'The Throne of Fire' Book Review

Throne of Fire
Rick Riordan
452 pg., U.S. Hardcover
Disney | Hyperion
3/5 Stars



I am immensely disappointed in this book. After reading The Red Pyramid, I wasn't exactly ecstatic to read this book, but as the hype around it increased, I became excited. When I got my hands on the book, I thoroughly enjoyed the first 100 pages. Then, things got a bit confusing, dull, and out of hand. The novel was a poor sequel, but Riordan seems to produce horrid sequels. Sea of Monsters is crap compared to The Lightning Thief, and I worry that The Son of Neptune will be worse than The Lost Hero, if Riordan continues this pattern of bad seconds...with his book, I wouldn't like second helpings.
The only thing that I think was good about this was the character progression. Carter and Sadie were sort of annoying in the first book, and they still sort of are, but they have loosened up. I just feel that Rick Riordan is not in touch with teenage dialogue. He likes to use "crap" a lot, which is tremendously unrealistic for a fourteen-year-old boy...trust me. I dislike Sadie's dialogue, especially. Sadie is from England (I have no clue why he had to put her in the UK...) and Riordan definitely overuses the term "bloody". Not even Ron Weasley, who is seen using the word multiple times, uses it nearly as much as this thirteen-year-old snooty little brat.
I suppose I like the gods, and their portrayal, but I think that the sequence between Sadie and her friends, and Nekhbet and Babi. It was over the course of about twenty pages, and I think that action scenes should be short and sweet, unless it is a climactic battle like in Harry Potter.