(Not the yummy kind of licorice, either the nasty variety that sits for eons in your stepmother’s candy bowl on the coffee table. Around us rose a meager cluster of downtown high-rises-stacks of stone and glass like layered wedges of black and white licorice. Indiana was flat country-highways crisscrossing scrubby brown plains, shadows of winter clouds floating above urban sprawl. “Apollo, just try, will you? Does this look like the city you dreamed about or not?” “Guys, cool it.” Leo patted the dragon’s neck. “That doesn’t mean I can pinpoint her location with my mind! Zeus has revoked my access to GPS!” Just hearing Meg’s name gave me a twinge of pain. “You said your friend Meg would be here.” “You’re the one who’s been having visions,” Calypso reminded me. “Why is it my job to sense things? Just because I used to be a god of prophecy-” Leo glanced back, his face streaked with soot. I had a flashback to the time I installed a life-size statue of the muse Calliope on my sun chariot and the extra weight of the hood ornament made me nosedive into China and create the Gobi Desert. Despite my New York State junior driver’s license, Leo Valdez didn’t trust me to operate his aerial bronze steed!įestus’s claws scrabbled for a hold on the green copper dome, which was much too small for a dragon his size. It wasn’t enough that I had to toil upon the earth doing (ugh) heroic quests until I could find a way back into my father’s good graces, or that I had a case of acne which simply would not respond to over-the-counter zit medicine. Oh, the indignities I had suffered since Zeus stripped me of my divine powers! It wasn’t enough that I was now a sixteen-year-old mortal with the ghastly alias Lester Papadopoulos. I, the most important passenger, the youth who had once been the glorious god Apollo, was forced to sit in the back of the dragon. Cold wind blew her chestnut hair into my face, making me blink and spit. “Could we please get to the ground? Gently this time?”įor a formerly immortal sorceress who once controlled air spirits, Calypso was not a fan of flying. No blowtorching public monuments!”īehind him on the dragon’s spine, Calypso gripped Festus’s scales for balance. “Whoa, buddy!” Leo Valdez pulled the dragon’s reins. He landed on the cupola of the Indiana Statehouse, flapped his metallic wings, and blew a cone of fire that incinerated the state flag right off the flagpole. Yet for some reason, Festus decided he did not like Indiana. Ohio he tolerated, even after our encounter with Potina, the Roman goddess of childhood drinks, who pursued us in the form of a giant red pitcher emblazoned with a smiley face. Pennsylvania he seemed to enjoy, despite our battle with the Cyclopes of Pittsburgh. We’d been traveling west for six weeks, and Festus had never shown such hostility toward a state. WHEN OUR DRAGON declared war on Indiana, I knew it was going to be a bad day. Cervantes, based on Mayan mythology, and DRAGON PEARL by Yoon Ha Lee, a space opera with elements of Korean mythology.Who taught me that rules change in the Reaches Includes the first chapter of The Trials of Apollo Book 3: THE BURNING MAZE, plus the first chapters of two Rick Riordan Presents novels: THE STORM RUNNER by J. Come along for what promises to be a harrowing, hilarious, and haiku-filled ride. To survive the encounter, Apollo will need the help of son of Hephaestus Leo Valdez, the now-mortal sorceress Calypso, the bronze dragon Festus, and other unexpected allies-some familiar, some new-from the world of demigods. Standing in Apollo's way is the second member of the evil Triumvirate, a Roman emperor whose love of bloodshed and spectacle makes even Nero look tame. Somewhere in the American Midwest, he and his companions must find the most dangerous Oracle from ancient times: a haunted cave that may hold answers for Apollo in his quest to become a god again-if it doesn't kill him or drive him insane first. What is affecting the Oracles, and how can Apollo/Lester do anything about them without his powers? After experiencing a series of dangerous-and frankly, humiliating-trials at Camp Half-Blood, Lester must now leave the relative safety of the demigod training ground and embark on a hair-raising journey across North America. The only way Apollo can reclaim his rightful place on Mount Olympus is by restoring several Oracles that have gone dark. Zeus has punished his son Apollo-god of the sun, music, archery, poetry, and more-by casting him down to earth in the form of a gawky, acne-covered sixteen-year-old mortal named Lester.
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