The Heroes of Olympus (Literature)

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Seven half-bloods shall answer the call,
To storm or fire, the world must fall,
An oath to keep with a final breath,
And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.

— The Prophecy of Seven

Warning: This page contains spoilers for both the first and second series.

A Sequel Series to Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, set a short time after. It is the second set of novels in The Camp Half-Blood Series, and is followed by The Trials of Apollo.

The first book, The Lost Hero, introduces a new half-blood named Jason who finds himself in a school bus with absolutely no memory of who or what he is, along with a girl, Piper, and a boy, Leo. The three turn out to be half-bloods and run into Annabeth (from the first series) and someone named Butch, who are looking for the missing Percy Jackson. Jason, Piper, and Leo are sent on a quest to free the captured Hera and end up realizing their destinies are far greater than they ever imagined. Meanwhile, Gaea the Earth Mother is stirring and reveals her plan to take down the gods, who are in no condition to fight her due to their warring Greek and Roman aspects.

At around the same time, an amnesiac Percy Jackson finds his way to a haven for Roman demigods — Camp Jupiter — and leads two newbie heroes, Frank and Hazel, on a quest to free Thanatos, the god of death.

The two groups unite soon after — Percy, Jason, the four new demigods, and Annabeth join forces to fly a Cool Airship to Rome, with Annabeth following a secret and dangerous mission from her vengeful mother. Now, the prophesied Seven and their allies must somehow unite the warring Greek and Roman camps, fight their way through the monsters, mythological figures, and various other enemies that arise to hinder them, as well as figure out a way stop Gaea before she rises...

The series is comprised of five books:

The Lost Hero (October 12, 2010)
The Son of Neptune (October 4, 2011)
The Mark of Athena (October 2, 2012)
The House of Hades (October 8, 2013)
The Blood of Olympus (October 7, 2014)

Tropes for the crossover stories The Son of Sobek, The Staff of Serapis and The Crown of Ptolemy are on Demigods & Magicians page.

Please place tropes which only apply to one character on the character sheet. The main article is getting cluttered.

This series provides examples of:

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Tropes A-G

Abusive Parents:
- Jason and Thalia's mother, was an unstable alcoholic.
- Queen Marie, Hazel's mother, actively (if unintentionally) cursed her daughter and resented Hazel for it when bad stuff started happening.
- Reyna's father, who suffered from PTSD and his love of Bellona began to make him go off the deep end.
- Leo ran away from 6 foster homes and states that at least one was abusive.
Adults Are Useless: The seven half-bloods destined to save the world are all below the age of eighteen. The gods are AWOL and those that aren't can't actively lend a hand.
Affably Evil: All the Giants are actually rather charming in their own twisted ways. Ephialtes and Otis especially... that is, until their spectacle is ruined.
Affirmative Action Girl: Piper and Hazel join Annabeth in the ranks of "female protagonist". While Reyna has been introduced since the second book, she doesn't get to join much fun until The Blood of Olympus, where she's elevated to the position of narrator (and thus a main character, naturally).
All Girls Want Bad Boys: Lampooned with Narcissus's nymphs when Leo plays a straight-up parody of the bad-boy archetype to distract them. Team Leo!
All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
- Polybotes' invasion of New Rome.
- New Rome's invasion of Camp Half Blood.
Alone Among the Couples:
- This used to be the case for Leo, as the "seventh wheel" among three couples. Not anymore, as of The House of Hades, as he hooks up with Calypso.
- By the end, most of the characters are in a relationship or have some sort of Ship Tease with someone else (even Tyson and Ella!) except for Reyna.
Always Someone Better: Leo and Frank both feel this way about Percy and sometimes Jason. Which is slightly hilarious considering how much Percy himself felt second-best in the previous series, especially concerning Luke. (And even in this series he's still got plenty of insecurities, leading to Leo and Frank's surprise at his down to earth nature once they get to know him).
Amazon Brigade: The actual Amazons show up in Seattle.
Amnesiac Lover:
- Defied. Jason quickly reciprocates Piper's feelings, but he doesn't want to lead her on when he isn't entirely sure how he feels about her (first because of his amnesia, then because it turns out they were never dating in the first place, and then because of Reyna).
- Subverted with Percy. Annabeth is the one thing he's absolutely sure about from his old life.
Amnesiac Villain Joins the Heroes: Bob, aka Iapetus, who lost his memory in a short story in The Demigod Files, appears in The House of Hades and helps guide Percy and Annabeth through Tartarus.
And Now for Someone Completely Different: After five books focusing on Percy Jackson and his friends, The Lost Hero starts with Jason, Piper, and Leo, who are only being indoctrinated as Greek demigods. Percy appears in the next book, however.
And the Adventure Continues: By the end of the last book, the Seven have won and the universe is saved! Except the power of prophecy is now gone from the world...
Animorphism: The Zhang family have the ability to shapeshift into different animals as a hereditary gift.
Ankle Drag: Arachne pulls Annabeth into Tartarus with a strand of spiderweb around her ankle.
Anthropomorphic Personification: The protogenoi (the primal gods) make their first appearance in the series. As in the original myths, they aren't merely "humans with superpowers", they are literally the concepts they represent. Annabeth sums it up best in The House of Hades, regarding the difference between having a parent that is a god and having a parent that is a protogenos:
Annabeth: The Olympian gods are already hard to imagine as parents, but at least they resemble humans, while the primordial gods like Gaea and Tartarus...How can you leave home, become independent and live separately from your parents, when they literally own the entire world?
Anti-Hero:
- As mentioned in the previous series, Percy is not above prioritizing his loved ones over the fate of the world. It's blatantly stated that this will come into play later, and it will be up to Frank to help him stick to his duty.
- Nico Di Angelo. A disturbing, powerful loner who's one of the deadliest mortals on the planet. Percy's still on the fence about him, given their troubled history, and he creeps the hell out of everyone on the Argo II, save Hazel and Annabeth. It doesn't help that Jason barely avoids fighting him after a misunderstanding—and he's not sure he'd be able to win.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: By The Mark of Athena there is a team of seven demigods, but due to that many demigods together attracting too many monsters, most of the book is spent with forming random parties of two or three, usually leaving a few people behind on the Argo II from time to time. The result seems incredibly like an RPG - especially when Coach Hedge forces himself into the party in Atlanta.
Arcadia: In The Mark of Athema, a tapestry shows a pastoral scene when Annabeth reaches the chamber of Athena Parthenos.
Artistic License – Economics: King Midas's plan, bankrolling the Big Bad's efforts by... turning things lying around his mansion into gold and selling them to investors, thereby lowering the inherent value of said gold and making the price drop. Ee-yeah.
Artistic License – Linguistics: In The House of Hades, Piper suggests (and the others generally accept) that when the prophecy says "the world must fall" the "world" means the earth, and therefore in Greek means Gaea. Except the Greek word for world isn't "Gaea" (Γαῖα) or even the generic word for earth "ge" (γῆ). The most common translation of "world" to Greek would be "kosmos" (κόσμος), which isn't a synonym for "earth"/"Gaea".
Art Shift: The covers of the first two books. Probably deliberate, to accentuate the more culturally refined nature of the Greeks (featured in ''The Lost Hero''◊) verses the rougher, grittier Romans (featured in ''The Son of Neptune''◊).
Ascended Extra:
- "D-list goddess" Khione plays a major role compared to her appearances in myth.
- Gleeson Hedge (referenced once in TLO) is now a major character, as the Seven's chaperone.
- Will Solace and Jake Mason were given offhand mentions in the last series, but play larger roles here..
- Hylla, Circe's assisstant, last seen in Sea of Monsters turns up again as Reyna's sister and queen of the Amazons.
- Reyna and Nico. While already important figures, they become two of the viewpoint characters in the end.
As Long as There Is Evil: Pointed out in chapter LXI of The House of Hades. Percy notices that the great crowd of monsters he sees in Tartarus includes monsters that he fought before. No matter how many times he kills them, they will just regenerate and come back later — a realization that fills Percy with dread and hopelessness. However, he realizes that even if monsters will keep on fighting, so too will future generations of demigods.
Asshole Victim:
- A lot of people, Greek and Roman, did not feel bad when Octavian got himself launched by a flaming catapult and died. Not even his most loyal bodyguard bothered to warn him that his toga was snagged.
- It's highly unlikely that anyone mourned Bryce Lawrence.
Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
- This is one of the two possible ways to get promoted to praetor — kick lots of ass on the battlefield.
- This is still in full effect for General Tyson of the Cyclops Army too.
- Also the method by which the Amazons can challenge the current queen for the queenship.
Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The giants are all huge opponents for the human-sized protagonists. The protogenoi are even bigger.
Back for the Dead: The Blood of Olympus sees the brief return of The Hunters of Artemis and Hylla's Amazon warriors, only to see a number of them slaughtered by Orion. Hylla and Thalia survive, but Phoebe and Kinzie do not.
- Festus' dragon form is a subversion. He's back in his full dragon glory for the climactic battle against Gaea only to be blown away. While he and Leo are presumed dead, it turns out that they've actually survived and been blasted to Ogygia.
Back for the Finale: Blackjack, Guido, Will Solace, Tyson, and Ella, among others, return in The Blood of Olympus after being absent or making minimal appearances the entire series.
Back from the Dead:
- There's a lot of mythological characters who are brought back to life thanks to Thanatos losing control over the Doors of Death, including several who were supposed to have "faded away" (basically being forgotten by everyone), including: Medea, Midas and his children, Medusa's sisters (Stheno and Euryale), Phineas, Echo, Narcissus, and Sciron. Thankfully, this also has beneficial effects for the side of good, since that means they can come back too (as in the case with Gwen).
- Jason returns after seemingly being god-fried in The Lost Hero, though the narration doesn't make it clear whether he was really dead or not.
- Hazel is revealed to be this at the end of her flashbacks.
- Leo dies stopping Gaia in the finale of the series, but returns.
Backstory Invader: The Mist is used to get Jason's classmates to think that he had always been in their class. Leo Valdez believes that Jason was his best friend, and Piper McLean even has memories of dating Jason.
Badass Army: The 12th legion. First established in 58 BC by Gaius Julius Caesar, a legacy of Venus through her son Aeneas, the Twelfth went underground after the fall of Rome, having been given secret orders by Jupiter itself to stay alive, recruit demigods and their children, and keep Rome going. They are now stationed in San Fransisco, California, where both the Legion (consisting of active demigods and legacies, who constantly train for war) and the city of New Rome make up Camp Jupiter.
Badass Boast:
- Jason to Porphyrion during their boasting match.
  Jason: I'm the son of Jupiter! I'm a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the First Legion. I slew the Trojan sea monster. I toppled the black throne of Kronos, and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I'm going to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves.
  Leo: Wow, dude. You been eating red meat?
- Percy does this casually for himself and Annabeth in The Demigod Diaries. It fails hilariously.
  Percy: I'm Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon. This is Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena. We help out the gods sometimes with little stuff, like - oh, killing Titans, saving Mount Olympus, things like that. Perhaps you've heard stories. So about that caduceus... it would be easier to just hand it over before things get unpleasant.
- Not during a fight like most boasts, but this still deserves mention. When Hazel, youngest of the heroes, makes this declaration to Hecate, goddess of magic and crossroads: "We’re going to find a way to stop Gaea. We’re going to rescue our friends from Tartarus. We’re going to keep the crew and ship together, and we’re going to stop Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood from going to war. We’re going to do it all." Hecate, for her part, is interested to see if Hazel and the others can actually do it, claiming it would be magic worth seeing.
- Percy in The House of Hades to the empousai: "You mix Greek and Roman, and you know what you get? You get BAM!"
Badass in Distress/Distressed Dude: Percy in The Lost Hero. Nico takes up the position from him by the end of The Son of Neptune. Flips back to Percy and adds Annabeth by the end of The Mark of Athena.
Bad "Bad Acting": Acting isn't one of Frank's many abilities.
Bag of Holding:
- Leo's magic toolbelt, which can produce any sort of tool (so long as it's not too huge) and apparently breath mints.
- Piper gets a Cornucopia which allows her to produce an unlimited supply of food and water.
Bag of Spilling: In The Son of Neptune, Percy loses most of his memories. He is still effectively invulnerable due to his Curse of Achilles and repeatedly defeats the gorgons. Soon after June tells him that for him to enter Camp Jupiter he must give up the Curse of Achilles, leaving him vulnerable to harm, but he chooses to enter anyway.
Batman Gambit:
- Double subverted. Percy tricks Phineas into giving up the location of Alcyoneus' lair, but it involves using himself as blackmail against Gaea and gambling that she'll come through for him. It works.
- Annabeth pulls off a beautiful one in The Mark of Athena; it takes real nerve to talk your enemy into literally sticking her head into a trap, and that's after getting her to make the trap in the first place.
Battle Couple: Percy/Annabeth, Frank/Hazel, and Jason/Piper are all couples made up of badass teenagers.
Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The three girls in the Seven. Although all of them are acknowledged as attractive, intelligent and capable fighters, their respective godly parents and powers make them this. Emotional, Unkempt Beauty, daughter of love goddess Piper is Beauty; Teen Genius, team strategist, 'wisdom's daughter' Annabeth is Brains; and roman soldier, practical, Dishing Out Dirt Hazel is Brawn.
Beautiful All Along: Piper is this, after being claimed by Aphrodite and getting a makeover.
Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Being claimed/blessed by Aphrodite invokes this. Piper tries her hardest to mess her appearance up, but her looks just keep fixing themselves for days afterward, to Piper's irritation.
"Begone" Bribe: In his first appearance, Don the Faun is holding a sign that says "Will W̶o̶r̶k̶ S̶i̶n̶g̶ T̶a̶l̶k̶ Go Away for Denarii"
Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Leo and Calypso. In The Blood of Olympus, Nico and Will Solace have some as well.
Berserk Button: Reyna hearing people saying her full name
Bestiality Is Depraved: Hazel is clearly grossed out by the story of how the Minotaur was born.
Betty and Veronica:
- This is the case about the triangle between Piper, Reyna, and Jason; however, it is unclear as to who is considered who, since both girls could be justified as either the Betty or the Veronica. Piper could be the Betty, since she is nicer, more outgoing, and less confident than the stoic Reyna (she believes that Reyna is more beautiful that her) and she just wants Jason to be happy no matter who he is with; she could also be the Veronica, since she is considered more beautiful than Reyna by Jason and she unintentionally interferes in what might have became a romance between the amnesiac Jason and Reyna. In the same way, Reyna could be the Betty, since she and Jason have known each other longer because she and Jason were best friends when he was at Camp Jupiter and she held romantic feelings for him (which were unrequited by Jason, he admits so himself), or she could be the Veronica, since she is meaner, more confident, and more aggressive (more "Roman") than the homely Piper and hides any feelings she has for Jason but wants him for herself. Ultimately, Jason chooses Piper, since he loves her for being who she is, and he never had any feelings for Reyna.
- Subverted with Leo, Frank, and Hazel, since Leo doesn't act on any feelings he has for Hazel, and Hazel isn't in love with Leo but rather with Frank. However, who is the Betty and who is the Veronica is more clear cut in this case. Frank is the Betty, since he and Hazel are best friends, he houses feelings for her, and he lacks self-confidence, while Leo is the Veronica, since he interferes in and complicates Hazel and Frank's relationship and is far more assured of himself than Frank is. By The House of Hades, this triangle is effectively over, since Leo has fallen in love with Calypso. All three of the characters comment on this new development.
Beta Couple: An odd case as in a meta sense Jason/Piper and Frank/Hazel are clearly this to Official Couple Percy and Annabeth whose relationship is a cornerstone of the series and receives the most focus. However within the books themselves Percy and Annabeth come across as the Beta Couple since they have the strongest, most stable relationship of the group (already having a long friendship and Will They or Won't They? history under their belt from the previous series) and act as models and advice-givers to the two fledgling couples, who are a lot less secure.
Big Bad: Gaea's machinations are responsible for the series' conflict, though each book (except the last, obviously) has its own Big Bad (usually in the form of Big Bad Duumvirate) since she's asleep for most of the series:
- The Lost Hero: The rising Porphyrion and Khione.
- The Son of Neptune: Alcyoneus and Polybotes
- The Mark of Athena: Arachne, Otis & Ephialtes.
- The House of Hades: Clytius and Pasiphåe on the surface; Tartarus himself in the eponymous pit.
Big Damn Heroes:
- Percy, Frank, and Hazel arrive at the nick of time during the invasion of New Rome, followed in short order by the Amazons, who act as The Cavalry.
- The gods themselves play this role in the last book at the Parthenon, arriving in full power to help out the heroes.
- Par for the course, Tyson shows up in time to save lives during the fifth book.
The Big Damn Kiss:
- Actually happens sometime after the conflict ends, but still. Jason and Piper have this kind of kiss on the balcony of Cabin 1 (the largest cabin in Camp Half-Blood), alone, and under a sky full of stars. It's more meaningful in Piper's part, because to her, she already experienced it due to the Mist's effects, yet is heartbroken when she is told that that's a fraud. Jason honorably makes it up.
Jason: Remember your memory about our kiss? Now it's real.
- Percy and Annabeth exemplify the trope when they reunite in Mark of Athena, complete with staring at each other, running at each other, and interrupting a crucial peacemaking moment between the camps.
- Also Leo and Calypso, this time doubling with Beach Kiss.
Bilingual Bonus: Frank Zhang's grandmother calls him "Fai", which can possibly spelled as "Fei" in certain romanization systems (e.g. Wade-Giles), making his Chinese name possibly "Zhang Fei" (this is how the mainland Chinese translation interprets his name). In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a book that every Chinese person knows, Zhang Fei was known for two things: being not particularly good looking, and being a superb warrior, capable of scaring off entire armies by himself.
Black-and-Grey Morality: On a supernatural level, with the Olympians being a dark grey and the giants being black. In the third book Percy thinks the gods are marginally better than the giants, but far from what can be considered "good." Calypso makes a similar remark in the fourth book that the gods are somewhat better than the Titans and Giants. Jupiter himself is noted to be far from a good role model despite his status as king and moral leader. The heroes tend to be more "white," but several of the characters who sided with the giants did so for the same reasons the Titans had an army in the first book series...the gods tend to be horrible to those who do not deserve it.
Blessed with Suck: A good portion of the main cast has to deal with powers that can be either crappy or awesome, depending on the situation:
- Leo, in addition to his technological talent, has fire powers. Great for fighting monsters, right? Yeah, except for the fact that said powers are difficult to control and extremely dangerous. Just ask Leo's mom. Oh, wait, you can't: she died in a fire started by accident by her son. And apparently the last son of Hephaestus with the ability started the Great Fire of London. So that should give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.
- Hazel can summon precious minerals from underground as per her mother's wish. While the ability has come in useful before, it absolutely ruined her first life, as the stones curse anyone who holds onto them...
- Frank Zhang has to deal with both. His life force is tied to a stick, and if it burns down completely, he dies. However, the fire from the stick has been shown to be able to free Death himself; who knows what other awesome stuff it could do. Also, his animorphism could be considered one, since his life was linked to the stick specifically to balance the sheer awesomeness of said powers.
Bling-Bling-BANG!: Swords of gold.
Blood Magic: Gaea plans to use Percy's blood in some kind of sacrifice to bring down the gods. Per book three, it's any one male and one female demigod. She just really wants it to be Percy and Annabeth.
Bloody Bowels of Hell: Tartarus definitely fits for much of it, with all of Tartarus (the place) itself being his slumbering body.
Body Snatcher: The eidolons in The Mark of Athena are capable of Demonic Possession.
Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Percy tells Chrysaor's dolphin warriors that Dionysus will finish their transformation into dolphins, or drive them insane, or turn them into insane dolphins.
Break the Cutie:
- For Leo, it's his mom's death, as well as Festus dying.
- Hazel's flashbacks reveal an utterly traumatic past.
- Nico's confrontation with Cupid in The House of Hades brings the former's issues with his sexuality to light.
Brick Joke:
- Annabeth's mouth is hung open at the horror of seeing Tartarus. She compares her reaction to how Percy drools in his sleep, the very first thing she ever said to him.
- When Annabeth and Piper have to go it alone in Sparta, Percy gets so stressed he blows up the toilets on the Argo II. Guess how his powers first manifested?
- Percy always sulks whenever the Icthyocentaurs are brought up, as they didn't want to meet him.
Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The gods of Olympus are in no shape to fight a war against the giants precisely because they're still broken from fighting the Titans and Typhon.
Brought Down to Badass: When he crosses the Little Tiber into Camp Jupiter, Percy loses the invincibility that comes with the Curse of Achilles (something he was warned of in advance - his Greek blessing cannot cross over to Roman territory), being reduced to "merely" the most powerful demigod and strongest fighter of the main characters.
Call-Back:
- Ma Gasket shows up in The Son of Neptune wanting revenge on Jason, Leo, and Piper. Percy also shows up to reclaim his place as a main character after being absent for the first book.
- Reyna's quest near the end of The House of Hades closely resembles Percy's first quest in The Lightning Thief: A demigod originating from the offending side (Percy/Reyna) has to return a powerful stolen artifact {The Master Bolt/Athena Parthenos) in order to prevent a devastating war. They are also aided by another powerful demigod (Annabeth/Nico) and a satyr (Grover/Hedge).
- "We've got a dam hole." This is a reference to Titan's Curse, and joking about the Hoover Dam.
- When Percy shows up again after falling off a giant cliff and Hazel and Frank are surprised, he mentions that he's fallen from higher, which was another reference to the first series, most likely to him falling off the St. Louis Arch.
- A lot of references to the past series show up in The House of Hades, the curses from past enemies that Percy and Annabeth encounter in Tartarus and Percy's brief time on Ogygia being just a few.
Campfire Character Exploration: Because Leo is the son of Hephaestus, it allows for instant campfires; as such, this tropes occurs three times throughout the first book. The second two, however, take place around the same campfire (right after a werewolf attack and with the addition of Thalia).
Casual Danger Dialog: A series staple. Special mention goes to Nico and Will Solace, who spend a significant chunk of the Roman invasion and battle with Gaea in The Blood of Olympus snarking (and flirting) at each other.
The Captain: Roman praetors, who act as the leaders in all of the legion's affairs, including battles.
Catch a Falling Star: Percy to Annabeth at the end of The Mark of Athena.
The Cavalry: Amazon reinforcements in New Rome show up in the nick of time.
Cavalry Betrayal: Polybotes' army assumes the Amazons are there to attack New Rome. In fact, they are riding to the Legion's aid.
Cessation of Existence: The implied consequence of both falling into Chaos as being sucked into Tartarus' void-face. We don't actually see it happen.
Challenging the Chief: How the Amazons get their queens. This comes back to bite them when their Queen, who would side with the Romans, is challenged by a Gaea-backed usurper who keeps on coming back to life whenever she is killed, winning through simple attrition.
Changing of the Guard: Percy and Annabeth are the only old characters who are part of the Seven.
Charm Person: Piper, Drew, certain other children of Aphrodite, and Medea all have this ability.
Cherry Tapping: Bacchus technically pulls one of these on the two giants after spectating Percy and Jason beating them down for him. He simply steps in after they're done and, after a brief appeal to the crowd of ghosts whether he should or shouldn't, he simply bats them on the nose with his pine-cone staff, finishing them.
Chekhov's Classroom: The story of how the protogenia Ouranos lost his powers. It's been taught since at least the first book, yet the characters don't realize until much later that maybe, just maybe it applies to other protogenoi, too.
Chekhov's Gag: Five books later, Annabeth proclaiming the Laistrygonian giants to be "Canadians" in The Sea of Monsters is brought back up in The Son of Neptune where Percy calls them Canadians... in front of genuine Canadian Frank Zhang. Frank is not pleased.
Chekhov's Gun:
- The bronze dragon, Festus, first appeared in the short story collection "The Demigod Files".
- And now Terminus. Seemingly a one-off gag, but then comes back in the climax to help Percy defeat a Giant.
- Gorgon blood, received when Percy is arriving at Camp Jupiter, and later key to overcoming Phineas the seer and recovering Percy's memories.
- Chinese handcuffs (or finger cuffs), which Percy and Frank find in Atlanta in The Mark of Athena. Frank, who's confused by them, remembers this and eventually asks Annabeth how they work; she remembers this later and convinces Arachne to create an enormous set, which the spider-woman winds up getting trapped in.
Chekhov's Gunman:
- Reyna and Hylla - two minor characters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians reappear. Reyna turns out to be a very important character.
- Michael Varus starts out as mostly backstory explaining the loss of the legion's eagle, but shows up on Ithaca in person as a spirit.
- Lycaon is a minor villain in the first book and pops back up to make trouble in the last one as well.
Chew-Out Fake-Out:
- After leaving Calypso's island and learning about her history with Percy, Leo begins to resent the son of Poseidon for some time. Later, during a battle with Nike/Victoria, Percy tells Leo that he figured out what his problem was and admits that he still hates that he forgot about Calypso, saying that he's happy for Leo, and believes that the latter is better for her. Leo promptly gets steamed—-not because he's still angry at Percy, but because Percy just humbled himself right in front of Leo and completely eliminated any justification that Leo still had for resenting him.
- When the Amazons and Hunters kidnap Reyna in order to use her as bait for Orion, she lays out what they've done in such brutal terms that none of them can meet her eyes. Then she congratulates them on their excellent plan.
The Chosen Many: All of them were chosen by fate for their talents/gifts. No room for tag-along kids or the load:
- Percy: Making a Splash (the only one we know of)
- Piper: Charm Person (and a heroic one with combat abilities, unlike Drew)
- Leo: Playing with Fire (only one in decades)
- Frank: Animorphism/Immune to Fate/Awesomeness by Analysis
- Hazel: Dishing Out Dirt/Back from the Dead/Cool Horse
- Jason: Blow You Away/Shock and Awe (unique for flight)
- Annabeth: Teen Genius
Cliffhanger: Of the heart-wrenching kind. In The Mark of Athena Percy deciding to fall into Tartarus with Annabeth.
Clockwork Creature: Festus is a giant mechanical dragon.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Orange and purple for the Greek and Roman camps, respectively.
Compelling Voice:
- Medea, Drew and Piper all display this ability. "Charmspeak" is a gift of some children of Aphrodite.
- Thanatos's voice is described this way in "The Son of Neptune".
Continuity Nod: Has its own page.
Cool Horse: Percy, Jason and Hazel all have cool horses. Blackjack (a giant black Pegasus), Tempest (a storm spirit who happens to look and act like a horse) and Arion (fastest horse alive, capable of breaking the sound barrier, his favorite food is the cursed gold Hazel sometimes unintentionally summons).
Conveniently an Orphan: Most of the main and main supporting cast. Percy, Piper, and Annabeth are the only exceptions, and even the latter two don't have the best relationship with their Muggle parent.
Cool Boat:
- Percy blatantly calls the Argo II the most incredible ship he's ever seen.
- Averted by the beat-up dinghy that constitutes the entire Roman navy.
  Hazel: "I didn't even know we had a navy."
Cool Sword: Besides Percy's and Nico's cool swords from the last series, there's also Jason's Imperial Gold sword, which can also turn into a javelin- see Swiss-Army Weapon. Sadly, it broke during the fight with Enceladus.
Cosmic Deadline: One of the complaints to the finale is how suddenly and unsatisfyingly the plot is resolved. After spending the series on a slow trip to Greece while confronting and failing to permanently kill a single Big Bad one book at a time, the heroes reach the Acropolis. Suddenly, all the Big Bads are dispatched off, most of them offscreen, without so much a struggle. Then, through a literal Deus ex Machina, they are immediately transported to Long Island (so no more slow boat trip), into the fight with the Greater-Scope Villain, who is also similarly dispatched without a struggle. It doesn't help that the series is slower-paced than its predecessor (thanks to multiple POVs and a more dedicated attempt at Worldbuilding), so the abrupt change of tone is more keenly felt.
Counting to Potato: The monsters going through the Doors of Death in Tartarus go through in groups with designations going from A-22 to Double Red. Hyperion wonders just what kind of number system that is.
Crazy-Prepared: The Zhangs have an armory in their attic that's almost as well stocked as the one at Camp Jupiter. They have everything from swords, bows, arrows, spears, even potato launchers for taking out earthborn. It comes in handy. (Don't forget the water-hose on the roof!)
Creator Provincialism: A noticeable aversion in comparison to the first series. Instead of all America, all the time (with a few digs at Canada), Heroes of Olympus looks set to be much more international: a Chinese-Canadian main character (complete with an exceedingly rare tip of the hat to Canada's military) a book cover set against the Quebec City skyline, and a climactic moment in British Columbia, all in the first two books. And there's the quest whose end goal takes the characters to Greece, with pit stops including: Italy, Croatia, and Malta, and a return journey that includes Portugal and PuertoRico.
Crossover Cosmology:
- When meeting his dad for the first time in a dream, Leo exclaims, "Holy Mother!" Hephaestus chides him, "It's 'holy father', boy. I would think you'd know the difference."
- Topped in The Son of Neptune by rainbow goddess Iris, who hasn't quite decided whether her personal creed should be...Buddhism or Taoism. Amusingly, Buddhism canonically sees nothing wrong with being a god and Buddhist at the same time.

Crush Blush: Ella is mentioned to blush around Tyson.
Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Percy, Frank and Hazel crush the First and Second cohorts in the war games.
- Also, Hazel and Frank against Alcyoneus the giant. It wasn't a totally one-sided battle, but they really gave him a beatdown.
- Inverted in The House of Hades, regarding Tartarus. If anything, Bob and Damasen's last stands are only really done to help Percy and Annabeth escape before they get inevitably offed by Tartarus, considering what happens to Hyperion and Krios just a short while ago. To date, he's the only villain in the entire series whom the heroes are completely aghast and helpless in facing, not to mention being ultimately The Unfought.
Cyclops: Ma Gasket and her sons are cyclops. Also, Tyson.
Darker and Edgier: Continuing the trend from the original series, featuring more cases of abuse, Parental Abandonment, and Gayngst. The House of Hades definitely takes the cake out of all five books, though, as it features the aforementioned internalized homophobia and the first villain that the heroes are unable to face and which requires at least two Heroic Sacrifices: Tartarus.
Dark Secret:
- Piper thinks she'll have to betray her friends. She doesn't.
- Hazel is directly responsible for Gaea bringing back Alcyoneus .
- Due to the time period in which he was raised, Nico sees his sexuality and crush on Percy to be one.
Death Is Cheap:
- For the monsters, which are regenerating within hours if not minutes because Gaea made a new tunnel into Tartarus.
- Eventually, even some demigods are able to come back from the dead without even realizing that they were dead. Freeing Thanatos puts a stop to that.
Death Glare: Used by Percy in The Son of Neptune:
"He'd perfected his wolf stare over the last few months - a look that said: However bad you think you are, I'm worse."
Deceased Parents Are the Best: Esperanza Valdez and Emily Zhang were kind women who are much-missed by their sons. The other deceased parents are more of a mixed bag.
Delinquents: Jason and his friends are students at a 'Wilderness School,' a boarding school in Nevada for 'bad kids.'
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Several examples across the series:
- In The Mark of Athena: At Camp Half-Blood, being a child of Athena is nothing out of the ordinary. At Camp Jupiter, however, Minerva is revered as a virgin goddess, so when Annabeth goes there, the Romans are extremely shocked that a child of Athena/Minerva even exists — and that she's leading the quest, since if a child of Minerva did exist, they wouldn't be heading up any quests, they'd be advisors at the most.
- Hazel has some time-displacement related attitudes toward a lot of things. She gets more used to modern times as she goes, one of her friends noting in the last book that she openly and casually holds hands with her boyfriend in public when a few months ago it would have made her blush like mad and possibly pull away.
- Being from the past has some influence on Nico's attitude towards his sexuality. He says later on that he would have accepted it in his own time, but having had a crush on the guy he blamed for his sister's death made him feel more guilty about his feelings than he might have otherwise. His angst about his sexuality seems to be only slightly influenced by the time he's from, but it is something he and Jason discuss in House of Hades.
- Camp Jupiter has its own values and very strict laws, many of which involve capital punishment. In particular, in The Blood of Olympus, Reyna has to explain to Nico exactly how serious it is that she technically killed her father, because patricide is amongst the biggest and most horrible crimes in Roman society and automatically condemnable with Cruel and Unusual Death.
Demonic Possession: Eidolons, who start a war between the Greeks and Romans by possessing Leo, Jason, and Percy.
Demoted to Extra:
- Grover, Chiron, and Clarisse, who were major characters who made appearances in every book in the last series, make sparing appearances here.
- The last series' heroine, Annabeth, is Out of Focus in the first two books but returns as the driving force of the third. She remains a protagonist in succeeding books.
Did They or Didn't They?: Percy and Annabeth, when they're found sleeping in the lower decks of the ship. Everyone certainly seems to think they did...
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Iris, the Messenger goddess, is trapped in her store with an army of monsters, and Polybotes, outside. She throws a ding-dong at him.
Disney Death:
- Oh no, Percy Jackson just fell off a cliff in a No Escape but Down situation! ... wait. He fell into water.
- In a more traditional example, Jason in The Lost Hero, complete with some Please Wake Up beggings, courtesy of Piper. Of course, he gets better.
- Leo - however, the reader knows otherwise, and it is actually foreshadowed quite early, as the characters had planned to invoke this.
Divided We Fall: The Roman and Greek camps have to unite against Gaia, as otherwise they don't stand a chance against her.
Divine Conflict: There's an interesting example when the Greek gods start fighting with the Roman gods in that they're the same being, their Greek half and their Roman half, and the greater the difference between them, the more conflict they find themselves in. Frank, for example, has Mars and Ares constantly yelling, trying to outshout each other in his head. The few that avoid this are the ones whose Greek and Roman aspects are virtually indistinguishable from each other.
Does Not Like Men: Subverted. The Amazons like men perfectly well. They just like men to know their place even more.
Does Not Understand Sarcasm: Hephaestus. He's not too smart dealing with organic life forms.
"That was sarcasm, wasn't it? Machines don't have sarcasm, usually."
Doorstopper: In-Universe, a harpy in The Son of Neptune holds a library door open with a copy of War and Peace.
Doting Parent: Mars (a marked contrast with his Greek counterpart, Ares), Hephaestus, and Hades/Pluto all take time to speak to their children even when Zeus has forbidden it.
Do with Him as You Will: After tricking King Midas into petrifying his son, then pinning the mad king under a chandelier, Jason throws a rug over Lit to prevent the rain from un-petrifying him, and leaves with Piper and Leo, leaving everyone Midas has petrified in gold over the years (who are all un-petrifying under the rain) to "spend some quality time with Midas".
The Dragon: Porphyrion, the king of the Giants, plays second fiddle to Big Bad Gaea.
Dramatic Wind: Invoked and lampshaded by Jason, who summons the winds during his boasting match with Porphyrion.
Dr. Jerk: Healing is Damasen's talent. Tact is not.
The Dulcinea Effect: Probably not what Reyna meant when she asked for Percy's help, but Percy interpreted it that way. See Ship Tease.
Dug Too Deep: Invoked. Gaea forces Hazel to use her powers to resurrect Alcyoneus. After realizing this, Hazel decides to bury herself with the giant to postpone Gaea's plans.
Dungeon Crawling: Several side quests take this form. Annabeth has to explore subterranean Rome in search of the Athena Parthenos, and the climax of The House of Hades involves most of the main characters crawling through the titular underground temple.
Easy Amnesia: Zigzagged. Both Jason and Percy have their memories stolen by Hera/Juno, but get them back a few days after joining the other camp of demigods. Jason joins the Greeks almost immediately after waking up with amnesia, but only gets most of his memories back at first. The rest take presumably months to return. Percy wakes up with and spends roughly two months with only the faintest memory of Annabeth and little else, but gets all of his memory back pretty much all at once. While this is appropriate, as Jason needed time to learn to trust the Greeks while Percy's Fatal Flaw allowed him to trust the Romans quickly, YMMV as to whose amnesia was easier. Percy's memories returning quickly was also partly caused by his drinking gorgon's blood.
Elemental Powers: The Seven:
- Earth: Hazel
- Fire: Leo
- Wind: Jason
- Water: Percy
- Heart: Piper
- The Beast Master: Frank. Less well known but an 'elemental' power nonetheless, controlling nature and animals.
Eternal Recurrence:
- How many times do you think the Titans and giants will keep going after the Olympians?
- Invoked with Monsters, which regenerate to be fought again, and with immortals, as they don't change (much). Addressed further in The Kane Chronicles, which share a universe.
Emotion Bomb: As in the original mythology, the Cocytus kills its victims by filling them with so much despair and hopelessness that they simply allow themselves to drown.
Emotions vs. Stoicism: A running theme in Piper and Annabeth's friendship in The Blood of Olympus— the former is a daughter of the love goddess and trusts her natural instincts, while Annabeth, as a daughter of the goddess of wisdom, adheres to logic and strategy above all else. Comes to a head when they have to fight Mimas in the Temple of Fear, as Annabeth is scared out of her wits trying to come up with a way to beat him and Piper has to constantly remind her to feel, not think.
Escaped from Hell: Nico di Angelo manages to escape Tartarus in "Mark of Athena", and later Percy and Annabeth fall down there as well. They fight through the Greek mythological hell pit and manage to escape! It's as terrifyingly awesome as it sounds.

Everyone Must Be Paired: In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, only Official Couple Percy/Annabeth gets any focus, with a couple minor side pairings like Grover/Juniper and Clarisse/Chris that are few and far between. Come the sequel series The Heroes Of Olympus, and suddenly romance plays an important role in the plotlines of every single major character, and Percy/Annabeth is joined by Jason/Piper, Hazel/Frank, Leo/Calypso, and Nico/Will Solace. The only main character who doesn't end up with anyone is Reyna, who plays the Romantic Runner-Up.
Everything Sounds Sexier in French:
- Aphrodite apparently thinks so. Children of Aphrodite can speak and understand French. Why? Because it's the language of love, of course.
- Subverted in The Son of Neptune. Frank and Hazel try to talk to each other in French, but they're pretty bad at it. It is probably because Canadian French and Creole French are somewhat different?
Evil Counterpart: Has its own page.
Evil Takes a Nap: Throughout the books, Gaea the Big Bad is slowly beginning to wake from her slumber, but she's still conscious enough to influence events and cause a lot of trouble for the heroes even while asleep. In the end, Gaea is finally defeated when Piper manages to charmspeak her into going back to sleep forever.
Exact Words: Piper charmspeaks the Eidolans possessing Jason, Percy and Leo into leaving and vowing on the River Styx. In Rome, the group realizes that the vow only stops them from attacking them on the ship and possessing them.
Exploding Fish Tanks: What did you think would happen when you put Percy in an aquarium exhibit?
Exposition Cut: A character will have a vision that will show them something far away. After the character wakes up, they tell their friends on what they have learned. Riordan outdid himself during The Lost Hero, where even the critics noticed this trope being overused.
Extremely Short Time Span: Books 2-5 all take place over the course of one summer, starting in June and ending on August 1. (Book 1 took place the previous December.)
Fauns and Satyrs: Both appear; Hedge mentions that "Fauns are Roman".
Feminist Fantasy: Reyna's arc in The Blood of Olympus is about her coming into her own as a daughter of Bellona, admitting that she shouldn't define herself by the men in her life, and dealing with Straw Misogynist Orion (with the help of Thalia Grace and her sister Hylla, both leaders of famously all-female groups of fighters).
Fetch Quest: Annabeth's charge in The Mark of Athena is to retrieve the Athena Parthenos.
Five-Token Band: The seven demigods of the prophecy include a Native American girl (Piper), a Latino boy (Leo), a Chinese-Canadian boy (Frank), a black girl (Hazel), and two white guys and a girl (Jason, Percy and Annabeth). Later books include close allies who are a Puerto Rican (Reyna) and a gay boy (Nico). Doubles as Affirmative-Action Legacy, as the first series was much whiter and only had one female main character.
Flirting Under Fire: As in the first series, Percy and Annabeth are fond of this trope, frequently trading flirtatious quips in the middle of battle. Nico and Will also get in on the action near the end of The Blood of Olympus.
Fire-Forged Friends:
- Played with in The Lost Hero. Leo and Piper think they've been friends with Jason for a while, but even when this is proven to be false, they're still tight from the time they have spent together.
- In a straight example, all of the Seven by the end of The Mark of Athena consider each other close friends after all the trials they've been through together.
Foe Romantic Subtext: Khione is pretty interested in Jason. Jason, on the other hand, not so much. There's also Leo's even more obvious interest in Khione.

Forced Out of the Closet: Cupid refuses to help them until Nico di Angelo is true to himself, essentially forcing the character to admit their homosexuality.
Foreshadowing:
- When Reyna summons Percy to a private meeting with her in the principia, he sits in the other praetor's chair while waiting for her.
- The Mark of Athena brings up a few times the fact that all children of Athena are afraid of spiders.
- Leo joking about getting the House of Hades T-shirt. Percy and Annabeth manage to get to the Doors of Death by acting like tourists.
- During a dream meeting with her godly parent in The Lost Hero, Piper wearily asks if she's supposed to simply put on a dress and charmspeak Gaea to go back to sleep.
- In Chapter 42 of The House of Hades, Leo and Piper joke about setting someone on fire to attack Gaea. In the next book, someone else is indeed set on fire to defeat Gaea.
- When Frank and Reyna meet at the end of The House of Hades, they agree the first thing they should do as fellow praetors is to fire Octavian as far as possible with a catapult. Guess how he dies...
- In the last book, Apollo, Octavian, and Rachel are struggling with a lack of prophecy, and Ella quotes a prophecy that mentions the fall of the sun. The Trials of Apollo reveals that said fall is Apollo's demotion to mortal, and the lack of prophecy is a much bigger issue, as all of the ancient oracles are in danger.
Formerly Fat: Frank Zhang appears in the series as a big and pudgy teenager combining a bulky wrestler body and a baby-like face that makes him look like a "cuddly koala bear". Comes The House of Hades and his father, Mars, offers him his "blessing" which gives Frank a body fitting a perfect Roman warrior: bulkier chest, broader shoulders, sturdier face, three inches taller, all while losing his "spare tire" of a gut. As other people point out, he becomes so solid and strong you can't call him "pudgy" or "cudly" anymore - he looks now more like a football linebacker or a bull of a young man.
Gaia's Revenge: In the literal sense. Gaea seeks to take revenge on the gods for usurping her children, the Titans. Interestingly, she does not have nature-based powers, as in the original mythology this was the domain of Pan.
Gentle Giant:
- In their native home, the Hyperborean giants are peaceful. Percy and Co. still use one to help them escape from some griffins.
- Tyson also technically counts, being a giant cyclops who is a kind ally of the heroes.
- Damasen, as the opposite of Ares, is the most benevolent of the Giants, but still stands huge like all his brothers
Giant Flyer: The giant eagles at Camp Jupiter.
Good Scars, Evil Scars:
- Jason has a little Good Scar on his lip from trying to eat a stapler when he was two.
- Lit, Midas' son and bodyguard is covered in Evil Scars.
G-Rated Drug: Dakota, a son of Bacchus, is addicted to Kool-Aid with three times the normal sugar.
Grievous Harm with a Body: Percy defeats Polybotes by smashing his face in with Terminus' head.
Grim Up North: The lands northward, specifically Alaska, are beyond the gods' power. This is where Alcyoneus makes his base, holding Thanatos captive and waiting for and demigods foolish enough to try rescuing him.
"As they trudged on, Percy thought about all the crazy places he'd seen. None of them left him speechless like Alaska. He could see why it was a land beyond the gods. Everything here was rough and untamed. There were no rules, no prophecies, no destinies—just the harsh wilderness and a bunch of animals and monsters. Mortals and demigods came here at their own risk."
Grimy Water: The waters of Venice are pretty filthy in The Mark of Athena.
Gunship Rescue: Double subverted. In The Son of Neptune, the Argo II doesn't get to Camp Jupiter until the day after the invasion, but it does pull off a lot of rescues in The Mark of Athena.

Tropes H-M

Happy Ending Override: Percy Jackson and the Olympians ends on a high note: The Great Prophecy has passed, the heroes have saved Olympus, and now get to go on with their semi-normal lives. This one starts with Percy going missing not even six months after the end of the last one, a new, higher-stakes Great Prophecy, and an even worse Big Bad.
Harping on About Harpies: In The Son of Neptune. However, Phineas is not having as much trouble with them anymore, basically turning his curse into theirs, with one exception. In order to get his help, the Power Trio has to capture the harpy Ella, and give her to him. This isn't exactly what happens.
Have You Seen My God?:
- Olympus has been closed and the gods have gone MIA. Subverted. Even though Zeus ordered it, thinking it would lull Gaea back to sleep, several of the gods, thinking Zeus is making a mistake, have defied his orders. They had to do so covertly, however.
- In The Son of Neptune he seems to have changed his mind (or bowed to the inevitability of the others' meddling making the plan moot), allowing Mars to order a quest. That, or his more responsible Jupiter aspect can no longer ignore the situation and knows something must be done.
- In The House of Hades the impending war between the Greeks and the Romans has caused the Greek and Roman sides of the gods to fight one another, rendering most major gods incapacitated unless one of their children does something particularly spectacular.
Healing Serpent: Pretty much has all the examples from Classical Mythology show up.
- The Son of Neptune.
  - A amnesiac Percy gains two vials of gorgon blood by killing the gorgon sisters Euryale and Stheno, where earlier it was revealed that blood from their right side can heal anything, while the blood from their left side is lethal. Percy later on uses the blood in a deal with Phineas, where they each drink a vial. Gaia thankfully made sure that Percy drank the healing blood instead of the lethal one^noteThus killing Phineas by extension.. The healing blood returns Percy's memory.
  - The Lar Vitellius is stated to be a descendant of Aesculapius and served as a medic in the Fifth Cohort.
- The Blood Of Olympus
  - The Trope Codifier himself Asclepius shows up along with his staff and snake, a green python named Spike, and true to the trope, Asclepius behaves like one would expect him to, a doctor. He quickly diagnoses Jason with shortsightedness and gives him a pair of glasses, tells Piper to ice her shoulder and provides them with the Physician's Cure, which was made with the help of Spike.
  - The automaton of Hygieia and her snake zig-zag this trope, for though the automatons are try to keep Jason, Piper and Leo from seeing Asclepius with lethal force, the automaton provides tips for a healthy lifestyle. Plus, they can heal themselves. The real Hygieia is also implied by Asclepius to play this trope straight, since she is the goddess of good health.
  - Hilariously, the Sadly Mythtaken nature of Hermes' Caduceus is also mentioned as the symbol of medicine which irritates the snake on Asclepius' staff; Spike, who feels that the snakes on the Caduceus; George and Martha, get all the attention.
"Hell, Yes!" Moment:
- The Fifth cohort after Percy, Hazel, and Frank storm the defenders' fortress during the war games. The entire legion, especially Reyna, when they pull a Big Damn Heroes during the invasion. Not to mention "TWELFTH LEGION FULMINATA!"
- Frank taking charge of a ghostly Roman army in the House of Hades after an emergency promotion to freaking praetor.
Nico: Now that's more like it. Let's turn this tide!
Heroes Unlimited: Percy and Annabeth still play major roles, but new heroes Jason, Piper, Leo, Hazel, Frank, and Reyna all have similarly significant parts in the story. Nico, a returning character, is also upgraded to main character status and is given a narrator spot in Blood of Olympus.
Heroic Sacrifice:
- Percy is initially thought to have killed himself to take out a ghost army that threatened Hazel and Frank. Then, after defeating Alcyoneus, they go back to the glacier only to find Percy there, totally unperturbed at bringing a glacier down on himself.
- Played straight in The Mark of Athena when Percy (he really does tend to do this often) throws himself down to Tartarus to protect Annabeth. And there are only a few thousand supercharged monsters in his path!
- Leo Valdez at the end of The Blood Of Olympus, creating a massive explosion that kills himself while destroying Gaea. He gets better.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Amazon.com is a front company for the actual Amazons, and the Amazon headquarters (in Seattle) is also the company's base of operations.
Historical In-Joke:
- The American Civil War (1861-1865) was at least partially a war between Roman half-bloods and Greek half-bloods. (You should see Hazel's reaction when she finds out the Romans were in the Confederate side).
- The last child of Hephaestus that could create fire before Leo was Thomas Faynor, who started the Great Fire of London in 1666.
- Frank's ancestor was blamed for the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, though it turns out he didn't do it.
- Jack London was a son of Mercury whose Wolf House burned down because it was built on sacred ground.
- Amazon.com Inc. was apparently founded or taken over by actual Amazon warriors and used to ship goods to Amazons worldwide.
- Johnny Weissmuller, US National Championship and Olympian (the sport version) swimmer, was apparently a merman trained by the ichthyocentaurs.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Octavian, and quite literally at that - in trying to kill Jason (though his motives were questionable seeing as he was just straight up insane by now), he kills himself when his clothes are stuck in the catapult he is trying to launch. Because of his actions and nature, nobody tries to stop him.
Holding Hands:
- Percy and Reyna after they defeat the invasion and he gets promoted to praetor.
- Everyone who's paired off by book three. And by "Everyone" we mean "Everyone except Leo". Mostly.
- Nico and Will though whether as a romantic gesture on the latter's part or not is kind of ambiguous—he did it to show how badly his hands were shaking. He is also a medic and diagnoses Nico through it.
- A very sweet yet very tragic version with Percy and Annabeth. They're holding hands as they fall into Tartarus together.
- The entire group in The House of Hades during an emergency shadow-travel trip.
A House Divided: The Greeks and Romans need to ally themselves so they can defeat Gaea. Otherwise, they are SCREWED.
Human Popsicle: Quite a few, from those in Boreas' fortress and the Hunters for a short time during the battle at the Wolf House. Midas' "house guests" probably count, too.
Improvised Weapon: When caught without much in the way of silver to fight Lycaon, Reyna uses silver coins the Coach earned while busking by duct-taping them to her sword.
Indy Ploy:
Octavian: So you do have a plan?
Percy: We go to Alaska as fast as possible...
Hazel: And we improvise.
Frank: A lot.
- The Temple of Fear forces people to improvise based on instinct and emotion, as all plans are doomed to fail.
I Reject Your Reality:
- Like in the last series, Zeus/Jupiter refuses thanks to his pride. He insist the giants can be put to sleep again if the Olympians do nothing and if they giants do rise the Olympians can defeat them without demigod help despite knowing flat out that it is impossible to kill them without a demigod. Once again, gods and heroes have to go behind his back to save the day. By the time he might have wised up it is too late to do anything. Juno claims he has a long history of doing this.
- However, by the end of The Blood of Olympus Zeus gets to tell his side and it turns out that Juno's plotting has its own drawbacks. Namely, by locking down events in accordance with the Prophecy of Seven, Juno has made it impossible for the gods (or anyone other than Juno's chosen Seven) to confront Gaea. Had the Prophecies not been forced to go down a certain path, things might have unfolded differently.
Inelegant Blubbering: The Earthborn. "Yay-son! Where Yay-son? Kill Yay-son!"
Insistent Terminology: Coach Hedge is a satyr. Got that, cupcakes?
Intentional Heartbreaker: One rite of passage for the daughters of Aphrodite involves making a boy fall in love with you, then breaking his heart. Piper puts a stop to this after she takes over.
Interspecies Romance:
- Ella (a harpy) and Tyson (a cyclops).
- As well as Coach Hedge (a satyr) and Mellie (a wind spirit), who are married and expecting a child by The House of Hades.
- Leo, a demigod, and Calypso, a titan.
Invisible to Normals: The entrance to Camp Jupiter and New Rome can't be seen by muggles.
Involuntary Group Split: At the end of The Mark of Athena, Percy and Annabeth wind up in Tartarus while the rest of the group scrambles to find a way to rescue them.
It Belongs in a Museum:
- Piper initially believes this of the dagger she gets from Annabeth (it had once belonged to Helen of Troy). Annabeth tells her that they're surrounded by Ancient Greek stuff at camp, but weapons like that are the heritage of the demigods and are meant to be used.
- Annabeth says this about Arachne's tapestries.
Jedi Mind Trick: One of the abilities of charmspeaking is to make people believe whatever you want them to believe.
Jerk Ass Has A Point: At the end, Zeus claims he did not take action so the prophecy would not be limited to a single outcome explaining that the reason there are three fates and prophecies are vague is due to multiple outcomes being possible. The Fates agree that what Zeus says is true. However, since he gave different reasons for closing off Olympus earlier and ignoring the giant threat whether the is true or not is debatable. His past decisions and personality are against him, making it more of a last-minute convenient excuse.
Kill It with Ice: The result of getting hit by Hyperborean breath. Percy uses this to his advantage.
Kiss-Kiss-Slap: Briefly at the beginning of The Mark of Athena. Percy and Annabeth share a happy reunion kiss... and then she judo-throws him as her way of showing how upset she is at having been separated from him for so long.
Lady Land: Amazon HQ is run by the mythological Amazon Brigade.
Our Dragons Are Different: Festus, the team's giant mechanical dragon who runs on Rule of Cool
The Last of These Is Not Like the Others:
The coffee shops were doing a brisk business, and street musicians filled the air with the sounds of guitar, lyre, panpipes, and armpit noises.
Late-Arrival Spoiler: After taking most of The Lost Hero to be revealed, Gaea being the new Big Bad is spoiled in the first chapter of The Son of Neptune.
Laugh of Love: In The Lost Hero, there is some giggling from the Aphrodite cabin when Drew makes a remark about Jason being "handsome and smart" after he recites the last two lines of the Great Prophecy in Latin.
Let's You and Him Fight:
- Percy and Jason duke it out when possessed by evil spirits.
- In the companion story Son of Sobek, Percy crosses paths with Carter Kane while they are both hunting the titular giant crocodile, and they get into a fight when Percy mistakes Carter for a rogue demigod and Carter (who is half-African American and half-Caucasian) misunderstands the term "half-blood".
Literal Cliffhanger: The end of The Mark of Athena sees Percy and Annabeth hanging from a ledge leading to Tartarus.
Locked Out of the Loop:
- The gods, Chiron, and Lupa are keeping a big secret. The Lares of Camp Jupiter, too.
- A bit of story hints is that Chiron never mentioned the Roman camp because he swore not to - chances are, Lupa wouldn't mention the Greek camp either.
- Nico has been keeping the secret as well; Percy in particular is less than thrilled by this.
Long-Lost Relative:
- Jason and Thalia have the same mother, as well as being kids of the same god (Jupiter/Zeus respectively) but in different aspects.
- Hazel is Nico's sister.
- Frank turns out to be a far-removed descendant of Poseidon, so Percy and Tyson adopt him as their brother.
- Leo is descended from Sammy Valdez, Hazel's boyfriend from back before World War II —specifically, he is Sammy's great-grandson.
- Heracles and Chrysaor to Jason and Percy, respectively. They try to kill each other.
Loophole Abuse: The Amazons get their queens crowned by fights to the death. Given the whole death thing, there's no law against repeat matches- so when an old queen comes back from the dead wanting a rematch (and being able to return even if she dies in battle), you can bet that Hylla was going to get out her law-fu ASAP.
- Khione, the goddess of snow, is fond of doing this. Her father allows Jason and his group to leave his home and go on their quest, and so Khione can't openly disobey him... but she can be sneaky about causing trouble for them afterward.
Love Dodecahedron: Piper likes Jason who's torn between her and Reyna who is also interested in Percy who's happily dating Annabeth. And then as of The House of Hades, it turns out Nico also used to like Percy, though he's mostly over it by the time we find out.
- Love Triangle: Subverted. Frank-Hazel-Leo is set up as one, but it fizzles after they discover that Leo is the great-grandson of Sammy, Hazel's old boyfriend, and disappears altogether after Leo meets and falls for Calypso.
MacGuffin: The Athena Parthenos, which doesn't do much by itself but is the subject of the Fetch Quest in The Mark of Athena.
Mama Bear:
- An evil example with Ma Gasket, who is violently protective of her sons.
- Frank's mother protected her son from an actual bear by turning into one herself.
Maybe Ever After: The status of Nico and Will's relationship by the end of The Blood of Olympus.
Meaningful Name: Michael Varus is named after a Roman general best known for losing three legions in the Teutoberg Forest. Guess what Michael is known for.
Meet Cute: Piper to Jason. The first time they actually see one another, it's while holding hands on a bus, when Jason has effectively no memory of anything before that and Piper's had memories of knowing him inserted into her head by Hera/Juno.
Megaphone Gag: Ever since Leo Valdez tinkered with Coach Hedge's megaphone, it randomly blurts things like "The cow goes moo!".
Mistaken for Spies: The Roman demigods tend to assume the worst of almost anyone who shows up at their camp until they get proof otherwise, and Percy hates it.
More Diverse Sequel:
- While a good majority of the characters in the original series were Caucasian, of the five new heroes, one is Native American^notePiper, one is Latino^noteLeo, one is African American^noteHazel, one is Chinese-Canadian^noteFrank — and only one^noteJason is white. See Five-Token Band. Plus, the previously introduced character Nico was revealed to be gay. In addition, Reyna is confirmed to be Puerto Rican. Riordan even managed to give a Watsonian explanation that Rome was much more diverse than Greece, due in part to the expansiveness of the empire, as well as the existence of New Rome itself. Race isn't an issue; you're only ridiculed if you're weak and can't pull your own weight.
Multistage Teleport: As a son of Hades, Nico can "shadow-travel" long distances with fair ease; however, when using this ability to transport more than himself (like, say, Hedge, Reyna, and a forty-foot-tall-statue of Athena) back to Camp Half-Blood, he can only do it in a series of short jumps for fear of overexertion.
Mundane Utility: Riptide is finally used to write with in The House of Hades. Also a bit of a Brick Joke, as the possibility is first alluded to by Nico in The Titan's Curse, a full six books back.
My Greatest Failure: The Romans lost their eagle standard in a disastrous campaign in Alaska in the 1980s. They're still sore about it. They made up for it with some help.
My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: When Hazel and Frank try to speak French to each other, their differing dialects (Louisiana versus Canada, respectively) and limited fluency result in Frank asking Hazel how her beef is feeling today and Hazel replying that his shoe is green.
Myth Arc: The second Gigantomachy is the focus of the series.

Tropes N-S

Negate Your Own Sacrifice:
- Attempting to do this becomes a major plot point in The Blood of Olympus. Leo seemingly dies trying to stop Gaea, but the reader knows he is alive.
- Percy does this on a smaller scale in The Son of Neptune, taking out an army by destroying the glacier that he himself is standing on. As the son of Poseidon he's unharmed by falling into water, even from that high up.
Never Found the Body: Leo and Festus to the other characters, although readers know that they're alive.
New Powers as the Plot Demands: Justified — the first series never delved into what powers the other godly parents could have passed on to their demigod children.
- Apparently certain children of Hephaestus can wield fire and all children of Aphrodite have apparently always been able to speak French, and some can charm-speak people into doing what they want. Justified as it's stated that controlling fire and charmspeaking are ridiculously rare, and the Seven would likely be given useful powers in their fight against Gaea.
- The House of Hades has this. Piper's charmspeak can now manipulate machines, though it's possibly justified as it is unclear whether or not Festus is truly sentient.
Nobody Poops: A rather jarring example in The House of Hades, where Percy and Annabeth spend the majority of the book in Tartarus, which is of course a hostile landscape with no decent bathroom facilities. It's never addressed.
Not Listening to Me, Are You? This exchange in The Mark of Athena:
Percy: Hey, how's it going?
Annabeth: Uh, no thanks.
Percy: Okay... have you eaten anything today?
Annabeth: I think Leo is on duty. Ask him.
Percy: So, my hair is on fire.
Annabeth: Okay, in a while.
Noodle Incident:
- The first time Nico, Reyna and Hedge shadow-travel (off-screen) they wind up in Albania and something happens that Reyna describes as "possibly the most humiliating experience of her long career." The three swear never to speak of it again.
- She also worries that the Athena Parthenos will shout "DIE UNBELIEVERS" and attack tourists because that's apparently what happened the last time she dealt with a giant statue of a goddess. She calls the experience "not relaxing."
No One Could Survive That!: Leo's fight with Gaea, which Nico confirms resulted in his death. He actually does die, but it turns out he'd installed the Physician's cure into Festus, got injected with it after dying, and comes back... shortly before landing on Ogygia and reuniting with Calypso.
Ocean of Adventure: The Mark of Athena has the seven traveling from San Francisco to Greece, which includes crossing the Atlantic and sailing the Mediterranean, a sea that holds a fearsome reputation as an ancient home of monsters. Rarely do they get a break, as they are constantly attacked and harassed by monsters, hostile mythological figures and other more mundane dangers, like sinking if they take too much damage.
Official Couple:
- Percy and Annabeth, carrying over from the previous series.
- Hazel and Frank, by the beginning of The Mark of Athena.
- Jason and Piper start out as this. It's complicated by Fake Memories-related shenanigans, but they become a couple again for real.
- By the end of the series, Leo and Calypso.
Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
- In-Universe, the moment that the Greek and Roman camps know each other's existence is this, because the last time they knew each other, the American Civil War happened.
- The series' epilogue also qualifies, because Apollo's loss of foresight might meant the death of prophecies, and thus, the death of great adventures. Though read up the next series for more clarification.
Oh, Crap!: Alcyoneus after Frank and Hazel drag him into Canada. Polybotes when he realizes that Percy's got a god on his side.
One-Man Army: It was mentioned that Greek Heroes are trained to handle things solo compared to the Romans who rely on military teamwork. Percy's fighting style is repeatedly mentioned to be un-Roman because of this.
One-Steve Limit: Averted.
- Though it'd be very hard to confuse, Midas mentions his daughter being named Zoe (not to be confused with the first series' Zoë Nightshade). There's also a Jason at Camp Half-Blood playing Capture the Flag in The Titan's Curse. The first cycle also had Michael Yew from Camp Half-Blood, while the Roman camp has Michael Kahale and a (deceased) Michael Varus.
- Borderline cases: a few characters are named after famous mythological or historical figures, but given the series, the originals are sometimes mentioned as their own characters: Dionysus' twin sons are called Castor and Pollux, Octavian mentions his ancestor Octavian Augustus, and Medea remembers the first Jason very well.
- Hazel's and Nico's mothers are named "Marie" and "Maria."
Only the Knowledgable May Pass: The ghosts of Mithras' cult think they have this. In fact, Annabeth guesses and bluffs most of it, though she does have the advantage that many of their "mysteries" were hinted at in the decor.
Other Me Annoys Me: Athena is affected more than most gods when their Greek and Roman forms come into conflict, because she resents the Romans and the form they gave her (Minerva is subject to heavy Chickification).
Our Dragons Are Different: Festus is an automaton constructed from celestial bronze.
Out of Focus: The first two books focus only on three heroes each before they get united in the Argo II, so it's understandable that they only get cursory mentions in the other. But then the seven are united in The Mark of Athena and some are still more focused than others. The House of Hades is the only book where all seven become narrators. Case in point:
- The Mark of Athena has Percy, Annabeth, Piper, and Leo as narrators, leaving Jason, Frank, and Hazel out of focus.
- The Blood of Olympus has Jason, Piper, Leo, Reyna, and Nico as narrators, leaving Percy, Annabeth, Frank, and Hazel out of focus.
- This means that Piper and Leo have the most time dedicated to them as narrators, and the epilogue of the series are narrated from their perspectives (incidentally, both are the main instruments leading to Gaea's downfall).
- A lot of major characters from the first series are reduced to minor roles or cameos particularly Grover, Rachel, and Sally.
Parental Favoritism: Played for Laughs. In The Son of Neptune, Medusa's sisters Euryale and Stheno mention that their mother liked Medusa the most for being able to turn people to stone, and would criticize them for not being able to do the same.
Pirate: Chrysaor is a son of Poseidon who is an even better swordsman than Percy, along with a crew of cursed dolphin-men.
Pirate Booty: Chrysaor's ship is full of plundered treasure. The heroes sacrifice it to Dionysus/Bacchus to gain his assistance in the fight with Otis and Ephialtes.
The Plan: The Senate's decision to send Percy and company to Alaska in a leaky dinghy.
Pocket Dimension: It's highly possible that the island of Ogygia is one of these, as it does not appear on any map and can only be accessed by mortals once in a lifetime. Leo manages to find a loophole by dying during the final battle with Gaea and using the Physician's Cure to come back to life.
Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo: Percy manages to pull this on Phineas with the gorgon blood. He wins. Doubles as Out-Gambitted.
Popular Is Dumb: Drew Tanaka is Aphrodite cabin's Alpha Bitch head councillor but isn't too quick on the uptake.
Power Incontinence:
- Percy accidentally blows up all the toilets on the Argo II when upset about Annabeth going off into Sparta.
- Leo's nose catching on fire is a bit of a Running Gag.
Power-Strain Blackout: Most really impressive powers run this risk, with Percy and Jason running into the most trouble with it. However, Nico's shadow travel may be the most extreme example, bordering on Heroic RRoD.
Power Trio:
- Jason, Leo, and Piper in The Lost Hero.
- Percy, Hazel, and Frank in The Son of Neptune.
- Throughout the whole of The Mark of Athena, the seven of them regularly form into different Power Trios.
Precision F-Strike: Except that the word "freaking" is used instead of the normal phrase as he goes toe-to-toe against an ice goddess.
Leo: See, lady, that's what happens to snow in Texas. It. Freaking. Melts.
Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
- "My turn."
- "You. Me. To the finish."
- "Twelfth legion. FULMINATA.” This then shot out a thousand blasts of lightning that basically annihilated the Giants entire center line due to Percy's willpower. BAD ASS.
- "Sorry we're late. Is this the guy who needs killing?"
- Reyna facing down Lycaon:
  Lycaon: I am the stuff of your nightmares.
  Reyna: The stuff of my indigestion, perhaps.
Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
- Frank has a good one on Alcyoneus:
  Frank: Welcome to Canada, idiot.
- Percy gets an awesome one in on Polybotes.
  Percy: I'd like you to meet my friend Terminus. He's a god! *thunk*
Production Foreshadowing: In The Blood of Olympus, just before the final battle with the Giants, Piper asks Percy and Annabeth about their families. Annabeth mentions, for the first time, that she has an uncle and cousin in Boston who she hasn't seen in quite a while due to some old family grudge. Said family members would be the center of Riordan's next series, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.
Product Placement:
- Apparently Amazon.com is a front company for the actual Amazons. And they apparently read on their Kindles when they ought to be on guard duty (though it's less likely to be Product Placement than Just for Pun).
- Thanatos uses an iPad to keep track of the dead.
Prophetic Fallacy: Several new prophecies are mentioned in The Son of Neptune, but are only half complete, leaving their ultimate meaning unclear.
Prophecies Rhyme All the Time:
- No one ever asks how they still rhyme after being translated from Latin.
- Lampshaded by Octavian who insists that Mars' prophecy rhyme and be cryptic and vague. Mars pulls out a grenade in response.
Prophecy Twist: Spoofed and defied by Mars in The Son of Neptune. When asked by Octavian for a prophecy, a cryptic poem to guide the quest, Mars writes down the most bluntly straightforward prophecy ever with absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever.
"Go to Alaska. Find Thanatos and free him. Come back by sun-down of June twenty-fourth or die."
Protect This House: Frank, Percy and Hazel are surrounded by Laistrygonians in the Zhang family home. Subverted in that they don't defend the homestead so much as use its defenses to make a break for it.
Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Courtesy of Piper.
"You—want—SLEEP."
Purple Is Powerful: The demigods and legacies in Camp Jupiter wear purple shirts. The praetors wear purple cloaks as symbols of their rank.
Race Against the Clock: Before solstice! Before the Feast of Fortuna! Before Nico suffocates! Before Percy and Annabeth die to thousands of the worst monsters in history! Before the Feast of Spes!
Raised by Wolves: Camp Jupiter, specifically by the wolf-goddess Lupa who raised Romulus and Remus.
Real Event, Fictional Cause: The American Civil War was caused by Roman and Greek Demigods fighting for supremacy. Most Romans were on the side of the South, and most Greeks on the side of the Union, but not all in either case, in line with that war being "brother against brother".
Real Men Wear Pink: Minor character Butch, a bulky dude with a shaved head and a face like a pile of bricks. He has a rainbow tattooed on his bicep, because his mother is Iris, the Rainbow Goddess. Got a problem with that?
Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: This trope is a massive part of Piper's character; she hates that she might be seen as a Brainless Beauty and isn't fond of her mother, Aphrodite, or her half-siblings. She also deliberately chooses a weapon that had previously been used only as a mirror so that she can use it as intended. She does gradually grow out of this.
Recycled IN SPACE!: The Argo II In-Universe, a flying version of the original Argo (the mythical Jason's ship, which he sailed on during his quest for the Golden Fleece).
Redemption Equals Death: Octavian's last act is to fire one of the onagers, Roman catapults, at Gaea in order to destroy her. He's caught on it and is sent flying with the attack, dying with her. Admittedly, he was also trying to kill Jason at the same time, but he explicitly names Gaea as a target as well; this leads to his being remembered as a savior of Rome afterward.
Remember the New Guy?:
- The Roman aspects were not mentioned at all in the original series. However, The Lost Hero justifies this in that the Greek and Roman demigods do not get along at all, hence the need for them to remain hidden from each other. In fact, a clever reader can point out that the only ones explaining the Roman aspects are, of course, Romans, and that the Romans felt this way about the Greeks. (Since Lupa's not one to tell!)
- Jason Grace himself. Thalia didn't mention having a little brother for several reasons, among them being that the events surrounding his disappearance were quite traumatic for her and that she thought him dead until this series began.
- The readers are never told that Koios was a part of the Second Titanomachy, yet he appears in The House of Hades as every bit a war veteran as others are. What's even more bizarre is that he pops up literally just once to meet with Bob before running off somewhere without any closure at all. Then again, we see everything of the previous series from Percy's eyes, and it's likely that Koios was part of the Othrys Front that's mentioned in The Lost Hero instead. His inexplicable appearance may also meant to further strengthen the Black-and-Gray Morality the gods vs non-gods is like (he mentions revenge after "what they'd done" to his daughter, Leto).
Repeated Cue, Tardy Response:
“Save yourselves!” Percy warned. “It is too late for us!” Then he gasped and pointed to the spot where Frank was hiding. “Oh, no! Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!”
Nothing happened.
“I said,” Percy repeated, “Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!”
Frank stumbled out of nowhere, making a big show of grabbing his throat. “Oh, no,” he said, like he was reading from a teleprompter. “I am turning into a crazy dolphin.”
Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Basilisks are abhorrent, and they destroyed Frank's bow!
Rummage Fail: When facing off against Lycaon, a nervous Leo reaches into his tool belt for a weapon and initially grabs breath mints before hastily swapping them for a hammer. He hopes no one noticed. This is turned into a Brick Joke seconds later when the perspective switches to Jason, and while evaluating his assets, he thinks about "Leo, who apparently thought he could defeat the armies of darkness with breath mints."
Sadistic Choice:
- In the second excerpt of The Son of Neptune, "June" (Juno) tells Percy that he can endure suffering and tragedy and maybe save his friends, or live happily under the ocean while the world ends.
- Jason and Percy become possessed by ghosts and attack each other. Piper is ordered to decide which one will survive.
- Also keeps with the History Repeats theme of the series, as Hercules/Heracles was offered essentially the same choice.
- Several characters outright state that Percy's gonna have to make another one sometime in the future, but likely won't be able to, due to his fatal flaw: loyalty to his friends above all else. This plays out in the circumstances surrounding The House of Hades:
  - Percy opts to fall into Tartarus with Annabeth, leaving Frank to hold the quest together, just as Mars predicted.
  - At the end, he and Annabeth are forced to leave Bob and Damasen behind to fight off Tartarus and operate the Doors of Death while they escape.
Sadly Mythtaken:
- A major part of the series is rooted in the misconception that the Roman gods are merely Greek gods who were adopted and tweaked slightly by Roman perceptions, ignoring the fact that the two pantheons originated separately and only became conflated later. The Roman gods were known to have taken on wildly different attributes compared to the familiar Greek ones — Jupiter was a stone on which oaths were sworn, Venus was a patron of vineyards, Mars an agricultural deity... This is also why there exist gods like Janus, who's explicitly a Roman creation with no Greek counterpart.

The series portrays Minerva as having been devalued by the Romans into a minor deity of crafts and handiwork compared to her strategic and combat-oriented Greek counterpart. In actuality, Minerva was one of the most important members of the Roman pantheon, to the point where she was one of the gods who made up the Capitoline Triad central to public perception and worship. For reference, the only other members of said triad were Jupiter and Juno themselves, which goes to show how significant Minerva was to the culture to be in league with them.

Save Your Deity: Jason, Piper, and Leo have to rescue Hera before the solstice.
Saved by Canon: The Demigods & Magicians stories The Son of Sobek and The Staff of Serapis, which were published while Heroes was ongoing^note, save Percy and Annabeth, as those stories are set after Heroes and feature them alive in separate teamups with The Kane Chronicles's Carter and Sadie.
Sealed Good in a Can:
- Percy was kept asleep by Juno for several months until the time was right for him to go to Camp Jupiter.
- Hazel's time in the Underworld also qualifies.
Secret Test of Character:
- Percy thinks "June" is trying to put him through one in the beginning of The Son of Neptune.
- Hazel thinks it's a test too - she orders Frank not to fire, because she thought Percy was a god in disguise.
Secretly Wealthy:
- Piper could probably try and tell her old classmates the truth: that her dad's Hollywood A-lister Tristan McLean, but she knows they'd never believe her.
- Insecure, awkward Frank lives with his very wealthy grandmother.
Self-Made Orphan:
- This is the reason why Leo is initially afraid of his fire powers: when he was a kid, Gaia visited the workshop where he and his single mother were, with the firm intention of preventing Leo from becoming a powerful enemy; Leo used his powers to try and protect his mother, but lost control and started a fire, accidentally killing her instead. He still has his father, but since he's the god Hephaestus whom Leo only met at 15...
- Hazel killed her mother and herself to stop Gaea from raising Alcyoneus back in 1942.
- Reyna killed her and Hylla's father after his obsession with Bellona turned him into a Mania.
Sequel Hook: It's not very obvious like the last time, though, because it doesn't involve any of the demigods (who get Happily Ever After). Apollo's control over foresight does not return even after Gaea's defeat, which probably means no more prophecies. Furthermore, Zeus is angry at Apollo as the latter didn't tell him about the prophecy and promises a punishment for him. This segues right into The Trials of Apollo.
Ship Tease:
- Percy and Reyna as well as Reyna and Jason. While she and Jason weren't a couple, Reyna is shown to be fond of him. It's also fairly common for praetors to become romantically involved. Then Jason disappears for eight months and Percy becomes the new praetor.
- Nico and Will Solace get a couple moments of cute contact in The Blood of Olympus .
Shout-Out: Has its own page.
Sickening Sweethearts: Tiberinus and Rhea act like a very affectionate married couple.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: Arion apparently has a very filthy mouth, according to Percy (the only person on the team who can speak horse).
Shown Their Work: Rick Riordan has been around in real life, and used to be an editor for mythology books. And it shows. He actually gets a lot of common misconceptions correct, such as how Thanatos is actually Death itself, and that Pluto was not just the lord of the underworld but also the god of wealth and the earth.
Soldier vs. Warrior: The organized, militaristic Roman demigods tend to fit the Soldier archetype, the comparatively disorganized, free-spirited Greeks the Warrior. Both ways are shown to have their advantages.
Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying: The House of Hades repeatedly calls weasels rodents (they're carnivorans).
Staying Alive: Gaea grants her minions the ability to return from the dead.
Stealth Pun: In The Mark of Athena, Leo (upon hearing that there is a bounty on their heads) makes a wisecrack about being worth two, or three Franks. Franks. As in, Francs.
Steampunk: Leo describes the Hephaestus cabin as steampunk. The term also applies to Festus.
Summon Magic:
- Frank's godly parent gives him a spear tipped with a Dragon's Tooth that can be used thrice. Breaking it off in the ground creates a zombie warrior roughly akin to the Terminator.
- Nico uses the Scepter of Diocletian to call up a Roman ghost-legion in The House of Hades.
Supernormal Bindings: Thanatos, god of death, has been captured and bound with chains. The only thing that can break them is the flame of life, meaning Frank has to burn off part of his life force to cut through them.
Swiss-Army Weapon: Jason's weapon begins as a gold coin; a toss causes it to become an Imperial Gold sword or javelin on heads or tails respectively.
Switching P.O.V.: Each character gets their turn to have their perspective told (from a third-person limited POV). To help with this, in lieu of chapter titles Riordan just puts "[CHARACTER NAME]" in ALL CAPS.

Tropes T-Z

Taking You with Me:
- Subverted. Hazel and Frank are afraid Percy has done this to get rid of the Roman shades in Alcyoneus's lair, but the readers know he's fine because his water gifts will protect him from the fall.
- Played straight during Hazel's first life, when she discovers she was being manipulated by Gaia into reviving Alcyoneus, the giant. She uses her powers as a daughter of Pluto to bring down the cave where the giant was forming, killing herself, her mother and effectively delaying the giant's revival for several decades.
- Arachne uses her web-lines to drag Annabeth down to Tartarus with her, with Percy going along for the ride.
Team Dad: Chiron, per usual, for Camp Half-Blood.
Team Mom: Lupa is this to Camp Jupiter.
Team Pet:
- Festus, who is a giant mechanical dragon, to Jason, Leo, and Piper.
- Hannibal the elephant for Camp Jupiter as a whole.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: There is quite a bit of animosity between Hera and more than a few demigods, particularly Annabeth and Thalia, but as Piper points out, they will have to work together to beat the Giants and Gaea.
Tempting Fate:
- Just as Coach Hedge observes that there's no sign of the "metaphorical wolves" Hades warned them of, they show up. Also, they're not metaphorical.
- Discussed in Piper's narration in The Blood of Olympus.
"Never assume you're safe, and never, ever tempt the Fates by announcing that you think you're safe."
Textile Work Is Feminine: Played with. Annabeth has to weave, but it is part of a deadly test and is not presented as feminine. However, it's a carryover from Greek mythology in which this trope was frequent (and commonly associated with Athena).
Thanatos Gambit: Leo dies taking Gaea down and uses his death as Loophole Abuse to return to Ogygia, which no man can find twice in a lifetime.
Think Nothing of It: In The Mark of Athena, when Rhea Silvia mentions the time Tiberinus (god of the river Tiber, and her future husband) flooded his banks and allowed Romulus and Remus to wash ashore and be found by the wolves, Tiberinus says that "It was nothing."
¡Three Amigos!: Jason, Leo, and Piper. Also Percy, Frank, and Hazel. In the final book, we have Nico, Reyna, and Coach Hedge.
Threshold Guardians: Hercules guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
Time Bomb: In The Blood of Olympus, shortly before the final battle, Orion shoots an arrow with one attached, trying to kill Reyna and destroy the Athena Parthenos. For Reyna's actions to deliver the statue and right the ancient wrong between Greece and Rome, Athena makes the bomb ineffective.
Title Drop: Hera/Juno does it while speaking with Jason about his destiny in the last chapter of The Lost Hero.
To Hell and Back: Percy and Annabeth barely survive Tartarus in House Of Hades, which is more or less Super Hell.
Token Minority Couple:
- Frank (Chinese-Canadian) and Hazel (black).
- Before that, Sammy (Mexican-American) and Hazel.
Token Trio:
- Jason as the quest leader, Piper as the Native-American love interest and Leo as the Latino Best Friend.
- Also in "The Son of Neptune" with Percy (white), Frank (Chinese-Canadian), and Hazel (black).
Too Dumb to Live:
- Alcyoneus, as pointed out by Frank — when you're unkillable as long as you stay in the boundaries of the state of Alaska, you really shouldn't hang out in the part of the state that's only 10 miles wide.
  Frank: Welcome to Canada, idiot.
- Bryce Lawrence, a Legacy of Orcus (got of punishment in the Underworld) and an exile from Camp Jupiter (recently reinstated by Octavian), tries to take on Nico and Reyna — two experienced demigods, a son of Hades and daughter of Bellona the war goddess, respectively — in The Blood of Olympus. An enraged Nico deals with him in one blow by unleashing a single "flood of pain and anger", turning him into a mindless ghost and sending him to the underworld.
Touché: Gaia is grudgingly impressed by Percy's gamble to force her to choose him over Phineas.
Touch the Intangible: Some demigods are able to physically interact with certain intangible beings due to powers inherited from their divine parents.
- Nico, by virtue of being a son of Hades, is able to grab a hold of ghosts and spirits that would otherwise be intangible.
- Jason, as a son of Jupiter, is able to grapple with storm spirits even when they make themselves intangible.
Trojan Horse: Invoked by Octavian, who uses the "beware Greeks bearing gifts" line to try and incite conflict with the Greek demigods and so maintain his own power. It's not exactly a horse though, and nor is that actually the plan.
True Companions: Jason, Leo and Piper become this in the first book. Percy comes to consider Hazel and Frank as important to him as anyone from Camp Half-Blood. Mark of Athena solidifies all of the 7 into this trope.
Truly Single Parent: Aphrodite was born from the sea foam produced from Ouranous' body when it fell into the ocean.
Two Guys and a Girl: Both trios for both books 1 and 2. Jason/Leo and Percy/Frank as the Two Guys, with Piper and Hazel as the Girls, respectively.
Two Lines, No Waiting: Riordan weaves in multiple secondary arcs and character arcs.
Underground Level: The final battles of book three are all underground.
Ungrateful Bastard: The Olympians in general tend to be this, making several characters wonder how they are better than the Titans or giants. Demigods do them favors and the best they get is "be grateful I do not kill you." In the last book, Zeus continues this trend by being proud of Jason one moment, but nearly killing him for questioning him in front of the other gods the next.

Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Lampshaded when Percy runs through traffic with "June" in The Son of Neptune, most of the drivers, "just swerved and looked irritated, as if they had to deal with a lot of ratty teenagers carrying old hippie women across the freeway." It's The Mist again.
The 'Verse: It shares one with its prequel series (naturally) and The Kane Chronicles; in that series characters mention odd things going on in the United States as well. Solidified with Drew and Lacy's appearance in The Serpent's Shadow and Carter Kane appearing in The Son of Sobek.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: All gods have the power to look like whatever they want. All of Frank's family can shift into animals.
Walk into Mordor: In The Son of Neptune, the heroes can't just fly to Alaska because Zeus would kill Percy if he tried it.
Walking Wasteland:
- Hazel's life gives off this vibe. Wherever she goes, cursed gems and gold emerge from the earth that could kill innocents who picked them up. Pluto seemed to imply that most of his children are like this to some extent, but Hazel just takes it up to eleven.
- Nico too. When he gets overly stressed or angry, flowers and grass surrounding him die, the ground cracks, and sometimes nearby spirits or bones become agitated. In some cases, the temperature plummets and frost forms on nearby surfaces.
Walk This Way: Discussed in The Mark of Athena, where Phorcys joyfully tells Percy and Frank this, then scuttles off sideways. Frank actually asks Percy if they really have to, before Percy tells him it's just a figure of speech.

White Male Lead:
- In a sequel series that seems to amp up the minorities compared to its predominantly Caucasian prequel, Percy and Jason still stand out as being the attractive, white, straight, cisgender male powerhouses among the Seven, and the lynchpins of Hera's plans.
- The series as a whole starts to subvert this:
  - In The Son of Neptune, Frank is the official leader of the quest.
  - In The Mark of Athena, Jason and Percy acknowledge Annabeth as the leader of the quest and responsible for searching out the Athena Parthenos.
  - In The House of Hades, Jason promotes Frank to praetorship to lead the ghost army.
Window Love: Piper and her father after he's lost his memory do this through a video chat, with their hands touching on "opposite sides" of the computer screen.
Who Wants to Live Forever?: Mars shows that he has this sentiment when speaking to his son Frank about Frank's dying grandmother.
Mars: Life's only precious because it ends, kid. Take it from a god. You mortals don't know how lucky you are.
Winter Royal Lady: Khione, goddess of snow, and daughter of Boreas, the North Wind.
With This Herring: The only formal aid the Roman Senate gives Percy, Frank, and Hazel on their quest to save Camp Jupiter in The Son Of Neptune is the piece-of-crap dinghy that sinks outside of Seattle.
The Woman Behind the Man: Gaia, behind her son, Porphyrion.
Womb Level: Tartarus (the realm) is literally the body of Tartarus (the Eldritch Abomination). When Annabeth and Percy fall down there, they sometimes wonder what part of his body they're walking on.

World of Pun: Riordan being Riordan, the puns are almost as frequent as snarking. Special mention goes to Lupa, directed to Jason: "As always, you are our saving Grace."
Wrench Wench: Leo's mom Esperanza, who was described as a competent mechanic. As usual, all of Hephaestus's daughters are good with machines, including Leo's half-sister Nyssa.
Writers Cannot Do Math: Aside from The Lost Hero, the whole series is set a year after The Last Olympian, but a few details are exactly a year off:
- Nico is fourteen here, even though he should be thirteen.
- It comes into play with Hazel’s age as well. She celebrates her thirteenth birthday in December of 1941, and the next time we see her it’s summer in Alaska. Since she’s one of the names that Jason mentions at the end of ‘’The Lost Hero’’, she must have arrived at Camp Jupiter before he disappeared in September. ‘‘The Son of Neptune’’ takes place the following June, making her fourteen years old.
- Percy says in The Mark of Athena that the events of The Titan's Curse were three and a half years ago, when they were actually two and a half years ago.
- In The Blood of Olympus, Percy and Annabeth plan to spend their senior year of high school in New York together, when they should only be starting their junior year. Plus, Percy missed the entire second half of his sophomore year.
You Can't Fight Fate: Played with. As the first series established, prophecies become worse if you try to avoid them, but Zeus points out near the end of the fifth book that there is never a single right answer to fate. There are three Fates, and each enables a different path to be walked, with different results, different paths. So while you can't fight Fate, Fate is perfectly okay with letting you decide how to go about fulfilling it.
You No Take Candle: Subverted with Ella, who despite her intelligence speaks like this because she is a harpy and that's just what they do.
You Are Worth Hell: The end of The Mark of Athena ends with one of these, with Percy getting dragged down to Tartarus with Annabeth instead of just letting her go.
You Shall Not Pass!: Percy initially intends to do this in The House of Hades so that Annabeth can escape Tartarus, but she rejects the suggestion out of hand. However, Bob and Damasen ultimately do this instead.

Literature / The Heroes of Olympus

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Alternative Title(s): The Heroes Of Olympus

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Literature / The Heroes of Olympus

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This series provides examples of:

Alternative Title(s): The Heroes Of Olympus

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