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[Warning: I will be cussing a lot in this review. The book is middle-grade. My review is not.

Also, there will be spoilers near the end (they should be pretty avoidable).]

I am not fucking okay.

This book made me ugly-cry, and laugh out loud, and scream when my parents weren’t home. Not kidding, I literally punched the sofa. Because emotions.

I’m going to be honest, I literally did not remember what happened in The Tyrant’s Tomb. Nothing. I wasn’t nearly as invested in Trials of Apollo as I was in the Heroes of Olympus series, which remains my favorite out of Rick Riordan’s books.

But I read this book so fucking intensely. It was not okay. I'm not okay.

Oh wait, I said that already.

I’M STILL NOT FUCKING OKAY OH MY GOD ASLFKJASLKDGJADSLKFJASDLKGJDASLKGJSDFJKL WHAT THE FUCK. WHY RICK RIORDAN?

Okay. I’m going to try and type coherently. Apologies.



I was very surprised by the pacing of this book. Generally, Rick Riordan’s books establish a journey and the obstacles that come with that journey, and then there’s a climactic battle scene near the end, which may or may not end in a cliffhanger (FUCK YOU MARK OF ATHENA).

What Tower of Nero did was it started the battle 30 PERCENT OF THE WAY IN. 30. PERCENT. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH SLEEP I LOST STRESSING ABOUT THIS? LITERALLY THE ENTIRE BOOK WAS A HUGE BATTLE AND IT HURT MY BRAIN CELL.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that other than the destruction of my emotions, so I’m not complaining about the pacing. I’m just pointing out that it was very different and it took me by surprise. I couldn't stop myself after I started reading. And that was an issue because I had homework to do and I wasn’t doing it.

I won’t go too far into the plot and characters, because this is the last book in the third series, so I mean...the basic idea should be pretty familiar to people. And, like I said at the beginning, there’s spoilers for the other two serieses and the first four books of ToA, so...not a good idea to keep reading if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

First thing I want to incoherently scream over talk about: Solangelo. MY BABIES. MY BEAUTIFUL BEANS. THIS IS ONE OF MY TOP OTPS IN EVER AND I WILL NEVER LET GO OF THEM.



LOOK AT THEM. LOOK AT MY PURE CHILDREN.

Nico deserved his happiness. He deserved Will to help him and heal him and the pure PERFECTION of this relationship is making me fangirl so fucking hard. Like, Rick Riordan pretty much admitted that Nico had been through too much shit. And properly wrote that mental health representation. Which made me cry for my poor baby Nico. And then I cried more because of his relationship with Will.

“He had been born in Mussolini’s Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He’d emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He’d overcome everyone’s distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He’d been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He’d wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he’d struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man.
Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.�

I literally -
That paragraph is so long. And it’s not even going into Nico’s backstory in detail. My precious child.

I’m still incoherent. Sorry to everyone reading this. There’s going to be much more screaming and stuttering and internal struggle. I literally need to obsess over every detail.

"Will sat next to Nico and put an apple on his empty plate. “Eat something.�
“Hmph,� Nico said, though he leaned into Will ever so slightly."

MAY I POINT OUT THAT IF YOU THROW AN APPLE AT SOMEONE IN ANCIENT GREECE YOU’RE ASKING THEM TO MARRY YOU.
RICK RIORDAN IS THIS CANON?
CAN I HAVE WEDDING FANART?
CAN WE HAVE A SOLANGELO BOOK OF WILL AND NICO ARGUING JUST DOING EVERYTHING TOGETHER?
*AGGRESSSIVE PTERODACTYL SCREECHING*

“If he’s too tired, he might teleport us into a vat of Cheez Whiz in Venezuela.�
“Okay…� said Nico. “We didn’t end up in the vat.�
“Pretty close,� Will said. “Definitely in the middle of Venezuela’s biggest Cheez Whiz processing plant."
"That was one time," Nico grumbled.�

I WANT THIS SCENE PLEASE

"Nico smirked. “Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.�
“Could you not make a big deal about it?� Will asked."

I LITERALLY DO NOT CARE THAT WILL IS A HUMAN FLASHLIGHT.
THAT’S NOT THE IMPORTANT PART.
THE IMPORTANT PART IS THAT NICO INTRODUCED WILL AS HIS BOYFRIEND EVEN THOUGH IN HOUSE OF HADES HE COULDN’T EVEN ADMIT THAT HE WAS GAY.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND THE ACCEPTANCE AND THE PRIDE AND -
*more screeching*

I SHIP SOLANGELO SO FUCKING HARD AND IT’S NOT NORMAL. AM I NORMAL? AM I SANE?

ahahahahahahahahaha definitely not.

MY BABIES ARE SO PRECIOUS AND I LOVE THEM SO FUCKING MUCH I JUST CAN’T EVEN PUT IT INTO WORDS.

CAN WE HAVE A NICO BOOK UNCLE RICK??? PLEASE????



IF YOU DO NOT GIVE US THIS I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND TAKE YOUR OREOS.

Right. That’s out there now. Next opinion.

The battle. That was a long battle. It was intense, terrifying, and painful. After the last two battles/the last two books, I was not ready for this. Not at all. There were more lives at stake. There were more people. There was more tension and more good anger than I have felt for a book since�*checks watch* like two or three months ago? It’s been too long since I had a book that made me so fucking invested.

This physically hurt me. There was so much going on and I just -
I couldn’t keep track of everything. It was one thing to another thing to another thing to oh shit there’s a problem to FUCK to there’s another thing to NOW WHAT IS IT to another thing to I think I know this person to wait is this a fucking plot twist to another thing to -
WHAT.
And then repeat.

I could barely keep up with the pain and the angst and the intensity. There were old characters fighting, new characters in the mix, lots of cameos, confusion, and chaos. Lots of sass.

Oh yes. The sass. It would not be a Rick Riordan book without the sass. Apollo’s sarcasm has grown so far beyond his stupidity and whining from the first book. Meg’s levels of *annoyed* have matured along with her. And don’t even get me started on everyone else. We’re lucky Persassy Jackson wasn’t here.

I got so excited when Seaweed Brain’s name was mentioned. But it turned out he wasn’t actually there until the end. Which was disappointing. But then we saw ALL OF THE SEVEN (except for Jason but I will scream about that later).

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t remember most of what happened in the series. I didn’t enjoy the first book that much, the second book was confusing, I have traumatic memories of the third book, and I just didn’t remember the fourth. So it was a little hard to read at first because I didn’t remember anything except for super important events.



Also, I just didn’t care about Meg and Apollo in the beginning. I love them now, sure, but at first I was just so annoyed.

MY BABIES HAVE GROWN UP. I’m still not an Apollo fan because he just cannot compare to Seaweed Brain or the Seven or Reyna or Nico, but I loved how his narrative developed.

The maturity was so amazing in this book. I hated Apollo so much in the first book and Meg got on my nerves. They were so immature and bratty and annoying. But Tower of Nero really showed how much they’d grown and changed since then and it made me so proud. That character development was both slow and subtle but also so insane and obvious that I just loved it so much. I loved it.

Apollo was so much more understanding and generous now, and even though he did have that ~annoying godly flair~, it was so much stronger and more sympathetic at this point than it was at the beginning.

And Meg. Don’t even get me started. This girl was fucking traumatized and the ToA series was such an amazing, amazing expression of how she learned to deal with her abuse. I loved how she grew stronger and figured out what she could do.

Rick Riordan’s mental health representation has always been insane. Nico’s PTSD (my poor babyyyyyyyy), Meg’s trauma, Piper’s grief, and the inner conflict with all of his narratives is just so emotionally accurate and raw.

Well, Rick Riordan’s representation in general is just so fucking perfect.



FUCKING WRECKED.




Rick Riordan is who all authors should aspire to be. As a teacher, he saw marginalized students who just didn’t fit the insanely stupid social norms that people support for some reason. Kids who weren’t cis, straight, allosexual, white and rich. Kids who were abused and looked down on and hurt because of who they were. Kids whose lives and minds had been fucked up. And you know what he did? He made them the fucking heroes.

Thank you, Uncle Rick. Thank you so much.



SPOILERS WILL BE AFTER THE DIVIDER IMAGE.






















Jason’s death: It hurt me so fucking bad. Jason was one of my favorite characters ever, and I was wrecked when he died. I literally cried for like a month afterward. It hit me so hard and I was just waiting and waiting and waiting for him to come back. He couldn’t just leave like that after everything else.

I thought there was no way Rick Riordan would let him stay dead.

But then in The Tyrant’s Tomb, THEY BURNED HIS BODY. They had a funeral and everything. And I was still thinking “it’ll be fine, he can still come back in the next book. Jason is Jason, he can’t just stay dead�.

Then I read Tower of Nero.

AND HE DIDN’T FUCKING COME BACK.

HE COULD HAVE COME BACK. HE COULD HAVE COME BACK. HE COULD HAVE COME BACK.

THERE WAS A CHANCE FOR HIM TO COME BACK. IT SAID SO. RICK RIORDAN SAID HE COULD HAVE COME BACK. THERE WAS A WAY. TWO WAYS. THERE WERE WAYS HE COULD HAVE COME BACK.

AND HE DIDN’T.

WHAT DO YOU FUCKING MEAN “HE’S MADE PEACE WITH HIS DECISION�?

I HAVEN’T.

AND NONE OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS HAVE EITHER. THERE WAS A CHANCE FOR HIM TO COME BACK AND HE JUST -

STAYED DEAD?

AND PIPER HAD MOVED ON?

WHY DID PIPER MOVE ON???

IN MARK OF ATHENA AND HOUSE OF HADES, THE JASPER WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. AND WHAT ABOUT IN BLOOD OF OLYMPUS WHEN SHE SAYS SOMETHING LIKE “YOU’RE NEVER GETTING AWAY FROM ME, SPARKY�??? WHAT ABOUT THAT??

WHY WAS SHE KISSING A GIRL ON THE ROOFTOP THE SAME WAY HER MIST-MEMORY KISSED JASON ON THE ROOFTOP IN THE LOST HERO?

THE LAST TIME WE SAW HER SHE WAS FUCKING WRECKED OVER JASON’S BODY AND NOW SHE’S KISSING A GIRL?

I LOVE THAT SHE’S BI/PAN, BUT SINCE WHEN DID SHE MOVE ON SO FAST? SHE LOVED HIM.

AND WHY IS JASON STILL DEAD?

I’M FUCKING CRYING.

JASON NEVER GOT TO SEE LEO AFTER LEO PRESUMABLY DIED.
JASON LEFT CAMP HALF-BLOOD TO GO TO NORMAL SCHOOL AND NEVER GOT A PROPER GOOD-BYE WITH PERCY AND ANNABETH.
JASON LEFT HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND BEHIND.
JASON LEFT HIS SISTER BEHIND.
JASON LEFT HIS FRIENDS BEHIND.

I’M SO FUCKING MAD AND SAD AND ANGRY AND I JUST CANNOT EXPRESS IT. WHY?

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

WHY MUST I BE HURT LIKE THIS. IT’S NOT OKAY. JASON GRACE IS NOT FUCKING ALLOWED TO BE DEAD, THAT’S NOT IN THE CONTRACT.

























Also, I'm pretty sure Rick Riordan is teasing a new series involving everyone. Like, all of his serieses.
1. Chiron had a meeting with "a cat and a severed head".
Cat = Bast from The Kane Chronicles.
Severed head = Mimir from Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.
2. Rachel Elizabeth Dare lives right next door to the Kanes and she brings them up. Also, she's suspicious about their penguin.
3. Magnus has already gotten involved with Percy and Annabeth.
4. Yes, I'm pretty sure Rick Riordan said that this would be his last with the Percy Jackson series (Greek/Roman pantheon) but he never said anything about the OTHER pantheons.
5. RACHEL SPOUTED A FUCKING PROPHECY AND IT INVOLVES SOLANGELO.