The Battle of the Labyrinth


The Battle of the Labyrinth Rick Riordan is an adventure story. The book is 361 pages and was published in 2008 by Hyperion Books for Children. It is the fourth book in the series about Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Battle of the Labyrinth starts with Percy exploring high school and continuing to have adventures with the Olympians.

The author's purpose was to create several characters and adventures for the reader to become fascinated by. The descriptions of the characters make the reader want to find out what they are capable of doing. The cheerleaders that were empousai have fire in their eyes and fangs. The scorpions were larger than people and moved strangely. One character was a hundred-handed one. Kampe wore a belt of many animals' heads and a dracanae is a snakelike warrior.

Percy tells the story about his experiences with his friends Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson at Camp Half-Blood. Nico is another friend, but he is not at the camp. Percy and Annabeth escape from the scorpions by going under the statue of Zeus's fist, and then see the Labyrinth. They know that it is dangerous to go into the Labyrinth, but feel they must go in order to find Pan and Daedalus. The Labyrinth has many confusing tunnels. They free a hundred-handed one from prison and escaped from Kampe. Later they get captured by dracanae. They meet Pan and Daedalus. The climax occurs when the good characters fight the evil characters for control of the Labyrinth in the battle.

Overall, the writing was detailed and imaginative but there were definite strengths and weaknesses. The strengths were the description of the Labyrinth and the evil characters and their actions. A weakness was the development of the character Annabeth. She argues with her friends and wants to end the adventure. Another weakness was the ending could have been more exciting.

In conclusion, I found a book, The Battle of the Labyrinth extremely interesting and exciting. I would recommend this book to readers who are into the series or Greek Mythology, in general. My favorite part was when Tyson leads the jail break. I would like a character (Calypso or Chiron) to tell Percy what to do next in an iris message in the ending.