The House of Hades by Rick Riordan

Reading Response

The House of Hades by Rick Riordan

When I was in fourth grade, my friends showed me the book The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. I fell in love with the series, but now that I am older, I see the books with a whole different perspective. Rick Riordan has written many books, and I have read almost all of them. I have noticed that throughout all of the series, there seems to be one overall theme. The theme is that working together can solve all problems.

I see the theme in all of his books, especially in The Heroes of Olympus series.  There are many individual teams, like Anabeth and Percy. They have been together from the start, and now they are stuck in Tartarus together. They always support each other and they keep each other alive. Another team is Piper and Hazel, they are the only girls on the ship, the Argo II, and they keep each other company. Hazel and Frank are a strong couple because Frank has trusted Hazel to hold his life-span firewood. He trusts Hazel more then he trusts himself. Hazel and Nico are half-siblings and they bond over their father, Hades, and how hard it is to be a son of him. Jason and Piper are a nice couple, yet they need to learn to trust themselves before they can trust each other. They are still finding out things about each other, which makes it a little difficult to fully trust one another. All of these individual teams or partnerships seem fine on their own, but the goal through the reader’s eyes is to get them all to work together in unison.

In the first book of the series, The Lost Hero, Jason, Leo, and Piper were all together on a quest. They slowly learned to trust each other and depend on one another. Now that they are joined with Nico, Frank, and Hazel on the Argo II, they are having a bit of trouble working all together. But when they join together in private, it becomes a more comfortable environment. For example:

‘Oh…’ Leo grinned even wider. ‘You know, I like your version a lot better. Cause if Gaea falls to me, Mr. Fire, that is absolutely copacetic.’

‘Or to me… storm.’ Jason kissed her. ‘Piper, that’s brilliant! If you’re right, this is great news. We just have to figure out which of us destroys Gaea.’

‘Maybe.’ She [Piper] felt uneasy getting their hopes up.

This shows how when it is just Jason, Leo, and Piper, they get less tense and can talk about real issues involving their quest. But they have to learn how to bond with Nico, Frank, and Hazel all together, not just one-on-one. The team is always splitting up because they claim that too many people at once is bad, but they don’t realize that they will need to work together to get Percy and Anabeth out of Tartarus. If they spend more time fighting monsters as a team, they will learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

            All of the individual teams work fine individually, but they need to all join together if they are going to reach the Doors of Death and save Percy and Anabeth. If they don’t, when they are in battle they will forget the strengths of each person and lose focus. Their togetherness will decide the fate of their friends.