House of Hades Book Review

Heroes of Olympus: The House of Hades

Review by Angeluz Kaitlene M. Pingol, age 17, 12 – ABM – AM1[pic 1]

The House of Hades is a kind of fantasy fiction book that focuses on Greek and Roman Mythologies and is written by Rick Riordan, an American author. This book focuses on the adventures of seven demigods: Percy, Annabeth, Leo, Piper, Jason, Frank, and Hazel, and their quest to save the world from the evil mother earth Gaea.

The House of Hades is a continuation of the previous book, Mark of Athena, where in the author left a major twist and cliffhanger: Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus. The book evolves on the challenges and obstacles faced by the couple in order to go to the Doors of Death and escape Tartarus.

There are no chapter titles in the book. Each chapter has a name of one of the main characters and is also written in Roman Numerals. There are 78 chapters all in all. The book features third person narration of all seven protagonists in no particular order.

The plot of the book mainly evolves on how the main characters, who are called the “Prophecy of Seven” in the book, close the doors of death to prevent monsters from coming back to life instantly. What really stood out amongst the characters is their teamwork. Percy and Annabeth face a lot of challenges and obstacles in Tartarus while on their way to the Doors of Death. Meanwhile, the other protagonists have their own battle and encounter many monsters while on their way to the House of Hades – where the Doors of Death are located in the mortal world. This shows that we can accomplish anything as long as we work together as a team.

Another theme that stood out is good versus evil. The gods and demigods are the good and Gaea and her minions are the evil. This book shows that the good always win against evil.

This book shows the more action-packed side of the series. In this book, almost all of the happenings and encounters of the protagonists mainly consists of battles, some of which they are almost killed. Nevertheless, the author still manages to make the plot humorous because of the dialogues and attitude of the characters.

What I really like about this book (and the other books of the series) is that there is a glossary of terms on the back part. The glossary consists of the Greek and Roman terms used that the readers are not familiar with. This is very helpful because it will serve as a guide to the readers as they read the book.

Another thing I really like is how the author constructed the plot. One can never really guess what comes next when reading this book because there sure are a lot of plot twists, which makes the story exciting and not boring to read. This book is definitely not cliché where you can predict what will happen, but a book where many plot twists will surprise you.