The Battle of the Labyrinth- Rick Riordan

The Battle of the Labyrinth is the fourth book in Rick Riordan's five volume "Percy and the Olympians" series. For those of you unfamiliar with the underlying premise: here's a quick recap: everything from Greek mythology is real. Gods, monsters, demons, and heroes exist both beyond and along the realms of mortal comprehension (Riordan describes them as being obscured by a magical mist). Among these mythological beings there exist "half-bloods," children born of one mortal and one immortal parent. Hercules (son of Zeus and a mortal mother is one famous example) and they are trained for various heroic quests at the appropriately-named "Camp Half Blood."

The series follows the adventures of Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon and a mortal mother as he struggles to learn his place in the worlds of the everyday and the mythological. Over time, Mount Olympus has followed the center of western civilization and currently resides on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building. In fact, one of the most enjoyable things about the series is seeing how Riordan is able to update various mythological elements for the modern world, and how he is able to explain their presence.

As it turns out, Kronos (leader of the Titans, the original group of Greek gods and father to Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Zeus eventually lead an uprising against his father and the other Titans, and cast him forever into the pit of Tartarus.) is reforming and hoping to wage war on the Olympian gods. He is pure evil and driven by his urge for revenge. The mythological world is fast being divided among the two (Titan and Olympian) camps. Percy and his fellow campers (Annabeth, a daughter of Athena, Grover, a satyr, among others) must go an varying quests in order to foil Kronos's plans.

Book 4, The Battle of the Labyrinth, involves Kronos' plot to invade Camp Half Blood by circumventing the magical defenses by sneaking in through the mythical labyrinth of Crete. That's right, that maze, created by Deadelus, home of the Minotaur, still exists and has been evolving and growing in the centuries since its inception centuries ago. It is filled with monsters, dead ends, traps, riddles, and other obstacles designed to kill, bewilder, or entrap all who enter it. There are entrances and exits all over the world, including one within the borders of Camp Half Blood.

The forces of Kronos are lead by Luke Castellan, a half-blood son of Hermes, who has betrayed the Olympians (he hates his father) for the Titan's cause. Percy, Annabeth, Grover and his half-brother Tyson, (a kindly, clever cyclops) must enter the Labyrinth themselves in order to find the workshop of Daedalus. They must reach him before Luke and his forces do, or else the route through the labyrinth and the key to the invasion of Camp Half Blood will be revealed.

Along the way they must deal with Kampe, a monster from the first Titan-Olympian war, the forges of Hephaestus (located beneath Mt. Saint Helens), Janus (the two faced god of doorways, beginnings and endings), the fields of Geryon, the disappearance of Pan, hellhounds, and a burgeoning love triangle in between Percy, Annabeth, and a mortal girl named Rachel who is capable of seeing through the mists and is instrumental to the successful navigation of the labyrinth.

The eventual battle itself is somewhat anticlimactic, once it finally occurs, but that is a minor quibble in this thrilling volume of one of my favorite ongoing series.

Book 5, The Last Olympian, is out now and concludes Percy's saga. I might have to break my paperbacks-only rule and pick up a copy to see how the story ends. Will Kronos finally triumph? If he is defeated (and let's face it, he probably will be), then what will be the cost? Who will survive the final confrontation between the Titans and the Olympians.

"Percy and the Olympians" official site.