The Battle of The Labyrinth (2008) Review // Kronos Isn’t Actually The Villain???

The Battle of The Labyrinth – Rick Riordan

Book 4/5 “Percy Jackson and the Olympians“

Fantasy, (Greek) Mythology, Middle Grade

Buddy read with Destiny

Publication Date: March 6th, 2008

Trigger Warnings: loss of a loved one (past), grief, high places/heights, fear of spiders, misogyny, anxiety, manipulation of children, depression, anxiety, dark/underground spaces, small spaces, physical fights, talk of parental abandonment

The Lightning Thief | Review | 3 ⭐

Sea of Monsters | Review | 3 ⭐

The Titan’s Curse | Review | 3 ⭐

Character Guide ⇩

►Percy “Seaweed Brain” Jackson → 14 (turns 15 in last chapter), Dyslexic, ADHD, lives in Manhattan, loves his mum, sarcastic, black hair, green eyes
►Annabeth Chase “Wise Girl” → 14/15, grey eyes, blonde, Athena’s daughter, has been at Camp since she was 7
►Grover Underwood → 30 (looks 14/15ish), Likes enchiladas, vegetarian, curly brown hair, Satyr, Keeper
►Juniper → Grover’s girlfriend, dryad (wood nymph), her tree is a Juniper bush
►Tyson → 6 foot 3, Cyclops, Homeless orphan (children of nature spirit and a god), immune to fire, son of Poseidon
►Mr Brunner/Chiron → Latin Teacher/Activities Director at Camp Half-Blood (currently not at camp), brown eyes
►Mr D/Dionysus → Curly black hair, God of wine & Camp Director, Zeus (his father) can’t drink wine
►Luke Castellan → maybe 19, a scar on his face, Hermes’ son,
►Thalia → Turned into a pine tree at age 12 (roughly 19 now because she kept growing slowly but actually according to Apollo she’s 15 (16 in a week, per ch 4), became a Hunter of Artemis, wears punk clothes, has a dead alcoholic mother
►Rachel Elizabeth Dare → 14?, red head, can see through the mist, mortal, can draw with her hands and her feet
►Nico Di Angelo → “The Ghost King”,11, lived in DC as a kid,
►The Oracle → the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python, lives in the attic
►Argus → Blonde, a bunch of blue eyes, Camp H-B Head of Security
►Sally Jackson → Percy’s mum, works at a candy shop, parents died in a plane crash when she was young, too good for Poseidon tbh
►Clarisse La Rue → Daughter of Ares (War God)
►Chris Rodriguez → Hermes cabin, driven mad by the labyrinth, Hispanic
►Mrs O’Leary → Hell hound, I love her a lot
►Blackjack → Percy rescued him “a few years ago”, likes sugar cubes, black pegasus
►Calypso → Almond eyes, caramel coloured hair, looks 15/16, lives on Ogygia, Atlas’s daughter, punished to live on Ogygia forever, cursed to fall in love with a hero who will never stay with her on her island (every 1000 years or so)
►Council of Cloven Elders → a bunch of pompous old satyrs
►Pan → the lost god of the wild
►Hera → Goddess of marriage, Zeus’ wife
►Janus → has 2 faces, God of Doorways, beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, passages, and endings
►Kampê → jailor of Cyclops & hundred handed ones in Tartarus, works for Kronos
►Briares → Hundred handed one, jailed by Kampê, hella depressed, his brothers faded
►The Labyrinth → can lead you almost anywhere, reads your thoughts, designed to fool you/ trick you and kill you. If you can make the labyrinth work for you, it could lead you to Pan (the wild god).

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 

“I hope the dead like root beer.”

RANDOM THOUGHTS

↣ I feel like Clarisse is one of those character who never fully get to know in this series but we do get to know her a bit more in this book and I really enjoyed that. She’s a really interesting character and I wish she was front and center more often!

↣ Don’t mind me having a little cry about how shocked percy was to find a demigod who lived past being a teenager/ early 20s

↣ I’ve never really noticed this in the past because I usually focus more on Percy when I read this series but I was thinking about Kronos and it occurred to me that I don’t really think of him as the main villain. When I think of the main villain or antagonist of the series I think of Luke so I’m wondering if that was intentional or just a small flaw of the writing since Kronos doesn’t become a more imposing force until the end of the series.

↣ Kronos is technically Percy’s grandfather and I think that’s wild

↣ I loved tht moment in the labyrinth where Percy was like, damn we really gotta leave but I don’t wanna leave this 100 handed dude here because Tyson will cry for weeks and he’s not about to let that happen. It’s loving Tyson and Percy hours 💕

↣ I think I’ve already mentioned this when we read one of the previous books, but there was a huge conversation about the illegal breeding and crossbreeding of animals, as well as inhumane treatment of animals in chapter 8 and I’m living for it. There’s also a lot of conversation and themes around the environment in this series (obviously because of Grover and Percy) and I’m really realising through this re-read, just how influential Rick Riordan’s books were to me as a kid. When I read this series for the first time is when I actually started thinking about the treatment of animals and the environment properly and started taking notice of it in my life, and I’m just now noticing that Riordan and his books are probably the reason why. Absolutely wild.

↣ The Mt. Saint Helens plotline tho… 1/ Percy got literal lava thrown at him 2/ Boy went nuts and blew up a volcano which I for one cannot wait to see on the show and 3/ Poor Calypso

↣ You know what’s fun? THinkgin about Annabeth writing the euology for her best friend. This poor girl is going through IT.

Rachel: “I played dumb”
Annabeth: “was it hard?”

↣ Okay, so yes that was a tremendously sick burn but also can these girls just be friends already please!

↣ Wait, why was Percy the only person even slightly concerned about Nico?? Even Chiron was liek, well if the kid dies he dies. Like, I’m sorry what?? He’s 11???

↣ I feel like there have been some points in each book where certain scenes have felt very coincidental or where Rick went, oh yeah I still need to sum up this plot point, or where I, at least sort of forgot about side characters in the story. Sort of like the scene where Percy finds Grover’s hat and they all have to go and find Grover and Tyson and then we have the very short (totally could’ve been longer) Pan scene and then we’re straight back into Kronos rising and then we pretty much immediately have a big battle scene once they get to camp.

THIS IS A NICO APPRECIATION POST

↣ Honestly, I can’t wait to get to know Nico more in later books because I find him so interesting and I think he’s going to have some amazing character development!

↣ Nico knows when people die, he gets a feeling, and honestly that might be the saddest thing I’ve heard all day.

↣ There isn’t even a cabin or a table for Nico at camp. There also isn’t a place for Hades at Olympus. So, they can have cabins for gods who will iterally never have kids like Artemis but not one for Hades who literally has multiple children???

Who’s your favourite PJO character?
Who do you think is the main villain of the series?

Goodreads | StoryGraph | Instagram | Letterboxd | TV Time | Twitter | Tumblr