The Lost Hero review

Summary: Jason has a problem.

He doesn't remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper. His best friend is a kid named Leo, and they're all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for "bad kids", as Leo puts it. What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret.

Her father, a famous actor, has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he's in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn't recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools.

His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What's troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper's gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god

My Thoughts: I was excited about The Lost Hero for the pure fact that it was the beginning of a new series that still took place in the same world as Riordan's previous series. I loved being able to see old characters, but still having a new story to marvel over. I do admit that initially, I eyed Jason, Piper, and Leo with pre-judged contempt (sorry). It's like when new characters show up on my TV shows. I need a few episodes before I'm at ease with the situation (or not). And its not that I wanted the new trio to "match" Percy, Annabeth, and Grover. I just wanted them to stand out in their own way. I didn't want their quest to be underwhelming.

And it definitely wasn't! There's a mystery that the main characters are trying to solve, both in relation to their quest and to their leader's identity. Thanks to my love of Greek mythology, I tried to solve the latter (I didn't want to "pre-guess" their quest), but to no avail until characters dropped huge hints near the end of the book.

In both mysteries, I was impressed by Riordan's abilities to take this series to the next level. Everything seemed elevated. More things were at stake. And he won me over with the three main characters. They each had something in their personalities that made them endearing. They all had something in their pasts that made me sympathize. And this is just the beginning. I know I am behind in the series, but I'm positive that I'm in for a wild ride with the next three books. Up next: The Son of Neptune.