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A review by katymul
The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
4.75
My first readthrough of the series years ago, this was my favorite of the books. Annabeth felt firmly and finally in charge, her emotional journey with Luke was allowed its full complexity even filtered through Percy as narrator, and the new characters who burst on the scene in this book felt particularly full of life and relevance. This book might also be the best series of adventures in the (first?) series, but the escalation of danger still feels fun.
The book didn't get a perfect rating mostly for how the book occasionally felt it was straining under the weight of how much information from the original mythology was required to follow the plot. I initially loved to see Riordan branching out to the offbeat parts of mythology like Daedalus and Perdix, but the beautiful cohesion of the other four novels in the series didn't quite feel achieved here. The different parts were so much fun and had individual payoffs, but it didn't feel quite so much like perfect clockwork when all the pieces came together.
The book didn't get a perfect rating mostly for how the book occasionally felt it was straining under the weight of how much information from the original mythology was required to follow the plot. I initially loved to see Riordan branching out to the offbeat parts of mythology like Daedalus and Perdix, but the beautiful cohesion of the other four novels in the series didn't quite feel achieved here. The different parts were so much fun and had individual payoffs, but it didn't feel quite so much like perfect clockwork when all the pieces came together.