The kids head off to DOA Recording Studios, which looks like a pretty normal places until you realize no one in the lobby is moving or even entirely opaque.  Charon is there, acting in the roll of security guard.  He blithely assumes that the kids are dead when they ask for passage to the Underworld. …

…This review is not turning out anything like I thought it would.  I sound a lot more vicious in this book than I actually mean to. So, here’s what I think happened.  This book has some really, really basic fails in it but without many of the trope/message fails of other stuff I’ve tackled.  There’s…

The kids meet up with Ares again, and he taunts them for surviving because, of course, he knew it was a trap all along.  “Bet that crippled blacksmith was surprised when he netted a couple of stupid kids. You looked good on TV.” The focus on Hephaestus’s deformity is kind of bothering me, even though…

The next day, the kids arrive in Denver and decide to contact Chiron back at camp.  Annabeth and Grover teach him how to make a rainbow from a spray hose, because the goddess of rainbows will carry messages for them. So.  Wait.  Monsters, mythological creatures made of magic, are able to track cell phones as…

I’d love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera. O.o  Why would you want to tell us that?  What even is the motivation behind this line?  Are there lots of stories out there…