“My name is Apollo.”

From Rick Riordan’s The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle.

Apollo (Greek god of poetry, music, healing, prophecy, and the sun) is in trouble.  Even though he’s been the same god with the same winning personality for centuries, his father, Zeus, has decided to punish him for his latest minor discretion.  However, this punishment seems totally unfair to Apollo… once he remembers what all that actually happened, that is.  Zeus dropped Apollo from the sky and he lands alone in an New York alley as a sixteen-yeaer-old, zit-faced, overweight, and totally uncool human teen named Lester Papadopoulos.  On top of cursing him to an acne-invested teenage body, Zeus has stripped Apollo of all his godly powers and most of his important godly memories.  Shortly after he crashed to earth, Apollo meets a young girl with a blindness for fashion named Meg McCaffrey.  Through a wild and embarrassing series of events, Apollo finds himself indebted to the young and mysterious demigod, Meg, and he is required to do whatever she tells him to do.  Apollo and Meg learn that the source of their problem is coming from a group going by the Triumvirate led by the mysterious “The Beast.”  This is a problem for Apollo because he is a god and because together, he and Meg are sent on a dangerous quest to find out why demigod communication has stopped and why the oracles have been unable to prophecies.

This second spin-off series from Riordan’s Percy Jackson series takes place after both the Greek and Greek/Roman series.  The book incorporates characters from previous books while also creating solid new characters and situations that captivate the readers from start to finish.  The Hidden Oracle is a fun start to another interesting series of ancient mythology that showcases Riordan’s well-loved humor, wit, and creativity.