The Heroes Of Olympus English Literature Essay

This book, The Lost Hero, is the first installment in the three book series, The Heroes of Olympus. This series is a fantasy-adventure series, aimed towards teens. In short, a boy appears on a field trip and doesn’t remember who he is, where he comes from, or even his own name. The people who think they remember him, Piper McLean and Leo Valdez, think he is named Jason, and they think they have known him for months. These three teens develop a very tight bond throughout the book. This book has received multiple awards, as has the author Rick Riordan. Personally, I love both series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, as well as The Heroes of Olympus.

This story was told from a third person point of view, alternating from Piper to Leo to Jason’s points of view. Jason Grace, who nobody knows his last name or where he comes from until later in the book, is a child of the Roman god Jupiter, who is Zeus in Greece. He later finds he is able to control the winds so he can ‘fly’ and he can call down lighting from his father to protect him and his friends. Leo Valdez is an orphan. He never knew his father as he left before he was born, and his mother died in a fire at the machine shop where she worked. He later finds out his father is the Greek god Hephaestus, god of fire and metalworking. Piper McLean is the daughter of the famous actor Tristan McLean, and her mother left just after she was born and left her father to care for her alone. She is able to just ask for something and people are almost forced to give it to her. She later finds this is a power of her Greek goddess mother, Aphrodite, called charm speaking. She once just asked a car dealer if she could have a brand new Mercedes and he let her drive it off the lot. She does these things to try to get her fathers attention because he never has time for her. This causes her to be shipped off to another boarding school her father’s helpful secretary picks out across the country. Gleeson Hedge is the chaperone and gym teacher at their boarding school, the Wilderness School for bad kids. He is really their protector as he knows that they are really demigods, children of gods and mortals, and he protects them from monsters trying to kill them. He is a satyr, half man, half goat. Dylan is a fellow student at the Wilderness school, but ends up being a venti, or storm spirit, in disguise trying to kill them. They meet Annabeth Chase, a daughter of Athena, and Butch, a son of Iris. Annabeth is looking for her boyfriend Percy Jackson, who is missing. Percy is the son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Drew is another daughter of Aphrodite at Camp Half-Blood. She is a bossy head counselor for her cabin. Rachel Elizabeth Dare is a mortal at Camp Half-Blood and their Oracle. Hera is the wife of Zeus and the god of women and marriage, and her Roman counterpart is Juno. Gaea is the Mother of everything, including the gods, the giants, the Cyclopes, the Titans, and many other things. Chiron is the head counselor at Camp Half-Blood and also a centaur, or half horse, half human. Clovis is a child of the minor god Hypnos, god of sleep. Thalia Grace is another child of Zeus, but what is special is that very rarely do gods grace a mortal with two children, making two demigods biological siblings. But this happened with Thalia and Jason’s mother. Festus is a giant Celestial Bronze dragon built by the Hephaestus cabin years earlier to protect the camp but has gone haywire. Boreas is the North Wind, also known as his Roman form Aquilon. Aeolus is the master of all winds, including north, south, east, west, and all the storm spirits. Khione is the goddess of snow, daughter of Boreas. Helios is the Sun in Greece. King Midas can turn anything into gold, including living things, and his curse can only be reversed by running water. The Hunters of Artemis are led by Thalia, Jason’s sister. Mellie is an aura and assistant to Aelous. Enceladus, one of the giants, was created to destroy the Greek goddess Athena. Porphyrion is the king of giants, born to destroy Zeus.

This story was set in current time, around October 2011, not long after the last book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, The Last Olympian, ended, in the United States and Canada. In the book, Jason wakes up on the bus with amnesia and doesn’t even remember how old he is or his own name. Piper says that she’s his girlfriend, and Leo claims to be his best friend. Dylan, a classmate at the Wilderness school for delinquent kids, turns into a venti on a field trip to the Grand Canyon. Jason pulls a coin out of his pocket, flips it, and it turns into an Imperial Gold sword. He fights off the venti, but it takes Coach Hedge ransom. Piper falls over the rail trying to fight, and Jason jumps after her and is able to save both of them by controlling the winds and ‘flying’. Annabeth and Butch come looking for Percy Jackson, who has been missing three days now, pick them up and take them back to Camp Half-Blood. They crash in the lake, and not long after Leo is “claimed” by Hephaestus. On the tour of the camp, in Hera’s cabin, the Oracle Rachel is possessed by Hera herself and reveals herself to Piper and asks her to free the goddess. Piper blacks out. While this is happening, Leo is at the Hephaestus cabin and learns that his capability to control fire is both rare and a curse. It is dangerous to the user and anyone else near him because it normally brings destruction to the area. He is shocked to hear this because as a young child, Gaea provoked him to use his powers and he ended up killing his mother as a result. Drew takes Jason to Chiron and he is puzzled when Chiron says “You should be dead.” He has a vision of Juno asking for his assistance, and he learns from Clovis that his memories were stolen by Juno. He walks into his father’s cabin, Zeus, and finds a few photos of who ends up being his sister Thalia. This sparks enough memories for him to realize his last name is Grace. At the bonfire later that night, he proves he is a son of Zeus by flipping his coin into a lance and shooting a bolt of lightning from it. He then accepts a quest to save Hera by the winter solstice, which is in four days. Rachel issued a prophecy that needs a child of Hephaestus and a child of Aphrodite to free Hera. Leo volunteers and shortly after is able to get them air transportation in the form of a messed up mechanical dragon he names Festus. He attaches a set of wings he finds in an abandoned workshop called Bunker 9 that Festus shows him. Drew volunteers, and Piper tries to stop her from going but she can’t because a child of Aphrodite has to go. She is then claimed by her mom proving that she can go on this quest. The next day the three friends leave for Quebec to see Boreas, the North Wind in hopes of trying to find where Aeolus, the master of winds, is. Leo develops a crush on Boreas’ daughter, Khione, the goddess of snow. Leo has to stay by himself and can’t go in the throne room since it is all ice and he can summon fire. Jason and Piper go on to meet Boreas, and when Boreas sees Jason’s tattoo, he transforms into his Roman form of Aquilon. They leave for Chicago, and are detoured when their dragon falls out of the sky and into what they think is an abandoned car factory in Detroit. They encounter three Hyperborean Cyclopes, and Jason and Piper are captured. Leo is able to save them after Gaea contacts him. They recover from this holdup and continue on their way. They decide to follow a group of wind spirits who go down a sewer drain. Leo sends off Festus and tells him to not BBQ people and to listen for a safety whistle, which he summons from his magic tool belt he found in Bunker 9. They camp in the sewers and Leo tells Jason and Piper about his ability to manipulate fire. Leo argues that it is a curse, but Jason insists that it is a gift. After sleeping, they continue to follow the sewer and come to an elevator. They use the elevator and discover themselves in a mall owned by the Princess of Colchis, who turns out to be an evil witch named Medea. She tries to persuade Jason and Leo into killing each other by using charmspeaking, and Piper saved them by countering Medea’s power with her own, more powerful, charmspeak. Medea, in a desperate effort, releases two sun dragons, which are easily beaten by their own dragon Festus. They narrowly escape after rescuing Coach Hedge from her. Festus again malfunctions, and then, when he gets too close to a rich person’s house, is shot out of the sky by lasers, which after this all that survives is his head. They crash land on the lawn of the mansion belonging to King Midas, and when King Midas turns Leo and Piper into gold Jason is left to fight and defeat the king without being touched and turning into gold himself. After fixing Piper and Leo’s gold problem, the trio meets Thalia and her Hunters for the first time in a cave on a mountainside. She explains that their mother birthed two of Zeus’ children, and that she gave Jason up to Hera at only two years old. He also finds out that Thalia ran away and shortly after their mother died while drinking and driving. Thalia takes them to Aeolus’ palace, which happens to float and is docked on the same mountain they are resting on. They get separated when Leo gets nervous and starts to melt the ice bridge that connects the palace to the mountain, and Thalia tells Jason that the Hunters will go ahead to the Wolf House and that he knows where it is and how to get there. He is puzzled because he doesn’t remember ever hearing anything about a Wolf House. They go up the mountain and are escorted by Mellie, Aeolus’ newest assistant. When they finally meet Aeolus, they are surprised to see that he is a weather reporter. They find out that he had issued an order to kill all demigods, but then repeals this order and says that he was just cranky when he issued it. He gets a call from an anonymous source telling him to reveal the location of Enceladus at Mount Diablo. Between Jason and Mellie they are just able to get the group off the floating palace safely. Aphrodite transports them to San Francisco and tells Piper who their true enemy is in a dream. When they get to Mount Diablo, Jason, Leo, and Coach Hedge try to distract the giant Enceladus while Piper attempts to rescue her father. The giant releases Earthborn, but Leo and Piper kill them. Jason fights the giant himself and breaks his lance in the process, creating a huge crater. He prays to his father, and Zeus unleashes a lightning bolt that rips through Jason’s body as he is standing on top of the giant, and it kills the giant since the only way to kill one is for a demigod and a god to work together. The group gets a helicopter and a pilot from the park service thanks to Piper’s ability to charmspeak, and this pilot flies them to the Wolf House, what they find out is really Jack London’s home, a demigod himself, minus Hedge and Piper’s father. The trio crash lands and joins the Hunters, who are already neck deep in fighting. They find Hera in a cage made of earthen tendrils and stone, with Porphyrion using her power to remake himself. Khione reveals herself as Gaea’s helper, as she manipulated the gods’ thoughts. She freezes Thalia, and Leo goes head to head with her. Jason battles his second giant of the day, as Piper uses charmspeak to try to lull the cage into a sleep so Leo can make headway of getting the goddess out. Jason distracts Porphyrion enough for Hera to be released and to show her divine form, which Jason looks into. He is knocked unconscious and it appears he dies like every other person to ever look at a god’s divine form, but Piper is able to bring him back from the dead using charmspeak and Hera transports them all magically to Camp Half-Blood. After the quest, Piper goes back to her cabin and challenges Drew to a duel for head counselor, but Drew surrenders the title to Piper. Leo reveals Bunker 9 and his fire manipulating ability to Piper, Jason, Chiron, and the rest of Hephaestus cabin. The Hephaestus cabin unanimously votes Leo head counselor and breaks their curse. Chiron tells them that a map in the Bunker is from the Civil War, which had two sides to it. There was the human side which everyone knows about, and there was the demigod side. This battle forced the gods to keep the two groups of demigods as far apart as possible. Leo shows everyone a set of blueprints and a drawing of an aerial warship he made as a child with Festus’ head as the masthead. He names the ship Argo II. They make plans to build the warship and travel to the original Mount Olympus in Greece in the summer to protect the gods “roots” and to stop Gaea from rising any further. Juno comes to Jason and reveals herself as his patron and says she is watching over him. She gives him a gladius to replace his lance/sword. Jason is taken to a meeting of all the cabin leaders and reveals that the Greek and Roman camps were never aware of the other because they both hated but respected each other. He says he was a leader of his camp and helped in the second Titan war by destroying Mount Othrys and defeating the Titan Krios. They all decide to find the Roman camp in San Francisco and Annabeth wants to come with them as they realize that Percy Jackson was probably traded to the Roman camp and has no idea who he is. The conflict was that Jason didn’t have a clue who he was, so this hindered some of his abilities. This was partially an external conflict in the respect that everyone could see he couldn’t remember anything, but part of it was internal because he couldn’t remember anything from his past, not even his mom or sister. The conflict hasn’t been resolved yet, but there is still more books in the series so it may be solved later on.

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Jason, Leo and Piper all learned that teamwork is everything because multiple times if it wasn’t for one member of the team none of them would have survived. While some people say the author was overly detailed, I like stories with a lot of detail so you can really get a sense of what’s happening. You are in suspense for almost the entire book, believe me. You get to a part in a good fight and you can’t even put the book down. The Lost Hero was written because Rick Riordan wrote the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series and fans wanted more myths and more Roman stuff to be brought into it, not all Greek. A lot of what was stated in the book was real with a twist. The Civil war really did happen, but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a demigod side to it. The Greek and Roman gods were believed to exist, along with demigods and a lot of the monsters. While this is all just myths, it is intertwined in history more than most would think. Some people still believe the Earth is Gaea, and earthquakes are her rolling over sleepless.

I think the book was interesting to read because of all the Greek words. Some may find it challenging, while others probably won’t. I absolutely loved the book, as with most of Rick Riordan’s books including the Kane Chronicles, and the Percy Jackson & The Olympians. I would highly recommend this book to anybody who likes an involved book and mythology.

All in all, I can’t wait to read the next books in the series, as I would expect anyone else would who reads the first one. While Jason, Leo and Piper go through some wild times, they have fun and learn things about being demigods along the way.

redhawks. The Lost Hero official cover the heroes of olympus. N.d. The Lost Hero Fan Club, Online. Fanpop. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.

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RibiasZip. The Mark of Athena Cover the mark of athena. N.d. The Mark of Athena photos, Online. Fanpop. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.

“The Lost Hero – Camp Half-Blood Wiki- Percy Jackson, The Heroes of Olympus, The Lightning Thief movie, books, series.” Camp Half-Blood Wiki – The Lightning Thief movie. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.