Teaser Tuesday: The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan.

The Blood of Olympus –
Disney Hyperion

“Of course we’re not cool! You’re as bad as Jason! I’m trying to resent you for being all perfect and hero-y and whatnot. Then you go and act like a standup guy. How am I supposed to hate you if you apologize and promise to help and stuff?”
— Chapter 12

Your voice is your identity, he’d told Reyna. If you don’t use it, you’re halfway to Asphodel already.
He hated when his own advice applied to himself.
— Chapter 29

The story how Rick Riordan first entered my reading-consciousness is in itself quite entertaining ... or so I think. It all started a few years ago with Christmas approaching and my best friend asking me what I wanted – or rather, which book I wanted – she knows me quite well, after all. I hadn’t really thought about presents for myself (an eternal problem for said best friend) and so I scrolled through book recommendations of a certain unnamed online retailer. I had recently bought something or other about Greek mythology and I kept getting recommendations about this Percy Jackson guy ... I told my friend that she could choose between a list and threw Percy on there as well. And for a reason I don’t know she purchased a boxed set of the first three books. I read them all over Christmas break and then made my tutoring kid (reluctant reader if you’ve ever seen one) read them (in English, which I was coaching him in). He loved them and we found out that there were two more books to be published ... I had never seen this boy so anxious for me to bring him a reading assignment. I also had to explain that there is a certain amount of waiting involved between two books because the next might not be written yet. And seem patient to wait even if I was anything but.
Fast forward to today: My former pupil no longer needs my help but he just finished the book and we had a really good chat about it. Not in English, but at least he read it in English (good thing his impatience won against waiting for the translation). We both loved the book and are happy/sad to see the conclusion of this series. Percy and the other Demigods have accompanied us through quite a few years and it’s a little bit like saying farewell to really good friends. The finale was almost everything I hoped it would be. Close enough to perfection to be called perfect. There is the matter of Apollo, which I’m uncertain about and which might need some clearing up, but maybe that’s just me. I would have loved to see a bit more of some characters, but I understand why I didn’t and that’s okay. I don’t know if there is any more to tell about the Greek (and Roman) demigod world, yet I hope that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of them. In that sense: αντίο and vale, demigods.

Do you have stories of how a book/author/series entered your life? Share them along with your teasers.