In Rick Riordan’s thrilling new book, The Mark of Athena, seven demigods (half god, half human) must battle through hordes of monsters and ancient gods in order to calm the old hatred between the Romans and the Greeks.

Set in modern day, Riordan masterfully connects old Greek and Roman legends to today’s culture in humorous and often unexpected ways.

The Mark of Athena is the third book in a series known as The Heroes of Olympus, which is also a series sequel to the original Percy Jackson stories. All in all, Riordan writes in a way that can easily be connected to with today’s teenagers and young adults, as his books have a sarcastic sense of humor that generally gets readers laughing, or at least brings a mild chuckle.

Because this book is narrated by four different characters at different times of the story, it’s difficult to get on a complete personal level with each due to the fact that they aren’t narrated by the person themselves, but rather somebody talks about their feelings.

This is a change compared to the earlier Percy Jackson series, where Percy himself told the reader exactly how he was feeling and what was happening throughout the entire book. Due to the narration difference, action cannot be fully covered as well as in Percy Jackson, because of the different way the narrator tells it, as opposed to in The Mark of Athena.

“It was really great having all the characters united in one book, and the dramatic ending makes me really excited for the next one,” says Kelly Hunnicutt, Bob Jones student

As Nathan Burch, another student at Bob Jones High says, “I liked it.”