Reviews with content warning for Confinement - The House of Hades

This wasn’t my first time reading this book but I can’t recall how I’ve previously rated it. I’m giving it a 3 stars rating this time because while I found certain things entertaining and have a lot of lines that I enjoyed, on the whole I didn’t have a fun time rereading. This addition to the series is very formulaic — a bad guy comes and threatens the characters. Immediately, at least 2 are knocked out or otherwise incapacitated during the fight so that this time, X and maybe Y can show their skills. (Jason especially is collecting TBIs.) Only, oh no! The bad guy is so powerful our characters can’t possibly defeat them by themselves! Time to come up with some witty stalling method (special favorites are: calling the baddie stupid names, catering to what they want to hear, saying something stupid like “your shoes are ugly!”). Then they outwit the baddie, have 15 minutes of rest, and then the cycle starts over.

It got very frustrating to say the least.

Another note is that while I love the seven and their related characters, there’s just too many of them.

There are large parts of this book where Piper is lucky to be mentioned in the background. Jason is finally getting characterization in book 4. Leo’s whole (contrived, annoying) love story has to happen and be believable in 4 chapters (it isn’t). Coach Hedge sure is there… in the background, only getting characterization that isn’t “die monster scum!!” when it can be shoehorned in. Percy and Annabeth spend the whole book depressed and suicidal, and like, that’s it. Nico is the Scary One until he’s outed and after that, he’s just hopelessly and bitterly pining for Percy. Frank is useless, and then his dad is incapacitating him, and then he’s kind of useless again, and then he’s not. I did find Hazel interesting thank god.

I really prefer the first series in this way, because each of the characters are given time to breathe and grow and feel real. In this series, every piece of them we get is forgotten or taken too far as soon as we switched POVs. (Seriously someone please describe Leo as anything other than heartsick after he returns. We get it. Also does anyone remember by the end that Piper has been feeling insecure in herself?)

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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