#this isn't as cohesive as I was for mark of athena

[the-algebra-thing]

just finished the house of hades and I liked it a whole lot. idk why I didn't expect to but I was so awed by the mark of athena that I think I was worried about how it was going to measure up, especially because I struggled so much with the first two in the heroes of olympus series. I thought the balance was really nice—I had a hard time with the first two because I knew how interesting the dynamic was going to be when we were eventually got all 7, which obviously slayed as they all hammered out their differences in the mark of athena. it is a fun narrative device to be able to just invent a quest that requires a specific few of your characters and send them out to have whatever relationship development you need with each other, and then have them assimilate that back into the group when they return; it was really sick to see them form a cohesive group like this by the end of the book. and then, when you take the core of the group away, the most experienced characters—a classic in this whole franchise thus far, moving the pieces around in fun new configurations—you get to watch it happen again.

in the house of hades, the little destination quests that move the main group away from and then back to the ship are also balanced out by a new and completely different setting: tartarus, where you get to see your two favorite characters, the most developed by far, experience new horrors even further beyond comprehension than they usually run into. their experience pushes the few boundaries that have even been set around the magic in this world, and it's mirrored upstairs in the ship, where hazel, then frank, then piper reach new heights in their respective abilities. this is that balance that struck me most about the book—the way percy and annabeth's journey mirrors the one above them. so much of the mark of athena was dominated by annabeth's themes and percy's daunting presence, and now they, in turn, follow everyone else's themes that are finally being properly developed now that we know enough about the new characters and their dynamics to really get into it.

jason, nico, and leo are one of my favorite things about the whole book—they share the last theme to crop up, one about home, and finding yours by listening to yourself. jason and nico travel the most obvious opposite paths in that sense, and it's interesting to watch them clash about it, but it's even more captivating to me to see how their relationship develops and most of all seems to bring about respect for one another, despite being headed in literal complete opposite directions on the thematic continuum. while we know percy hopes to settle down in new rome with annabeth once this is all done, trading the freedom that's brought him so much suffering for safety and security, jason realizes that he feels more at home at camp half-blood, where he is free of crushing rules and responsibility, than he ever did at camp jupiter. in fact, he decisively lets go of everything the romans put on him and decides for sure over the course of the house of hades that that's where he wants to go. nico is moving the other direction—the more he goes through, the more tired he gets of all of this, and the more he wants to disappear. we don't get his narration in this book so we only see him through everyone else's eyes, but the way house of hades develops his relationship with jason and to percy sets him up really well to narrate in the blood of olympus.

leo is, as always, in a league of his own—he is one of my favorites, and he finally gets some time alone in the spotlight in book 4. percy is just about as relevant to leo's story here as he is to jason's, and while the duality he has with jason isn't present, that's really the point. basically everyone catches an inferiority complex when you put them up next to percy jackson, and since leo already had that covered previously with his whole ass life and with jason, it's hit him extra hard. when he becomes attached to someone who breaks the usual system that he operates within—and whose system he breaks in return—he gains new perspective: if he had been a regular heroey hero like percy jackson or jason grace, this would've gone the same for calypso as it always does, but he is not. he is the mistake that breaks her cycle, a cycle that he realizes percy jackson has contributed to in the past. this new purpose, untethered from the group that makes him feel so out of place, and discarded by "real" heroes throughout history, helps him move past his doubt. in turn, percy jackson is in hell grappling with his own shortcomings. being a powerful hero doesn't safeguard you from passive cruelty; in fact, it makes it very easy to stumble into. he encounters the arai, who curse annabeth with calypso's bitter wish, and remembers he hasn't checked on the status of his promise to free her at all. he is guided through the pit by bob, whose memory he erased, and whom he then left to hades' care and never looked back. this tension and the moral quandary that evolves out of it is a main point on his and annabeth's journey. while leo is inspired to succeed where percy carelessly abandoned ship, percy realizes for the first time how many ships he's abandoned. I can't remember if it's quite lined up in the timeline, but it struck me as a fun way to flip some more stuff on its head.