Now, before you think I’m going to bash the man himself, here is your spoiler. I’m not gonna bash Rick himself, I really think he is a good person in general. I’m going to rant on how different – and worse – the writing is in his Heroes Of Olympus series.
Now, I loved Percy Jackson, and I’m not completely through the final book of the series, but I just feel like this is a matter that needs discussion.
Everybody knows that Rick always writes middle grade – except for the Tres Navarre series – but the style of his writing in the Heroes of Olympus’ series is just bland. The plot armor sky-rockets, faith seems to be more important than knowledge, and he seems to have forgotten the age-old rule of ***’show not tell.’***
For example, when Khione arrives with her brothers on the Argo 2, chucks Leo to Ogygia, but she freezes everyone on board the ship except for Piper. Why? Because the immortal goddess is mad that Piper is the girlfriend of the dude she liked? That scene is just so frustrating for me. Why did Khione listen to Piper’s rant, and not just freeze her and give her to Khione’s brother – Cal, was it? – and leave the ship with the snow bomb left to explode? It was so obvious what Piper was trying to do. It’s not like Khione has never been manipulated before in her immortal life? You know what, leave that. How in the name of Poseidon’s Hawaiian underpants did *Piper* manage to kill the snow goddess? Why didn’t Khione just freeze her when she realized that Piper was manipulating her brothers against her?
The thing I don’t like about the fourth book – and I’m going to take most examples from the fourth since I went on a break after reading the Mark of Athena – is that the amount of internal conflict between the five demigods on the Argo 2 was just null. There wasn’t a lot of conflict between them. Sure there was Jason finding out that Nico was gay, and him keeping Nico’s secret, but that conflict doesn’t weave really well into the overall narrative, does it? Most of the time, the only chapters worth reading for me were Annabeth’s, Percy’s, and Leo’s. The rest were mere skims for me. I remember skipping the entire five of Frank’s POV chapters between Tartarus’s intro and the fight.
Telling is done a lot. ‘Frank knew’, or ‘Hazel knew’ or this and that… like I know that this is middle grade, but come on, Rick? Twelve-year-old’s aren’t dumb. Sometimes a character’s thoughts, when described in third person, irk the reader because of the way it reads. It’s just best to put them in italics, and cater the thoughts to the voice of the character. But no. The man just *has* to describe everything in third person.
One of the reasons why authors like Joe Abercrombie are so famous and have such an incredible command over their narrative, is because of their distinct character voices. First Law fans would remember Glotka’s POV, and how authentic and raw it felt. That is not the case with Riordan’s writing. Every single character’s POV is structured the same way. Like, even the way a character describers a glass of water should be enough to tell who they are as a person. But *every single character, in almost every single scenario,* describes what they see the same way and structure. That doesn’t make sense. Some people may smell more, some may observe more, some are narcissistic and don’t observe their surroundings a lot, thus their descriptions are filled with their own struggles and problems.
And don’t even get me started on the pacing. The seven would be doing some serious discussion, and Leo would just butt in and crack a joke. Like I know that is how he deals with stress, but come on. No matter how funny or sad a scene/dialogue is, if it kills the pacing, it’s trash. Delete it, burn it, never use it again.
Al right, I think I have ranted enough. Please share your experiences down in the comments. Please bear in mind that I love the Heroes of Olympus series; the characters have stayed with me for years. I think that the internal conflict they have is beautiful, but not beautifully woven into the narrative.
What do you guys and girls think? Am I being a little *too* critical?
by TheNightmareWeilder