The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo, #3) de Rick Riordan

Hé les gens ! C’est à cette période de l’année où j’écris une critique criarde vraiment incohérente sur les livres de Rick Riordan et on me dit de me détendre, mais je n’ai aucun frisson quand il s’agit de Rick Riordan. Et croyez-moi quand je dis que cette fois, Rick Riordan est ne pas foutre le bordel.

Ne vous méprenez pas – pour une grande partie du livre, nous avons le même jeu d’aventure amusant que de nombreux lecteurs ont appris à aimer dans les livres de Rick, même si c’est quelque peu stéréotypé. Nous avons Apollo dans tout son mélodrame, avec tellement de références à la culture pop et à l’histoire, à la fois pour les adolescents modernes ET leurs parents. Tant. DONC. DE NOMBREUX. Apollo, comme toujours, est un plaisir si horrible à lire, car c’est un désastre, et il est si vaniteux, mais tout cela est très attachant. Cela étant dit, je pense qu’Apollo est beaucoup plus sympathique qu’il ne l’était dans le premier ou le deuxième livre – il a appris une certaine humilité. Ses aventures précédentes sont restées avec lui, et c’était génial de voir autant de développement de personnage.

C’était vraiment excitant de revoir Grover et de voir à quel point il avait mûri. Je suis tellement fier de lui. Et la famille Hedge – j’ai vraiment grandi en les aimant tous les trois dans ce livre, même si je ne leur ai pas vraiment prêté beaucoup d’attention dans les Héros de l’Olympe. Nous avons également eu quelques vieux méchants, comme Medea, ce qui était vraiment cool à voir.

Spoilers à partir de ce moment.

(voir spoiler)[I was so excited for Piper and Jason, because I’ve really come to love them, even though when I first read The Lost Hero, I was not a fan of any of them. I was twelve. In the eight years in between, I have come to love each and every member of the Seven, including Leo Valdez, even if he can be really annoying. Especially since reading The House of Hades, I’ve really come to realize how much I love everything about Piper and Jason – I’m not a huge Jasiper fan, but I know now I love them in The Lost Hero, and all the books in between.

So the first shock of the book: Jasiper broke up. I was stunned, because this contradicted everything we had seen from the ending of the Heroes of Olympus, with everyone neatly paired off and getting a happily-ever-after. We all thought that they were going to get a happily-ever-after. But I thought that this was a really mature look on first love. While Percy and Annabeth are proof that first love can be your true love – as it was for Rick himself – Piper and Jason proves that things aren’t always that cut and dry. Leo and Calypso, in The Dark Prophecy, talked about how they needed to find time to figure out how to be a couple away from travelling and danger. Piper and Jason figured that they weren’t a good couple, but they were still friends, and that was okay.

Even seeing both Piper and Jason was so bittersweet, and it hurt that Piper’s life was turned upside down. I admire how incredibly brave she was, dealing with so much in such a short time – even before the events of this book. And when we finally see Jason, we see him just the way as he’s aways been – quiet, dedicated, loyal. The same qualities that I pegged him as ‘boring’ when I first met him in the end made me love him. And it was good to see that Jason, at least, was living as normal of a life that demigods can.

I have to admit that I had, up until this recent reread and this book, that I considered Trials of Apollo to be the most juvenile of Rick’s series. But it’s not: the silliness hides the brutality and tragedy that has always been inherent in Greek mythology, and, well, the Camp Half-Blood-verse as a whole. This book really brought it into the forefront. On the first page of The Lightning Thief, Percy says, « Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, scary ways. » And sure, we’ve seen some pretty brutal deaths over the years. But Rick doesn’t kill main characters. If he does, he brings them back. Or so we thought.

Because Jason. Jason Grace dies and even though I am in denial, it is made incredibly clear that this is final. There is no Piper charmspeaking him to life. No potion. No godly magic. We see him get stabbed, twice. We see his body. We see his coffin. In all Rick Riordan’s books, this is the most final and brutal death, because it’s so goddamn real. I think that a lot of other deaths in the series had hope and fantasy behind them: Beckendorf and Silena reunited in Elysium, Zoe Nightshade turning into a constellation, Bianca di Angelo showing up in ghost form – and even so, these were minor characters. They were sad, but you only knew them for a book or so. You don’t spend FIVE FUCKING BOOKS with them only to see them end up in a coffin.

Jason’s death is one of the hardest depictions of loss I’ve ever seen in a book, because it’s so frank and human. It takes on a view of death that I’ve seen in books for older readers. I think it was very reminiscent of One Particular Death in one of Leigh Bardugo’s books. He doesn’t get a romantic monologue of dying like Luke or Silena did. It was quick and brutal. And realizing it was just as – Jason’s corpse tumbling onto the beach. Even though he finished his Grand Quest, he wasn’t safe, because demigods aren’t safe – and neither are humans, for that matter. It’s a very straightforward look at mortality. Sometimes people die gracelessly (I’M SORRY, I’M SO FUCKING SORRY). Sometimes people die too early. Sometimes people die when no one expected them to. I have criticized Rick for not killing anyone in his books, that this lowers the stakes. I think we all didn’t expect the stakes to be raised so quickly. Like Caligula says: it’s not a game. And this book shows it.

I also have to commend Rick for this depiction of grief, because it’s so fucking raw. Jason’s death didn’t really hit me until Leo flew in and asked, « Where’s Jason, » and I screamed because I realized Jason and Leo never got to say goodbye to each other. Hell, Jason never knew that Leo was ALIVE. Like, excuse me, I’m going to go cry under a rock now. Not to mention Leo going, « I can’t even think right now? Is that normal? Just forgetting how to think? » That also hit me so hard because it was so real and human. And I think, if this book had been out when my dad passed away, this would have been the book I’d turn to for solace, because it covers all these complex and hard feelings about death and loss that you don’t fully realize until someone you care about dies. Apollo found those feelings.

Jason Grace died as he lived, for the most part: selflessly and heroically (though, notably, it wasn’t a brick that killed him). And even though his death fucking hurts, I think it’s given everyone a lot more fire to defeat the emperors. I have a lot of complicated feelings right now, because I only just finished the book and this is the worst fictional death I’ve gone through, like, ever. But I really do commend Rick Riordan on how he handled everything, even if I’m going to be shrieking into the next century.

As for the end: Bellona’s daughter. On the one hand, this means we’ll see Reyna again, one of my favourite characters. On the other, I don’t believe we got Leo’s bad news from Camp Jupiter? Also, I’m really really really really not wanting this Reyna/Apollo thing to happen, so I have a lot of mixed feelings? I just. Have. A lot of feelings about this book. I have no chill. I’m sorry. (hide spoiler)]