Holdings?  If the bad emperors are running around, it stands to reason that there are the good ones somewhere out there.  Maybe they could be emperors with connections to the Triumvirate?  Obvious, Marcus Aurelius for Commodus, and Claudius for Caligula.  He was Caligula's uncle, and is widely considered the smartest of the emperors.  For Nero, perhaps Augustus?  Julius Caesar wasn't emperor, but maybe he could appear too?  Titus and Tiberius might also make good candidates.  

We also get some excellent worldbuilding in this book.  We know that Chinese Mythology is real, as Apollo mentions nearly hitting a Chinese dragon with his sun chariot one time.  Then we meet Olujime from Nigeria.  He's clearly got a connection to the Yoruba orishas, meaning Yoruba Mythology is true.  Specifically, he's got some kind of connection to Shango, orisha of thunder.  Orisha's are basically the same things as gods, just a matter of semantics.  Shango is associated with black and red, as is Jaime.  Shango's symbol is the double headed axe, which Jamie fights with.  Jaime also has lighting powers, and as mentioned, Shango is god of thunder.  Shango is also believed to possibly be an inspiration for the American folk hero John Henry.  Oh course, John Henry was real in the Riordanverse, but he was a son of Thor.  Yet another mark against Magnus Chase, but I digress.   

It's a damn shame that Rick isn't going to be tackling non-Western mythologies.  He's clearly got a passion and knowledge in them, much as he'd like to deny that.  Of course, just look at how many books he's written as it is.  My theory on why the Rick Riordan Presents imprint came about is that Rick is getting worn out from all the writing, and knows it was this or hiring ghost writers to keep up with demand.  The fact that it gave him an opportunity to virtue signal about promoting minority writers just happened to be a nice bonus.  Like I said, just speculation on my part. 

The scene where Apollo loses his memories when going to the Oracle of Trophonius was fun.  Rick should have his characters get high more often. Also, note that he destroys Trophonius, rather than restoring him.  I can't help but wonder if that's going to have significance in the future books of the trilogy.    Also, yay, Thalia is back.  I was a bit disappointed that she didn't play a bigger role, but I'll take what I can get.  It would have been nice if Artemis had appeared to, but maybe in the future books.  In other small, but by no means insignificant appearances, Grover is back!  He's back at last!  Of course, we'll talk more about him when we get to The Burning Maze.  

Now then, let's analyze the cover.  The see Apollo riding on a griffin along with...well, I'm not entirely sure.  My impulse is to say Calypso, but the Hunters of Artemis jacket is throwing me for a loop.  We also see war ostriches wearing Imperial German pickelhaube.  I just knew I was in for a good time when I saw this book cover.  Robbie Daymond continues doing excellent work as narrator of the audiobook version.  

Well, that should do it for this retrospective.  I know I've said it before, but I'm glad to have all of you along for the ride with me.  It was nice to do one of a book I enjoyed.  I bring this up because next time we're heading back to Magnus Chase for another bad book beat down.  Join me again next time when we take a look back at The Ship of the Dead.  I will see you all next time.