#elf sideeyes RR the blog

[elfgrove]

So I've been audio-booking my way through the Trials of Apollo novels, and I just got to the bit in the Burning Maze novel I knew was gonna piss me off.

Yep. It pissed me off.

And the narrative voice the Trials of Apollo are written in works really well. The sniveling self-centered god who is protected by the narrative the same way Percy was through all the prior books fits. And he very much is protected by the narrative, so it takes out some of the tension because like Percy, RR isn't really going to let anything permanent happen to him. The audience knows that, and that's fine for a YA book to do.

Here's the thing.

How RR handled the Solace/Di Angelo get together made no sense. It was poorly written. You don't put a character through the absolute abusive/neglected hell he did for Nico then pair him up romantically with a character he has had zero interaction with beyond that character telling him he was exaggerating all his troubles and just being "emo" about it unless you plan to make that story arc about bad relationships where one partner constantly belittles the experiences of the other or it's gonna be about the dismissive partner learning to listen and be empathetic to lived experiences outside their own. Reading Trials of Apollo, Nico is basically a fresh slate acting as a brand new teen character as if his past experiences hadn't happened or having a boyfriend really did magically fix him into a standard goth teen. It's NOT good.

RR never handled the entire wind wipe, fake memories, and charm speak mind-controlling that littered Piper and Jason's relationship. And I like both of those characters.

You take an insecure, hormonal teen girl, put her in the middle of traumatic events, mess with her brain, give her magic mind control powers and no training about ethical use of said powers, of course she's gonna misuse them to try to ease her circumstances. It doesn't make it right, but it's understandable character behavior. What isn't right is no one ever calls her out about using mind control on her kidnapped amnesiac boyfriend or using it in situations where it's not needed just to get her way. She never develops a moral code about when it is or not okay to mind control people. In Trials of Apollo she regularly uses the mind control to steal cars from her neighbor because they don't like each other and gets the car in regular legal trouble. They're both rich assholes. She minds controls people over minor shit because she can. I am glad once Trials hit that she and Jason broke up. That it's because she realized she doesn't know who she is outside the emergency and the influence of the gods? Good. That the relationship was founded on mind manipulation could have stood to be a bigger factor, but that would require Piper an RR to examine how she uses her power too, something he's clearly not about to do.

The novels never really work through the fake memories & fake relationship part of the equation.

So you have Jason Grace who has almost as traumatic a story as Nico, but in different ways. The boy deserves some respite and a happy ending or at least a future. He got the romantic mind control form multiple sides. That's never worked through. He was kidnapped form the only home he recalled and his memories wiped. His ties to New Rome were never really properly addressed/explored. We got some tell rather than show that he felt torn between camps and chose to belong to both. We don't get his perspective on the break up with Piper or the manipulative mess that romance was. It's just Jason is (comparatively) well adjusted and does what the narrative needs the doll to do.

So in this book about Apollo, RR brings in Jason for a single book cameo, focuses entirely on Piper's side of the narrative equation, then kills Jason off dramatically. No narrative closure for him. He's killed to further Apollo's story and to traumatize Piper. It's shitty to put the character through all he's ben through and kill him off to protect a character with narrative immunity. And to follow up that death with lines about oh yes death is often unreasonable and good people die unjustly while bad people live does not sit right when you have Apollo and Percy Jackson who are never at risk of death despite having been in numerous situations that should have killed them. You don't get to play the oh no death is often unfair and not a good/reasonable story when you have 10+ books of Percy Jackson the narratively immune to all fucking consequences.

UGH. I fucking hate how RR treats characters that by all rights should have more nuanced stories or the same narrative immunity his other leads get.

#RANT #elfgrove reads percy jackson #elf sideeyes Percy the blog #elf sideeyes RR the blog #elfgrove reads trials of apollo #spoilers