Review: The Trials of Apollo Openly Marked the End of Sanity (Spoilers)

If you thought my review of The Heroes of Olympus was bad, this one is going to be much worse. The Trials of Apollo was the gayest series in the Riordanverse (next to Magnus Chase and The Sun and the Star) and while it stuck farily well to the plot (thankfully it had a plot), sometimes would get sidetracked into talking about LGBTQ+ matters. If you thought that was bad enough, it gets progressively worse as the series comes to its end.

#1: The Hidden Oracle

Let’s just get one thing out of the way. I know that in the original Greek myths, Apollo was what we would consider today as bisexual. He would chase after men just as much as he would chase after women. In many cases, all the Greek gods were like that and it severely affected the ancient Greek culture. Archaeologists have found plenty of artifacts that prove that Ancient Greece was a place of vice. Not only was homosexuality considered okay, but it was also often a big part of their religious rites (even more disturbing was that pedophilia was considered okay as well; the most famous pedophile in Greek mythology being Zeus who kidnapped a young boy (Ganymede) and made him the immortal wine bearer of the gods and male lover).

With that out of the way, it would make sense why Rick Riordan – being the enlightened Leftist that he is who just wants to groom *ahem* educate your children – would choose Apollo as the main character of a book series with a lot of LGBTQ+ representation. Throughout the book, Apollo whinily reminds us of his relationships with both Daphene and Hyacinthus and wishes he could have such a relationship again. He also comments a lot on one of the Brazilian campers (who might I remind you is a minor while Apollo is still technically a 2000-year-old god) being hot and is seemingly quite proud of his son, Will Solace, dating Nico di Angelo.

Oh, yeah. Nico’s in this book and since Riordan has established him as an LGBTQ+ character in the last book for no other reason than to please the devil (Mickey Mouse) that obviously means that we have to be reminded constantly that he’s dating Will. I don’t care what the Solangelo shippers say to me in the comments, this relationship isn’t cute or endearing, it’s incredibly creepy that we’re supposed to be supportive of a 50, 60-year-old author writing about the sexualities of two minors. It’s almost like the Left wants us to become like the Ancient Greeks where we allow every sort of debauchery to happen in public. It doesn’t take a lot of speculation, either. All you have to do is see footage from a gay pride parade in June to see that we’ve already reached the point where public orgies are acceptable.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, one of the only good things I can say about this book is that it at least had a plot. The plot of course is that Nero has basically become a god and has been running things behind the scenes during all the wars that have happened in the last books and he must be stopped by Apollo. In my opinion, Nero was the perfect villian for this story because he is basically Leftism defined. In history, Nero was one of the most disgusting Roman emperors, having slept with his own mother, then having her killed, burning Rome to the ground for the fun of it, lighting garden parties with the bodies of burning Christians (who were burned alive), severely persecuting Christians by murdering them in a variety of ways, the most famous of his victims being the apostles Peter and Paul, etc. While we haven’t reached that point yet, Leftist basically want us to. I was honestly surprised that Rick Riordan didn’t make the persecution of Christians look like a good thing.

There was one good joke in the book where Meg McAffery is claimed as Demeter’s daughter and when the goddess’s symbol (a sickle and wheat) pops up over her head one kid yells, “She’s a communist!” That got a laugh out of me.

#2: The Dark Prophecy

Leo Valdez is in this book and having unfortunately survived the events of Blood of Olympus through the magical plot-convenience medicine plays a big role in this book…by being Apollo and Meg’s taxi service. You would think that after dying in the last series and coming back that Leo would have come back with a classier sense of humor, but nope. Instead, he still makes annoying jokes about women and even calls his new girlfriend, Calypso, “Mamacita”, which from my research is a Spanish slang word that literally means “little mother”, but is more often used to call a woman “hot mama” or a hot babe. Calypso knows this and tells him repeatedly not to call her that. While I’m not usually on board with books making guys look like idiots and having female characters step on them, I’m actually somewhat relieved that he’s overshadowed by the females in this book because it means I didn’t have to put up with this character any more. I would also like to ask why Rick Riordan made the only Hispanic character in the book a total sleaze-bag? How’s that not racist? Was it meant as a commentary on what happens to young men when they don’t have a father in the house? What’s happening here?

Unfortunately, the women in this book are all lesbians (except for Meg and Calypso). Once again, while homosexuality was okay in Ancient Greece, why do we need so many gay characters? It’s not appropriate for a kids’ book to be telling kids all about how great lesbian relationships are. I realize that some kids have two moms or two dads, but that still doesn’t make it right. Stop grooming the children. If their parents want to tell them about that, that’s up to them; not the author.

In The Dark Prophecy, we’re introduced to a new villian, the emperor Commodus. With a name like that there were obviously many toilet jokes that were mildly funny, but were overshadowed by Apollo’s memories of being Commodus’s boyfriend. Throughout the book, Apollo is commenting on how hot Commodus is and how he regrets that he’ll have to kill him or maim his “beautiful face”. Once again: STOP GROOMING THE CHILDREN BY TALKING ABOUT THIS!

#3: The Burning Maze

Other than Apollo sometimes mentioning his bisexual-ness I guess, The Burning Maze was the least LGBTQ+ book in the five-book series. Leo isn’t in the book except for a cameo at the end, but Jason and Piper are in it and that leads to one of the dumbest plot twist deaths ever.

Piper is now an angry feminist who needs to find herself and her identity since her and her dad are moving back to the Cherokee reservation and has broken up with Jason. Jason is at a boarding school for boys and seems happy until Apollo, Meg, and Piper come in and tell him he has to quest with them now. This leads him to get killed by Caligula (the new villian and third member of the evil Triumvirate) and this is the dumbest death in the series because it makes no sense. Jason has already been established as being on of the strongest demigods in the fandom, even rivaling Percy Jackson. He has seven years of fighting experience and has honed his powers to a T. And how does he die? A lucky shot with a few arrows and a spear to the back. I swear, if every demigod died like that, the Big Three kids would’ve been taken out easily in the original series and Kronos would’ve won easily. His entire death just seemed forced and very much like Rick Riordan was just trying to raise the stakes somehow.

#4: The Tyrant’s Tomb

Caligula and Commodus are coming to destroy Camp Jupiter and they have a zombie king on their side. Already Camp Jupiter has been decimated and have very few campers to defend the camp. Reyna and Frank are trying to keep calm and carry on, but still have time to discuss feelings with Apollo, who has been scratched by a zombie and is now dying. On top of that, we’re introduced to Lavinia Asimov, the lebian who is in love with a Pioson Oak tree. If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. She’s in love with the dryad of the oak. If this isn’t the most ham-fisted way to introduce a lesbian relationship to kids (and maybe plant sexuality…I don’t know), then I don’t know what is.

Reyna’s character is also thoroughly destroyed in this book as she joins the Hunters of Artemis because she has given up finding a boyfriend and it’s suggested that she’s now Aro/Ace. In other words, she’s a normal person who’s lonely and over the dating scene. Why are we introducing this to kids? We know the dating scene is crap and many of us do feel lonely because of it. We don’t need to make a sexuality out of it so that kids can turn that into their entire identity/personality.

#5: The Tower of Nero

Rick Riordan did a good job with the final fight scene between Apollo and Nero and finallly with Python, but this is the book where we get the most forced diversity. We get a cliff hanger that three years after it’s publication would lead to The Sun and the Star, the gay romance novel between Nico and Will that I refuse to read and we get to catch up with all our lesbian, bisexual, and Aro/Ace characters. Meg now gets to live in a giant mansion that the dryads built for her in Southern California (which the IRS is going to have some questions for her), and Apollo is now a god again. Percy and Annabeth are together and in college at New Rome University, but lament the fact that there are no co-ed dorms for freshmen. We also find out that Chiron knew about not only the Greeks and Romans, but also about the Egyptians (Kane Chronicles) and the Norse that live near-by (which opens up some plot holes, but okay).

All in all, while I enjoyed the books, I hated the diversity and felt that this was an example of Rick Riordan’s Leftist leanings which have destroyed the quality of his writing. It relied too much on “Remember this character that you loved from the previous books?!” and the forced representation really took away from the story and I could’ve done without it. I’ll give him some grace for at least including a plot, but many of the sub-plots sucked. This was not his best work and it’s safe to say that from here-on-out, he should’ve just stopped with The Trials of Apollo because the rest is just a souless cash grab leaning on the success of his original work. While the original Percy Jackson and the Olympians series was written in a time where we were sane and thus had more conservative leanings, the rest is garbage and you can tell that as the climate in the publishing industry got more woke, so did the books. Camp Half-Blood was a fun place to be for a time, but looking back on it now, I wonder why I ever liked some of these books and some of these characters.

Until next time,

M.J.