The Mark of Athena

Soo... I didn't enjoy this much.

Fair warning, guys, this is going to be brutal.

I've never liked Annabeth. I had held out some hope that, finally getting into her head, would make me like her more. It didn't. In fact, I'm pretty sure it went the other way and made me like her less. That being said, I could see myself, possibly, liking her as a character if it wasn't for the romance. (Seriously, not every internal monologue needs to be based around romance and, yes, boys and girls can just be friends.)

Honestly, that might be my biggest issue with this book. Everyone is motivated by how in love they are with another person. Percy and Annabeth are obsessed with each other and Jason and Piper aren't much better. (I'm not even going to get started on the love triangle that is Leo/Hazel/Frank.)

Once again, this probably wouldn't be so bad if I actually shipped Percabeth. But I never did because they don't feel like a good couple. They have nothing in common and... Well:

Annabeth smirked, like she was pleased they were back in their old familiar pattern - Percy being ignorant, she herself explaining stuff.

...

This is the be-all-end-all romance that everyone obsesses over? No thank you. (Personally, I never thought their friendship should turn into romance because it never felt like it would be a healthy romance, but I was willing to overlook it in the first series because they were children. But now they are almost adults and this is showing signs of an unhealthy relationship.)

As for Jason and Piper... I'm still unsure about them. I'm leaning towards not shipping them, either because, once again, they don't fit.

In other thoughts:

I finally figured out what it is about these books, how I can buzz through them (usually) like I'm eating popcorn, only to feel a little empty - and maybe sick - at the end. These books never slow down. They are nonstop and, while sometimes very fun, they are also rather shallow.

That's part of the reason I tend to read them so fast. I race through them at the same speed they go, looking for that emotional payoff that I will never get. (Is this because they are MG books? Because the deaths in the first series left me feeling nothing. Much like the deaths in Harry Potter also left me feeling nothing.)

Also, as I discovered on this book, there is no internal motivation for me to keep reading. I put this book down for almost three full days (I only read like ten pages in that time) and I've only finished it now so it's not dragging out over my weekend.

Because The Kane Chronicles was a breath of fresh air, I am going to plow through this series to get to Magnus Chase in the hopes it will be the same as Carter and Sadie. But this book has dragged back down to my thoughts of the first PJ series: such indifference. Because this book is a retread of all the others in this series: prophecy, set out, attacked ad nauseam - with ‘jokes' that really weren't funny coming from twelve year olds and are even less funny from sixteen year olds and the absolutely lovely addition of romance woes.

Sigh.