Re-read 2015: The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan and read by Joshua Swanson

Summary from Goodreads:

Jason has a problem.
He doesn't remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper. His best friend is a kid named Leo, and they're all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for "bad kids", as Leo puts it. What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret.
Her father, a famous actor, has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he's in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn't recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools.
His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What's troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper's gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god.

Review:

I’m not going to lie; I initially stopped reading Rick Riordan’s books after I read this one. I remember thinking I just didn’t like these characters as much as I liked Percy, Grover, and Annabeth. Also, I remember just feeling like so much of the monster of a book (it’s twice as many cd’s as most of the Percy books) seemed to feel like a waste of space. There was so much repetition for me about learning about all the gods actually existing, about leaning about the camp, about leaning about it all. And it just wasn’t as interesting a second time.

So, is all that still true with my re-read? Not completely. I definitely enjoyed this one more as an audiobook. It was easy for me to differentiate between the three points of view because they each had a different sounding voice. I also enjoyed the story and the characters a little bit more. I did still find a lot repetition from the past books, and it was even more evident just having finished them.

Also, I still don’t like Leo that much. He’s the comic relief character. And while I like that the humor of the Percy Jackson books remains, I’m not sure I can ever be a big fan of a character that appears to be just that humor.

Everyone who has read these books and loved the Percy Jackson ones told me I had to give this newer series another try and that the books get better after this monster of a first one. I wanted to re-read them all so my mind was ready to get started with the rest of the books. And I’m glad I did. I loved re-reading all the Percy books. And I’m only two discs in to Son of Neptune and I’m already loving it too. So, I’m glad I went back and re-read The Lost Hero even though it’s definitely not my favorite Riordan book.

There’s still amazing things in it like mechanical dragons, arctic adventures, Roman mythology, more interactions with different Gods, quests, epic prophecies, rescue missions, and battle with giants. And there’s also cameos by some of my old favorite characters. Though, there’s no Percy. He is missing (being the “lost hero” and all). And you find out where he is in book 2, so yeah, I’m already liking book 2.

There’s the super cool overlap of Greek and Roman mythologies. And there’s more of the blending of the real world with the magical/mythological one that I love. This re-read has me liking Jason and Piper a lot more. I’m still not a big Leo fan. I kept waiting to like him more, and never quite getting there. Though, his history is interesting.

I’m not a fan of the repetition. I’d rather of gotten right into the good stuff: the action and adventure. I did still like the story. I even grew to like certain characters more with this reading. I’m already on to the next book, and I’m looking forward to continuing on with this author. This book gets a 7/10.