The Trials of Apollo

About The Trials of Apollo

The Trials of Apollo begins with one of Rick Riordan's best jokes: Zeus punishes the god Apollo for his role in the Giant War by hurling him to earth as Lester Papadopoulos — a sixteen-year-old mortal with acne, flab and absolutely no divine powers. To win back his godhood, the former god of poetry, music and prophecy must restore five ancient Oracles that have fallen silent, and to do that he must serve a twelve-year-old demigod named Meg McCaffrey, whose own past hides the series' sharpest secrets.

Behind the comedy — and Apollo's terrible haikus, which open every chapter — is Riordan's most pointed villain concept: the Triumvirate, three of history's worst Roman emperors, who never really died and now run the modern world's evil as a corporation. Across five books Apollo crosses America from Camp Half-Blood to Indianapolis, the Burning Maze of the southwest, Camp Jupiter and finally Nero's tower in Manhattan, gathering allies from every previous Riordanverse series.

It is the closing movement of the ten-year Greek–Roman saga: arcs for Nico di Angelo, Will Solace, Reyna, Grover and the two camps all resolve here. It is also, beneath the gags, the most emotionally serious of the series — a story about an immortal being learning guilt, grief and what humans risk every day simply by loving things they can lose.

How to read this series

Read in publication order: The Hidden Oracle, The Dark Prophecy, The Burning Maze, The Tyrant's Tomb, The Tower of Nero. Each book restores (or fails to restore) one Oracle and flows directly into the next.

This is the third series in the Greek–Roman 'Riordanverse' sequence, and it leans hard on what came before: read Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus first, or the returning characters and running consequences will lose most of their weight. Familiarity with Magnus Chase and the Kane Chronicles is not required. Afterward, The Sun and the Star (2023) continues Nico and Will's story, and the recent Percy Jackson 'Senior Year' novels take place after these events.