#1 The Red Pyramid ★★★★☆
#2 The Throne of Fire ★★★☆☆
#3 The Serpent's Shadow ★★★☆☆

“A person's shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.”

Ahh... and finally, the series comes to an end. What a roller coaster ride of a trilogy, my friends. I spent the first book falling in love, the second book gradually feeling less and less pleased with this series, and the final book wishing it would just finish already. That said, I should preface this by saying that The Serpent's Shadow was slightly better for me than The Throne of Fire, so if you've read the first 2 books and are uncertain as to whether or not you want to finish the series, let me be the first to tell you that you absolutely should. Besides, you've already come this far, right?

Anyways, this book was much of a repeat for the second for me as far as the romances went — still not buying Carter and Zia as an even remotely possible couple, and still super uncomfortable with Sadie's interest in boys at all, much less ones who are thousands of years older than her — but the pacing was a lot better and I enjoyed the action scenes tremendously. I think battle scenes must be tough to write, but every RR book that I've read has featured one whether big or small, and I always walk away thinking Rick has a serious talent for scripting them out.

I might not have loved this series overall, but I'm glad I picked it up and I feel like any fan of Rick Riordan's should give it a chance. If you're feeling hesitant, I highly recommend the audiobooks, as the narrators did a fantastic job. That said, I 100% recommend that this is not your introduction to RR's series, because the PJO series is frankly a million times better than this one, and I would warrant a guess that all of his other series are, too.

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Buddy read with Ellyn! ♥