aliaskoko 's review for:

The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
2.0 
Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️ 2 stars
Pacing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 2.5 stars
Characters: ⭐️⭐️ 2 stars
Plot: ⭐️⭐️ 2 stars

Ah! Nico, my precious boy. The series is FINALLY garnering a teeny tiny bit of my interest. Nico and Bianca were an interesting addition.
My Rating of all things Percy Jackson:
The Lightning Thief:      ⭐️ 1 star
The Sea of Monsters:     ⭐️⭐️ 2 stars
The Titan's Curse:     ⭐️⭐️ 2 stars
The Battle of the Labyrinth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars
The Last Olympian: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars
The Chalice of the Gods: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.3 stars

My gripe, however, is with Riordan's "cool" writing. The calling your sister "sis" thing gave me Wattpad flashbacks. And while we're on the topic of Wattpad, there are only SO MANY TIMES a reader can let the "he/she was about to drop a juicy piece of lore but before they could get to the important bit SOMETHING interrupted us" thing slide before ripping a book to shreds. Over and over again. There's suspense and then there's cheap interruptions. Riordan never ceases to get on my nerves.

Percy is so terribly dumb it's not even funny anymore. We are halfway through the series and our main character still has an existential crisis every time something magical happens.
Percy Jackson, every time the odd, sinister-looking human is a magical bad guy

I seriously dislike writers that get a pass for their weak writing just because the audience is children. Do not insult children's intellect and do not take away from their development by sheltering them against hard-hitting emotions. Percy forgetting his whole mother turning to dust within a few lines in book 1 was the first red-flag for me. Why should we care that the main character's mom, an important character, practically just died when Percy's half-baked sadness towards it confirmed that she'll be back?

Consider this if you're still not sold on why Riordan does not know how to write emotions. People do not act as calm as Percy when their best friend falls from a cliff. Riordan makes the characters say "Annabeth" a couple of times after her apparent death and hops onto the next terribly modernized version of a myth for comedy. The lack of serious emotion with which her disappearance is treated makes the reader wonder if they should care since "Percy will save the day anyway."