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taotrooper) wrote2010-10-21 06:53 pm
taotrooper) wrote2010-10-21 06:53 pm
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I'm doing this again? Oh dammit, I'm broken
Actually I finished it over the weekend, but I was feeling too lazy to put it into teal deer. So consider this my first reaction post to The Lost Hero. Particularly, about the new characters and what I think of them, now that we're stuck with them for four more books.
Hmmm, where should I begin? Let's see, my expectations were low because this is the year of weird next-gen sequels, and the "main character" looked really dull. To be exact, the opinions after the online preview were:
Jason: SO DULL, WHY ARE YOU THE MAIN CHARACTER
Piper: Eh, could go anywhere, but still more interesting than Jason
Leo: Actually pretty neat. WHY ISN'T THIS KID THE MAIN ONE
Of course in the end it turned out the three of them are the main characters and the POV switches every two chapters. So that's pretty good. I do like Percy as a narrator like mad, but this method gave a lot of inner thoughts and flashbacks for what it would've been considered the love interest and the sidekick in similar books. By doing this, the three of them are equal in the story. I would've liked Annabeth's POV once during the previous series, after seeing these results. But yes, let's re-evaluate my opinions on the new trio.
Jason: ...I feel mean, but I still say he's the dullest of them all. Sorry, dude. It's harsh to be Percy's substitute, since he's funny and clever and so full of heart. Jason doesn't quite know how he feels about things most of the time, except worrying about leading his mates to a trap, or his memories coming back and making no sense, or hurting Piper by getting too involved with her. He's a nice guy, at least for now (we don't know if he'll change once he returns to normal), but still. Dull. But I'm okay with duller, sorta generic protagonists.
It's two things about him what bothered me the most, though:
a. Plotholes. Was he never considered for the first Great Prophecy? What, because he's Roman it doesn't count? It's obvious his story was pastede on yay, and I do like how it makes Thalia's background similar to Luke (i.e, crazy moms and feeling abandoned by dads), but it still breaks the PJO plot if you think about it.
b. Show, not tell! We're constantly told about the badassery, killing Kryos, phenomenal son-of-Jupiter powers, etc. But if you think about THIS quest and not his past, he barely does cool things twice with big baddies and he's not that much of a leader (and this he's aware of). I should be happy that he's not the BAMF all the time and that Leo and Piper save the day more often, but then I'm not that impressed with him. The text keeps telling me LOOK HE'S SO AWESOME AND GOOD-LOOKING ARE YOU LOVING HIM NOW and I'm all UH, WHATEVER.
Nothing personal, Jake. Perhaps you'll get better next year.
Piper: Just poking at the fandom, I saw almost no one liked Piper. But I liked her a lot! She has the most normal, non-tragic backstory of the three, which is refreshing in the sea of WTF THAT IS SO WRONG concerning the other two guys. She has parent problems but they're easy to relate to and she never actually ran away from home like most demikids (then again, she never had monsters unto her). Actually, she's pretty normal for demigod standards, especially child of Aphrodite standards. And she's smart and FIERCE! I loved how fierce she is. She solved most of her problems with words and persuasion in a series where pointy swords make the point across (shut up, I love that pun) and I think this compensates her physical weaknesses. What I like about characters like Piper or Rachel or Sally Jackson is that this canon has strong females who aren't 100% action girls. For every Annabeth and Clarisse and Thalia, we get one of those. This is remarkable. I don't get why people whine so much about her focus on Jason? She's 15, at that age it's normal to be stupidly attracted to someone because s/he's hot. Plus, I'd say her thoughts were 40% Jason, 60% her dad. Do you really think that an Annabeth POV wouldn't be OMG PERCY about 40% of the time? And now that we talk about that, I knew she wouldn't betray them ♥ Granted, I've played many Tales Of games so I know her type of trope by heart. I fucking love that she told them the truth and they're all HOLY SHIT LET'S SAVE HIM. Really. So she's awesome.
Leo: I LOVE LEO SO FUCKING MUCH ♥
I just. Love. Leo Valdez. He's the best. This comes as no surprise because I did think he was the best thing in the preview chapters, and I could see he was my kind of funny trickster idiot. What I didn't expect was that he had this incredibly terrible backstory that broke my heart to pieces. I'd say, in terms of nasty backstories that make you baw, better than Luke but worse than the Di Angelos. Yeah, and the fact that he's never gotten over his mom's death makes it so painful. But... Leo tries so hard to be cheerful (even if it's fake sometimes) and drop the manpain and move forward. I'm all for this kind of characters, who have more than enough reasons to be angstmuffins, but decide NOT to let it bring them down. Hell, nothing wins my heart faster than being that trope! And his insecurities and attitude about that plus his power of fire seem to make sense to me. He's lived scared of others and himself all his life, yet he really grows up in this story and learns to be an amazing person and a total badass. Really, I fucking love his mechanical gimmicks and witty plans versus Jason or Percy's sword shounentard ways. He's dorky and fun in spite of all. I'm... not sure I can continue this without gushing and quoting and pointing out almost every crowning moment of awesome of his. I just love him so much and I want to give him power tools and hug him forever. So let's stop. I even think he's my new favorite male character in this canon from now on.
...See, when I said this was the Apollo Justice equivalent of the Percy Jackson series, I wasn't expecting to get a favorite character in this one. This is like what happened with Klavier Gavin all over again, but with lot less sparkles and way more mechanical geekness.
Hmmm, you know, I should talk about the book itself in another post. Just ranting about the characters exhausted me.
But about the book itself, I squeed and enjoyed it a lot. Haters to the left, I say. And while I'm not entirely keen on the new plot or what it's doing to the Percy Jackson characters and universe? Hell yeah, I want more. Mostly formoar Leo the characters.
Hmmm, where should I begin? Let's see, my expectations were low because this is the year of weird next-gen sequels, and the "main character" looked really dull. To be exact, the opinions after the online preview were:
Jason: SO DULL, WHY ARE YOU THE MAIN CHARACTER
Piper: Eh, could go anywhere, but still more interesting than Jason
Leo: Actually pretty neat. WHY ISN'T THIS KID THE MAIN ONE
Of course in the end it turned out the three of them are the main characters and the POV switches every two chapters. So that's pretty good. I do like Percy as a narrator like mad, but this method gave a lot of inner thoughts and flashbacks for what it would've been considered the love interest and the sidekick in similar books. By doing this, the three of them are equal in the story. I would've liked Annabeth's POV once during the previous series, after seeing these results. But yes, let's re-evaluate my opinions on the new trio.
Jason: ...I feel mean, but I still say he's the dullest of them all. Sorry, dude. It's harsh to be Percy's substitute, since he's funny and clever and so full of heart. Jason doesn't quite know how he feels about things most of the time, except worrying about leading his mates to a trap, or his memories coming back and making no sense, or hurting Piper by getting too involved with her. He's a nice guy, at least for now (we don't know if he'll change once he returns to normal), but still. Dull. But I'm okay with duller, sorta generic protagonists.
It's two things about him what bothered me the most, though:
a. Plotholes. Was he never considered for the first Great Prophecy? What, because he's Roman it doesn't count? It's obvious his story was pastede on yay, and I do like how it makes Thalia's background similar to Luke (i.e, crazy moms and feeling abandoned by dads), but it still breaks the PJO plot if you think about it.
b. Show, not tell! We're constantly told about the badassery, killing Kryos, phenomenal son-of-Jupiter powers, etc. But if you think about THIS quest and not his past, he barely does cool things twice with big baddies and he's not that much of a leader (and this he's aware of). I should be happy that he's not the BAMF all the time and that Leo and Piper save the day more often, but then I'm not that impressed with him. The text keeps telling me LOOK HE'S SO AWESOME AND GOOD-LOOKING ARE YOU LOVING HIM NOW and I'm all UH, WHATEVER.
Nothing personal, Jake. Perhaps you'll get better next year.
Piper: Just poking at the fandom, I saw almost no one liked Piper. But I liked her a lot! She has the most normal, non-tragic backstory of the three, which is refreshing in the sea of WTF THAT IS SO WRONG concerning the other two guys. She has parent problems but they're easy to relate to and she never actually ran away from home like most demikids (then again, she never had monsters unto her). Actually, she's pretty normal for demigod standards, especially child of Aphrodite standards. And she's smart and FIERCE! I loved how fierce she is. She solved most of her problems with words and persuasion in a series where pointy swords make the point across (shut up, I love that pun) and I think this compensates her physical weaknesses. What I like about characters like Piper or Rachel or Sally Jackson is that this canon has strong females who aren't 100% action girls. For every Annabeth and Clarisse and Thalia, we get one of those. This is remarkable. I don't get why people whine so much about her focus on Jason? She's 15, at that age it's normal to be stupidly attracted to someone because s/he's hot. Plus, I'd say her thoughts were 40% Jason, 60% her dad. Do you really think that an Annabeth POV wouldn't be OMG PERCY about 40% of the time? And now that we talk about that, I knew she wouldn't betray them ♥ Granted, I've played many Tales Of games so I know her type of trope by heart. I fucking love that she told them the truth and they're all HOLY SHIT LET'S SAVE HIM. Really. So she's awesome.
Leo: I LOVE LEO SO FUCKING MUCH ♥
I just. Love. Leo Valdez. He's the best. This comes as no surprise because I did think he was the best thing in the preview chapters, and I could see he was my kind of funny trickster idiot. What I didn't expect was that he had this incredibly terrible backstory that broke my heart to pieces. I'd say, in terms of nasty backstories that make you baw, better than Luke but worse than the Di Angelos. Yeah, and the fact that he's never gotten over his mom's death makes it so painful. But... Leo tries so hard to be cheerful (even if it's fake sometimes) and drop the manpain and move forward. I'm all for this kind of characters, who have more than enough reasons to be angstmuffins, but decide NOT to let it bring them down. Hell, nothing wins my heart faster than being that trope! And his insecurities and attitude about that plus his power of fire seem to make sense to me. He's lived scared of others and himself all his life, yet he really grows up in this story and learns to be an amazing person and a total badass. Really, I fucking love his mechanical gimmicks and witty plans versus Jason or Percy's sword shounentard ways. He's dorky and fun in spite of all. I'm... not sure I can continue this without gushing and quoting and pointing out almost every crowning moment of awesome of his. I just love him so much and I want to give him power tools and hug him forever. So let's stop. I even think he's my new favorite male character in this canon from now on.
...See, when I said this was the Apollo Justice equivalent of the Percy Jackson series, I wasn't expecting to get a favorite character in this one. This is like what happened with Klavier Gavin all over again, but with lot less sparkles and way more mechanical geekness.
Hmmm, you know, I should talk about the book itself in another post. Just ranting about the characters exhausted me.
But about the book itself, I squeed and enjoyed it a lot. Haters to the left, I say. And while I'm not entirely keen on the new plot or what it's doing to the Percy Jackson characters and universe? Hell yeah, I want more. Mostly for
no subject
And I didn't hate Jason! That's already a plus!
But so much word on Piper and Leo, I just. Leo! Piper! I almost wish THEY were the romantic couple except that I loved their BFFery soooooooooo much. Now I wish we could see how they were before the Mist added Jason to their memories.
no subject
Now that you mention the Mist from the beginning, I'm thinking that the one behind it is Hera and not Jason. It's too much of a coincidence that while everyone was fine with suddenly Jason there, the ones who truly believed to be close to him were precisely the other two prophecy heroes. That seems a bit convenient, like it would help to her plan to get the seven to get along. Actually, it's an interesting non-coincidence as well that Piper and Leo got sent to the same school (also, Jane was the one who had the idea and she worked for Medea.) Actually, I also wonder if Piper and Leo were friends at all before the Mist, or it's part of the project to get the three of them close. They never talked about non-Jason memories in Wilderness, and they were all thinking in the lines of "oh, I don't have a boyfriend" and "oh, I don't have a BFF" as if they were friends only because they were both hanging with Jason.
...this went so offtopic.
no subject
And yeah, I also think that it's Hera - or the gods, at least - who did the Mist thing, because it is too much coincidence otherwise.