The Battle of the Labyrinth picks up six months after the last installment at the beginning of summer camp. This time it’s Annabeth’s turn to go on a quest, with Percy, Tyson (the Cyclops), and Grover (the Satyr) by her side. They must go into the Labyrinth to try to stop Luke’s anti-Olympian forces from entering camp to destroy it. I don’t want to say much more than that.

Once again, this book suffered the same flaws as all the sequels in this series has. It just wasn’t as good or as clever as the first. However, I’m ranking this one better than books 2 or 3 because there were two moments that surprised me. First, as I’ve mentioned before in reviews for these books, the plot is extremely predictable. Sometimes annoyingly so. Now, I know this is written for 12 year olds, so it’s probably not as predictable for them as it is to this 30-year-old woman, but still, it gets on my nerves that I can see plot twists coming from hundreds of pages beforehand. One plot twist in this book, though, came as a complete surprise to me. I hadn’t suspected it at all. That’s the first time one has caught me like that.

The second thing that impressed me was the scene where Percy ends up on Calypso’s island. While it was completely out of the tone for the book, the chapter those two characters spent together was very touching and sad. That’s not at all what I’m used to in these books. Even in moments when characters die or have to leave each other for long periods of time, when the characters grieve, it doesn’t feel sad for me as the reader. The Calypso chapter did. The writing felt more mature. I gave the book extra points for that.

Book 1: The Lightning Thief
Book 2: The Sea of Monsters
Book 3: The Titan’s Curse