The Heroes of Olympus

About The Heroes of Olympus

The Heroes of Olympus picks up months after the Titan war that closed Percy Jackson and the Olympians — and immediately breaks its own world open. A boy wakes on a school bus with no memory and a name he is not sure is his; meanwhile Percy Jackson has vanished from Camp Half-Blood entirely. The answer to both mysteries is the series' great twist: the Greek gods also have Roman aspects, and a second, secret camp of Roman demigods has existed all along, trained for discipline and conquest where the Greeks prize heroics and improvisation.

Rick Riordan widens his cast from one narrator to seven demigods — Jason, Piper, Leo, Percy, Annabeth, Hazel and Frank — whose alternating viewpoints power a five-book quest to stop Gaea, the earth mother herself, from waking. The stakes are bigger than the first series (a prophecy of seven, two camps on the brink of civil war, a flying warship crossing the Mediterranean), and the books are longer and slightly older in tone, dealing with memory, identity and belonging.

Highlights include the fan-favourite descent into Tartarus in The House of Hades and the introduction of characters — Nico di Angelo above all — whose stories carry forward into The Trials of Apollo. It is the structural centre of the Riordanverse: everything before feeds into it, and everything after builds on it.

How to read this series

Read the five novels in publication order: The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, The Mark of Athena, The House of Hades, The Blood of Olympus. The books alternate between Greek and Roman casts before uniting them, and each ends on developments the next assumes you know.

Read Percy Jackson and the Olympians (at least the original five) first — this series spoils its ending and depends on your investment in Percy and Annabeth. Afterward, continue to The Trials of Apollo, which resolves several character arcs begun here. The Demigod Diaries is an optional companion of short stories, fine to read any time after The Lost Hero.