Mark of Athena

The third book in Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series is The Mark of Athena, picking up exactly where Son of Neptune left off.

This book begins from Annabeth's perspective, and this time there are a total of four points of view in this book. Annabeth, as mentioned above, along with Leo, Piper, and Percy. Since you already know these characters from the last two books, let's move on to plot.

The overall quest is to travel to Rome and then Greece and stop the earth goddess Gaea from waking up. The main quest for this book is to free Nico, Hazel's half-brother, from the two giants imprisoning him.

There's a minor problem there. Giants can only be killed by gods and demigods working together, but all the gods seem to be going schizophrenic. Most of the important ones aren't able to be of any use at all. But our heroes figure they'll cross that bridge when they come to it, and Percy ends up with a fantastic idea to get one of them on their side.

And then there's the title of the book. Annabeth has a quest separate from the rest of the group. She must follow the Mark of Athena to find a treasure that was stolen from Athena and is one of the main reasons that the Greeks and Romans hate each other so much.

If Annabeth can find the treasure, she could convince the Romans not to attack Camp Half-Blood. However, none of the children of Athena to date have ever successfully completed this quest; all have died at some point or another.

Another question would be this: Can Percy, whose fatal flaw is personal loyalty, let Annabeth do this alone? For alone she must, because the Mark of Athena will not appear unless no one else is with Annabeth.

And then, just when you think Riordan can't get any more cruel, he ends this book on an even worse cliffhanger than the last time: Percy and Annabeth fall headfirst into Tartarus.

I think, from what I've read of the series so far, my favorite book would probably be a tie between this one and Son of Neptune. Maybe Son of Neptune would win out in the end, but I did really like this book too.