The Mark of Athena: Fangasms and Speculation

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from Percy Jackson and The Olympians, as well as the Heroes of Olympus

The Mark of Athena: Fangasms and Speculation

The cover for Rick Riordan's third installment of The Heroes of Olympus series, set for release this fall, has recently been revealed and oh my Zeus, am I excited! As you can see, the cover features two boys (obviously Jason on the left and Percy on the right) charging at each other, seemingly about to attack each other. It's been confirmed that this is an actual scene in the book, which leaves me, as well as hordes of other fans wondering WHY? Jason and Percy haven't quite met each other yet, so judging by the cover, I'm guessing they didn't hit it off so well on their first meeting. And to be honest, it isn't quite so hard to believe once you think about it, because Jason is simply Percy's Roman counterpart. Granted, even though they have many things in common, they aren't exactly the same; they each have qualities that set them apart from each other. But as we saw in the previous books with Thalia, who also had many things in common with Percy, those who are alike don't always see eye to eye. So perhaps Jason wouldn't appreciate Percy basically taking his spot as praetor, or maybe Percy would feel as though he shouldn't take orders from Jason (I can only assume that Jason would try to take charge and order others around with him being the son of Zeus and all). Or maybe Gaea performs some sort of crazy voodoo magic, brainwashes Jason and Percy into mindless zombies whose only purpose in life is to destroy each other, which in turn, sparks a civil war between the Greek and Roman camps and then the world as we know it is destroyed and ripped apart into oblivion...okay maybe not, but I feel as though my two previous theories are plausible and both would definitely cause some tension. 

Now on to other matters, I'm almost positive that The Mark of Athena is a reference to Annabeth, just as The Son of Neptune was referencing to Percy. I also think that Annabeth is going to be the seventh demigod of The Prophecy of Seven. I just don't see it going any other way, unless some mysterious demigod just suddenly appears out of nowhere. Though, in saying that, I guess there is a possibility of Nico being the seventh demigod, but it seems unlikely since Hazel has already taken the place as a child of Hades AND the fact that he's currently missing in action. Oh and wow, is anybody else freaked out by Octavian? I'm usually pretty fond of children of Apollo,but this guy is just terrifying. One of my favorite lines was when Percy gets his mark and Octavian tells him, "I hope that hurt" just because it was so...well, evil. Seriously, he's a psychopath! Rick Riordan has definitely succeeded in making the books a bit darker.

There are definitely some more unanswered questions like, what happened to Nico or how Leo can possibly be Sam, but I'm going to leave those up to you. I will now leave you all with a video of Rick Riordan reading the first chapter of The Mark of Athena. Enjoy!

~Sam

P.S. Sara, I absolutely LOVED Job Hunters and Squaresville! They're both so unique and are extremely entertaining!! I haven't started watching the Lizze Bennet Diaries simply because I'm still only in the beginning of Pride and Predjudice, but I can assure you, once I finish reading it, I'm totally watching it!