Book Review: The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4) by Rick Riordan

Title: The House of Hades

Author: Rick Riordan

Summary: At the conclusion of The Mark of Athena, Annabeth and Percy tumble into a pit leading straight to the Underworld. The other five demigods have to put aside their grief and follow Percy’s instructions to find the mortal side of the Doors of Death. If they can fight their way through the Gaea’s forces, and Percy and Annabeth can survive the House of Hades, then the Seven will be able to seal the Doors both sides and prevent the giants from raising Gaea. But, Leo wonders, if the Doors are sealed, how will Percy and Annabeth be able to escape?

They have no choice. If the demigods don’t succeed, Gaea’s armies will never die. They have no time. In about a month, the Romans will march on Camp Half-Blood. The stakes are higher than ever in this adventure that dives into the depths of Tartarus. -Goodreads

Review:

**Warning: This book was just recently released, and I REALLY don’t want to say anything to spoil you, so I’m just going to put spoiler alerts up here in case I say something spoil-worthy.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!  Unless, y’know… you’ve already read HoH.  In that case, hop on board the Crazy Train!**

AHHH!!!  It’s here!!!  I OWN it!

When I saw this beautiful book leaned against my door, I was so frickin’ EXCITED, man!  I spent the first five minutes with the package, just hugging it.  THEN, I spent the next five minutes (after I opened it, revealing my beautiful copy of HoH) hugging the book, fangirling, pacing, and squealing, trying to share my excitement with everyone!

 Pre-opening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post-opening!  Isn’t that awesome?!

Might I say, first, that I absolutely loved the dedication?  It was amazing and unique and freaking EVIL!

HoH is written in the POVs of Hazel, Annabeth, Leo, Percy, Frank, Jason, and Piper, and putting the book down was just painful, man.  Even to take these notes!

Leo’s POV was my favorite!  He’s always so funny:“Then there was Hazel’s half brother, Nico di Angelo.  Dang, that kid gave Leo the freaky-deakies.”  BWAHAHA!!!

I think it was in HoH that I really realized who my favorite character is (LEO!).

So, in the last book, I wasn’t too crazy about Frank, but in HoH, I grew to like him more.  I understood where he was coming from a bit more.

Now, a couple of posts ago, I told you that I had a problem with the book–not the story, The House of Hades, but the actual physical book.  I swear, it’s a reader’s worst, most hellish nightmare.

So I’m reading, and reading, and reading happily and I’m on page 184, in Annabeth’s POV.  I move to page 185 and realize something’s off.  All of the sudden, we were talking about Hazel.  What?!  So I look back to page 184 and realize there’s no period at the end of the last sentence.  I’m pretty confused at this point and am kind of freaking out.

I look back to what I assume is page 185 to see… it isn’t page 185.  It’s PAGE 217.

I jumped from page 184 to page 217.

Wha… Wha… NOOOOOOOO!!!  This isn’t possible!  H-H-HOW?!?!  THIRTY-THREE PAGES MISSING!  GONE!  THIRTY-THREE PAGES MISSING FROM MY BELOVED!  The book I was freaking out about, the book I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR!  MISSING THIRTY-THREE PAGES!

And, of course, I’m missing critical pages (well, every page is a critical page :D), so I’m stuck on another freakin’ cliffhanger.

Grrr…

I went to Amazon immediately and filed for a return.  Then, straight after, I called my local bookstore and had the guy check the copy to make sure the pages were all there before having him place it on hold for me.

I was SO disappointed!  I had plans to stay up reading this book till all hours and then… reality slapped me hard.

Here’s a picture of the book where it skipped from Annabeth’s POV to Hazel’s POV.  It’s not very focused, but I think you can clearly see where it says Annabeth and where it says Hazel:

Anyway, I decided I couldn’t wait till the next day to pick up HoH from the book store, so I hurried to the bookstore before it closed to pick up Copy #2.

When I got there, I explained the situation to one of the employees, who promptly made a funny comment about Amazon, which I’ve decided to keep to myself 😀

This may sound crazy, but I got pretty attached to Copy #1!  I was really reluctant to return it.  Sound crazy?  Yeah…

Has something like that ever happened to you?  Did any of you guys get a defective copy of HoH?

ANYWAY!  Back to the review!

Something was revealed that knocked my socks off!  I was so shocked that I literally jumped out of my seat and started pacing, snapping my fingers, and saying this repeatedly: “Ooooh!  Oooooh!!!”

Of course, and unfortunately, I ran into a spoiler on the Internet, which sucked because I was trying to be so careful about what I read online while I was reading HoH.  It wasn’t too big of a spoiler, but I was pretty sad that I’d stumbled onto it.  And there were no spoiler alerts on what I was reading, so I just read on.  DX

When I had a hundred pages left, I began to feel sad because the series is almost over!  The last installment is coming out next fall!  Half of me is excited because, y’know, it’s the Heroes of Olympus!  Der!  But part of me doesn’t want next fall to come because I just want to make the suspense and the excitement last.  Does that make sense?

I got pretty emotional, teehee (yes, I cried!) and seriously began thinking about just putting the book down right there and finishing it when we got closer to The Blood of Olympus’ release.  (That’s what book 5 is called!)  Of course, there were several flaws in that plan, like I could run into a billion other spoilers in the next year.  So as you can see, I finished it!

In the end, I give The House of Hades 1,000,000,000/1,000,000,000 stars!  Is that allowed?  *Grumbles* Fine.  I give HoH 5/5 stars, though!  It was beautifully written, and I absolutely loved it!  Do you have any favorite parts?  Let me know!