In which some Mark of Athena chapters are available on Google Books early
...aaaaand Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus fandom explodes into a ball of squee and hyperventilating.
If you would like to read the chapters, they can be found here on Google Books or some lovely person made screencaps here. Some people are getting different chapters to load. According to saturnized, she got the full version of chapters 1-5 while my version cut off in the middle of chapter three and skipped around the first part of the book until it ended at chapter twenty. So basically I've been spoiled a whole hell of a lot for major stuff in this book.
But anyway, shall we discuss what we've all managed to glean from these previews?
If we all remember correctly, the preview on RSquared's website cuts off JUST BEFORE the Percy/Annabeth reunion when Annabeth, Jason, Piper and Leo arrive at Camp Jupiter. Basically 90 percent of my anticipation for this book was the reunion scene and WE GOT IT AND IT WAS PERFECT AND GOD ANNABETH YOU ARE AMAZING BASICALLY FOR THIS LINE LATER:
"And this is Annabeth," Jason said. "Uh, she normally doesn't judo-flip people."
I always end up focusing on Percy and Annabeth even though there's a bunch of awesome going on else where to comment on, but they're my favorites, I'm sorry I'm not sorry and THERE'S TOO MUCH GREATNESS WITH REYNA AND LEO AND EVERYONE ELSE FOR ME TO DIGEST PROPERLY.
From what I've gathered, basically everyone gets parts of the chapters where Annabeth and company are in New Rome, Leo gets possessed and fires the Argo II's guns, and shits does down so they have to leave. At some point after that, either the Google Book version starts to skip chapters or ends completely. So I'm going to just summary post what I got from Google Books and y'all can add whatever else I missed or you saw.
- Annabeth, Leo, Piper and Percy are the narrators. Excuse me while I die because MORE PERCY POV.
- Leo hangs out with Echo and Narcissus for a while with some kind of plot to uncurse Narcissus? This must happen after the Argo II lands, but I only got snippets of that chapter so I have no idea what's going on.
- Apparently Jason and Percy get into the fight from the cover in Kansas somewhere between chapters 8 and like 15.
- The demigods have realized that Gaea is after some demigod blood to complete her evil plot, preferably that of Piper, Percy or Jason, apparently.
Piper narration from that scene: “Today on the highway,” she said, “Gaea told me that she needed the blood of only two demigods - one female, one male. She asked me to chose which boy would die.”
Piper has a Bacchus induced vision about her, Percy and Jason drowning. She's hoping it's symbolic. ME TOO, PIPER.
- They’re going to Atlanta to do some ship. While in Atlanta, Percy and Frank get captured by a giant to be put on display in an aquarium and have fights and stuff, so you know. The usual. Interestingly, Percy appears to be having a bit of PTSD from that time he almost drowned in Alaska and doesn't like being in a room with water over his head.
- There’s a flashback with Annabeth and her mom where Annabeth talks about going to visit Sally every week while Percy was gone and them crying together and OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU DO THIS TOO ME RICK RIORDAN. During this flashback, Annabeth stumbles across a confused Athena/Minerva in New York and this is apparently where her mother freaks out on her but I WOULDN'T KNOW because my stupid chapter previews keep skipping at the good parts.
- In which RSquared clearly knows about Nico/Annabeth/Percy and is trying to squash it like a ANT:
Annabeth felt that deadline weighing on her, too. She’d always had mixed feelings about Nico di Angelo. She suspected that he’d had a crush on her ever since they rescued him and his big sister Bianca from that military academy in Main; but Annabeth had never felt any attraction to Nico. He was too young and too moody. There was a darkness in him that made her uneasy.
Oh, by the way, that deadline is find Nico is four days or HE DIES so, you know. No pressure to SAVE THE FAN FAVORITE or anything.
- At some point, they move out of Georgia and to Fort Sumter. Southern Belle!Aphrodite shows up to have tea with Hazel, Piper and Annabeth and it is hilaaaaarious. Piper is basically like OMG MOM STOP BEING SO EMBARASSING and Annabeth is like APRHODITE, THE CIVIL WAR WAS NOT ROMANTIC OMG. Aphrodite spends some time reminscing about the party the Olympians had the night Fort Sumter was fired upon and teasing Annabeth about making her teenage love life totes miserable before delivering some important info regarding the Mark of Athena.
- The Mark of Athena is a series of clues that lead to Athena’s statue in Rome and there’s a map in Fort Sumner that will lead them to it. As we learn from Reyna and Annabeth's conversation, Athena's statue might help reunite the Romans and the Greeks, and that other children of Athena have tried to get it and have failed miserable. Possibly because of this:
”But as you said, Annabeth Chase, no one has ever succeeded in following the Mark of Athena to its end. There you will face your worst fear - the fear of every child of Athena.”
MOTHERFUCKING ARACHNE YOU GUYS IT HAS TO BE OH GOD ANNABETH
- The tea gets interrupted by Octavian and some other Romans who have followed them all the way to Fort Sumter. Hazel, Piper and Annabeth are cornered by the three Romans with more on the way, and Annabeth realizes she needs to create some kind of distraction to get to the ship but no one else is available. Percy's hanging out in the bay for whatever reason (like I said NO CONTEXT) and the blessedly amazing girl decides to drop her knife in the bay to get his attention. And Octavian's just like Y DID U DO THAT EVIDENCE and Annabeth gives him a LOL I'M A DUMB BLONDE look and he BUYS IT because he's OCTAVIAN and then this amazingness happens:
All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in the armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth’s dagger
”You dropped this,” he said, totally poker-faced.
Annabeth threw her arms around him. “I love you!”
- Also, there’s this scene Coach Hedge causes some issues and Annabeth has to go be awesome again:
”The fort is crawling with Romans,” Percy warned. “You’ll have to fight your way through, find our friends - assuming they’re okay - find this map, and get everybody back alive. All on your own?”
”Just an average day,” Annabeth kissed him. “Whatever you do, don’t let them take this ship!”
Annnd then my section ends with Jason sword fighting with Dakota. Probably. Kool-Aid was mentioned so it was a safe bet.
I NEED MORE IMMEDIATELY.
ETA: If you search for key words such as oh, I don't know, CHARACTER NAMES, Google Books will pull up paragraphs of text throughout the whole book, not just the ones allowed during a preview. So I GOT MORE IMMEDIATELY and I found this amazing gem and proceeding to shriek like a howler monkey:
When he and Annabeth started dating, his mother had drummed it into his head: It's good manners to walk your date to the door. If that was true, it had to be good manners to walk her to the start of her epic solo death quest.
PERCY I LOVE YOU GODDAMMIT WHY AREN'T YOU REAL
If you would like to read the chapters, they can be found here on Google Books or some lovely person made screencaps here. Some people are getting different chapters to load. According to saturnized, she got the full version of chapters 1-5 while my version cut off in the middle of chapter three and skipped around the first part of the book until it ended at chapter twenty. So basically I've been spoiled a whole hell of a lot for major stuff in this book.
But anyway, shall we discuss what we've all managed to glean from these previews?
If we all remember correctly, the preview on RSquared's website cuts off JUST BEFORE the Percy/Annabeth reunion when Annabeth, Jason, Piper and Leo arrive at Camp Jupiter. Basically 90 percent of my anticipation for this book was the reunion scene and WE GOT IT AND IT WAS PERFECT AND GOD ANNABETH YOU ARE AMAZING BASICALLY FOR THIS LINE LATER:
"And this is Annabeth," Jason said. "Uh, she normally doesn't judo-flip people."
I always end up focusing on Percy and Annabeth even though there's a bunch of awesome going on else where to comment on, but they're my favorites, I'm sorry I'm not sorry and THERE'S TOO MUCH GREATNESS WITH REYNA AND LEO AND EVERYONE ELSE FOR ME TO DIGEST PROPERLY.
From what I've gathered, basically everyone gets parts of the chapters where Annabeth and company are in New Rome, Leo gets possessed and fires the Argo II's guns, and shits does down so they have to leave. At some point after that, either the Google Book version starts to skip chapters or ends completely. So I'm going to just summary post what I got from Google Books and y'all can add whatever else I missed or you saw.
- Annabeth, Leo, Piper and Percy are the narrators. Excuse me while I die because MORE PERCY POV.
- Leo hangs out with Echo and Narcissus for a while with some kind of plot to uncurse Narcissus? This must happen after the Argo II lands, but I only got snippets of that chapter so I have no idea what's going on.
- Apparently Jason and Percy get into the fight from the cover in Kansas somewhere between chapters 8 and like 15.
- The demigods have realized that Gaea is after some demigod blood to complete her evil plot, preferably that of Piper, Percy or Jason, apparently.
Piper narration from that scene: “Today on the highway,” she said, “Gaea told me that she needed the blood of only two demigods - one female, one male. She asked me to chose which boy would die.”
Piper has a Bacchus induced vision about her, Percy and Jason drowning. She's hoping it's symbolic. ME TOO, PIPER.
- They’re going to Atlanta to do some ship. While in Atlanta, Percy and Frank get captured by a giant to be put on display in an aquarium and have fights and stuff, so you know. The usual. Interestingly, Percy appears to be having a bit of PTSD from that time he almost drowned in Alaska and doesn't like being in a room with water over his head.
- There’s a flashback with Annabeth and her mom where Annabeth talks about going to visit Sally every week while Percy was gone and them crying together and OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU DO THIS TOO ME RICK RIORDAN. During this flashback, Annabeth stumbles across a confused Athena/Minerva in New York and this is apparently where her mother freaks out on her but I WOULDN'T KNOW because my stupid chapter previews keep skipping at the good parts.
- In which RSquared clearly knows about Nico/Annabeth/Percy and is trying to squash it like a ANT:
Annabeth felt that deadline weighing on her, too. She’d always had mixed feelings about Nico di Angelo. She suspected that he’d had a crush on her ever since they rescued him and his big sister Bianca from that military academy in Main; but Annabeth had never felt any attraction to Nico. He was too young and too moody. There was a darkness in him that made her uneasy.
Oh, by the way, that deadline is find Nico is four days or HE DIES so, you know. No pressure to SAVE THE FAN FAVORITE or anything.
- At some point, they move out of Georgia and to Fort Sumter. Southern Belle!Aphrodite shows up to have tea with Hazel, Piper and Annabeth and it is hilaaaaarious. Piper is basically like OMG MOM STOP BEING SO EMBARASSING and Annabeth is like APRHODITE, THE CIVIL WAR WAS NOT ROMANTIC OMG. Aphrodite spends some time reminscing about the party the Olympians had the night Fort Sumter was fired upon and teasing Annabeth about making her teenage love life totes miserable before delivering some important info regarding the Mark of Athena.
- The Mark of Athena is a series of clues that lead to Athena’s statue in Rome and there’s a map in Fort Sumner that will lead them to it. As we learn from Reyna and Annabeth's conversation, Athena's statue might help reunite the Romans and the Greeks, and that other children of Athena have tried to get it and have failed miserable. Possibly because of this:
”But as you said, Annabeth Chase, no one has ever succeeded in following the Mark of Athena to its end. There you will face your worst fear - the fear of every child of Athena.”
MOTHERFUCKING ARACHNE YOU GUYS IT HAS TO BE OH GOD ANNABETH
- The tea gets interrupted by Octavian and some other Romans who have followed them all the way to Fort Sumter. Hazel, Piper and Annabeth are cornered by the three Romans with more on the way, and Annabeth realizes she needs to create some kind of distraction to get to the ship but no one else is available. Percy's hanging out in the bay for whatever reason (like I said NO CONTEXT) and the blessedly amazing girl decides to drop her knife in the bay to get his attention. And Octavian's just like Y DID U DO THAT EVIDENCE and Annabeth gives him a LOL I'M A DUMB BLONDE look and he BUYS IT because he's OCTAVIAN and then this amazingness happens:
All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in the armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth’s dagger
”You dropped this,” he said, totally poker-faced.
Annabeth threw her arms around him. “I love you!”
- Also, there’s this scene Coach Hedge causes some issues and Annabeth has to go be awesome again:
”The fort is crawling with Romans,” Percy warned. “You’ll have to fight your way through, find our friends - assuming they’re okay - find this map, and get everybody back alive. All on your own?”
”Just an average day,” Annabeth kissed him. “Whatever you do, don’t let them take this ship!”
Annnd then my section ends with Jason sword fighting with Dakota. Probably. Kool-Aid was mentioned so it was a safe bet.
I NEED MORE IMMEDIATELY.
ETA: If you search for key words such as oh, I don't know, CHARACTER NAMES, Google Books will pull up paragraphs of text throughout the whole book, not just the ones allowed during a preview. So I GOT MORE IMMEDIATELY and I found this amazing gem and proceeding to shriek like a howler monkey:
When he and Annabeth started dating, his mother had drummed it into his head: It's good manners to walk your date to the door. If that was true, it had to be good manners to walk her to the start of her epic solo death quest.
PERCY I LOVE YOU GODDAMMIT WHY AREN'T YOU REAL