Mike Jeffries

Mike Jeffries
The Mark of Athena
Rick Riordan
Fantasy/ Adventure
Just Right
574 pages total


1) The ending of The Mark of Athena was extremely exciting. It totally took me by surprise. One of the main characters named Annabeth is on her destiny quest. She is the child of the Greek goddess Athena. Every child of Athena has to go on a quest to find the Athena Parthenos, which is a statue that will reunite the Greek and Roman Demigods. At the end of her quest, she has to battle her worst nightmare which is a spider called Arachne. Arachne hates Athena and guards her statue so no one can steal it and fulfil the quest. Annabeth tricks Arachne into weaving herself into a lock or "woven prison."So all is well until Annabeth realizes that Arachne starts screaming and squirming so loud and hard, that she is trying to bring down the tunnel that they are in. The ground is already very unstable, and if the floor breaks, it is a straight shot to Tartarus. Tartarus is a giant pit in the underworld were all the evil monsters go when they get killed in the mortal world. Just when the floor is about to shatter, a giant explosion creates a giant hole into the tunnel revealing light, the outside world, and Annabeths friends. Her best friend Percy goes to aid her, but as he is doing so, Arachne squirms and shoots out a piece of web and it gets tangled to Annabeths feet. Part of the ground in the tunnel breaks and Arachne falls into Tartarus, annabeth gets dragged down with her but Percy tries to save her and ends up falling into tartarus with Annabeth. So it is up to the rest of the demigod gang, to go toTartarus and save Percy and Annabeth.

2) This is definitely one of my favorite books by Rick Riordan. His ideas are absolutely brilliant and the way he makes the story unfold really helps make it a great page turner. There is always a constant conflict going on in the story. One of my favorite things about this book is that there is more than one conflict going on. One chapter might be about two people doing something dangerous, when the next chapter is about another two people doing something dangerous that could get them both killed. He really puts a strong cliffhanger at the end of each chapter which really makes you want to keep reading  the book until it is finished and you have to wait what feels like a lifetime for the next book in the series to come out.

3) The theme of this book is Sacrifice. Every single person throughout this entire series has sacrificed so much. Whether it is sacrificing your life, friends, time, effort,  energy, and love. Percy sacrifices himself to try to save Annabeth when she is falling into Tartarus, Annabeth has to sacrifice almost everything she has in order to fulfill her quest and try to bring piece to the Greek and Romans. Percy and Annabeths friends: Piper, Jason, Leo, Frank, Hazel and Coach hedge sacrifice so much in order to fulfill the quest given to each other. The theme of this story really inspires you to make your life and the peoples lives around you, better than they are right now.

4) My favorite character from this book is definitely Percy Jackson. He is a natural born hero, he cares for his friends, and he is without a doubt, willing to die for them. Words cannot describe the person he is, and what he does, and that is one of many different reasons of why he is my favorite character. Percy inspires me to try to be a better person. He always inspires me to be stronger, braver, smarter, and just all around a good person. It really makes me happy that I can learn so much from a character in a book and take so much out of that character and apply it to myself, and I feel that I can do that really well with Percy Jackson.

5) My least favorite character is Gaea, the goddess of earth. (Mother Earth). She is the villain in the story. Her plot is to wake and rise up from the earth and destroy Mount Olympus and crush all the Gods and Demigods and rule the world with the giants. She has caused all the problems throughout the series and, to me, she is selfish. She has to make everybody's lives on earth miserable just so that she can be happy. I am so glad that there is going to be another book in this series so that I can watch her fail and go back into the earth were she belongs.

6) The ending of the book was not what I had expected at all. I figured that Annabeth would still be on her quest in the next book, I didn't think that she would finish it in this story because she started towards the end of the book. I didn't think that Percy and the rest of the group would end up saving her on her quest. I though that she would walk out of the quest successfully because she started it alone. But I always find the book better when it doesn't end as I would have expected it to. If that had happend I think that that would show a lack of creativity and twists in the authors writing. Luckily that is not a problem with Rick Riordan.