Why am I still reading these books? [The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan]

As I explained earlier I started reading the Percy Jackson (PJO) series because I wanted to understand the context for a meme video on YouTube. I've continued on with subsequent books in they expanded universe because I'm a ho for a wide worldbuild. I read the Kane Chronicles (TKC) books and I've read random shorter stories that are apparently in-between others chronologically story-wise. Finishing with the aforementioned miniseries focused on the Egyptian gods I started the next miniseries in Rick Riordan's myth-verse, Heroes of Olympus (HOO). The main heroes from the PJO universe are a bit older with boatloads more of hubris, arrogance, tactlessness, hypocrisy, and cultural ignorance. Except now we've brought in Roman counterparts.

There's a compilation of the first three books in the HOO series available on download through my Hoopla connect, so that's been great for my loan count. I'd read the first two and started the third, The Mark of Athena (TMA). A quick summary to avoid a rehashing, there are Roman demigods existing in a similar camp for halfling offspring, but on the West Coast. In this book they're finally brought all together and the quest (again, to save the world, because what else?) has begun. I've tweeted through my reads of other books and this time was no different. The epiphany that I was graced with was that there was an innate ceiling of greatness to these books. Why? Because the Greek heroes have always been trash. Feel free to argue with me but know you're wrong.

The Hero archetype, especially in "Western" civilizations has always been flawed and bent to patriarchal standards. Athena, for being a goddess of wisdom and war, always sides with Zeus, routine philanderer. Hercules is trash for too many reasons to list. Aphrodite just doesn't care. Female heroes are limited in their ceilings of success and male heroes are liars and cheats. What this  history of trash translates to for the heroes in TMA is that they're routinely self-involved to faults, excessively sexually or romantically charged, illogically prideful, and also xenophobic?

I've tweeted it out but let me say it here, the characters are too young to be acting so attached. Teenagers years away from legal age shouldn't be depicted as so committed. They routinely rebuff authority and social hierarchies, but then enforce social hierarchies and respective authority structures in their own circles? There is literally a 13-year old girl in a love triangle with two around 15-year old boys, a plot device that was disgustingly pushed in TKC as well.

Not to mention the weird white voices of non-white characters. Our token Hispanic character, Leo Valdez, is a child of Hephaestus. He's essentially an incel, bemoaning his lack of romantic prospects but is also a lecherous peeping tom? Previously our token black character, Charles Beckendorf, was also a child of Hephaestus. After having his personage introductions tacked to notations of his race, he died. Hephaestus, having raped Athena in Greek myth, was apparently so ugly his mother tried to kill him. These are two-thirds of the noted male characters of color. The third, Frank Zhang, is Chinese. Frank's a bigger guy. Muscular I guess, but maybe a bit chubby? We're routinely reminded of his Asianness because other characters in their inner monologues compare him to a Buddha statue. Yikes.

I'm not sure (that's a lie, I'm pretty sure it's because I said I'm a ho for a wide worldbuild, but go off) why I'm still reading these books. I read each and roll my eyes so much as I read. After reading the PJO series I watched one of the YouTube meme compilation videos and it was a fun experience. I didn't realize that there were more books, so that's mostly why I'm still reading. I feel like I read on Tumblr that there was LGBT representation in these books maybe? I can only imagine how that might read. I know there's another series with the Norse gods, and having previously been my favorite mythology maybe there's hope for that series.

I think on GoodReads I'd rated one of the books from TKC, maybe one from PJO, but I don't think it was accurate. It was one of the first ratings I'd given after I'd made my profile and was trying to find 20 books I'd read to add. Realistically none of these books will ever approach a 5-star rating. Plus I think I'm quite generous with my 4-star ratings. This will likely get a 3-star rating. It wasn't (relatively) egregious enough to push low, but it wasn't anything stellar. And plot was pushed for plot's sake.

The villain is making sense and winning? Have them act stupidly for plot. Centuries old monsters are enacted their centuries old plots of revenge? Make them blundering buffoons. As someone no longer in their teens, the biggest issue with this myth-verse has been the out of age acting. If the characters were all in their late teens or early twenties then maybe my eyes wouldn't roll so much. Three stars. And probably, if we're honest, that's pushing it.