Review: The Burning Maze

The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The latest in the Trials of Apollo series continues the increased darkness trend started in the second book, while also raising the memorable humor and smartassery back to the levels we've long come to expect from Rick Riordan. I pretty much couldn't remember a single joke from The Dark Prophecy, but here, we get a lot more stuff to make us laugh, usually from the Arrow of Dodona, who for some reason or other keeps shouting in bad Shakespearean every time Apollo tries to ask it for help.

That said, though, that darkness lurks hard on this book, even more so than in The Dark Prophecy. There's some ironic darkness with the main villain in this book, Caligula, whose goal is basically to usurp Apollo as the sun god. And because he can't get his way that easily, he's helping cause so much natural unbalancing in Southern California - even more "California Burnin'" than usual, that's for sure.

What really surprised me in this book was the inclusion of a certain death scene. It's a really unexpected step of maturity on Riordan's part, since he's spent much of his kidlit career actually making sure that a lot of dead characters still get parts to play later. Hell, just look at Magnus Chase - his trilogy's entire premise is built on him dying to start off. But here, there's that one death that's all but final...though of course there's every chance Riordan might still undo it in one of the two books we're still to get in this series.

Naturally, this book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Not as nasty as the ones Riordan's been known to deliver before, but more in line with the cliffhangers he's employed in recent years with this series and Magnus Chase, dropping huge hints about which fan fave is due back next.

And one more thing - I thought it was a nice touch of Riordan to include a reference to the mythology of India - specifically, pandai - which I thought was a subtle way of further nudging readers in the direction of Roshani Chokshi's Aru Shah and the End of Time if they hadn't picked it up yet.

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