The Blood of Olympus

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014

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Chapters 29-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 29 Summary: “Nico”

Nico, Reyna, and Hedge are in Buford, South Carolina. Nico worries that shadow-traveling is taking a toll on his body, causing him to at times become more spirit than shadow. He remembers Jason suggesting that it might be “time you come out of the shadows” (214, italics in original) and realizes that for the first time in his life, he fears the dark. The Athena Parthenos has brought them to the site of the Battle of Waxhaws during the American Revolution, when the British (Roman demigods) massacred the colonialists (Greek demigods). Nico is surprised that he can’t sense any spirits at a site of so much death. When Reyna says she blames herself that they landed there, Nico encourages her to talk about her past, sharing his own anecdote of Hades gifting him a French zombie chauffeur.

Disarmed, Reyna tells her story. The Roman war goddess Bellona, a patron to her family for centuries, fell in love and had children with Reyna’s father. Bellona prophesied that the fate of Rome rested on his family, and he became obsessed. A soldier, he returned from serving in Iraq with post-traumatic stress and physical wounds that both took a toll. Eventually, he became nothing more than a mania, a wraith. One day, he knocked Hylla unconscious, and Reyna rushed at him with a saber, a family heirloom that she didn’t realize was imperial gold, and accidentally vaporized him. Nico tells her that she didn’t kill her father, since he was already dead, but Reyna weeps that patricide is a capital offense in Rome. She says that if word got back to Camp Jupiter—and Roman legionnaire Bryce Lawrence appears, finishing her thought—she’d be killed.

Chapter 30 Summary: “Nico”

Hedge returns with good news but stops short at the sight of Bryce, who arrests Reyna for violating Roman laws. He calls forth from the earth the skeletons of British soldiers—skeletal warriors called spartoi—who offered the colonialists quarters and then slaughtered them. Because they broke their oath, the British soldiers come under the power of Bryce’s father, Orcus, the god who punishes oath breakers. Nico can’t affect them. The spartoi grab Reyna and Hedge while Bryce shares his plans to torture them. Nico feels himself dissolving. If he tries to shadow-jump with the Athena Parthenos, he’ll dissolve and the statue will be lost forever. Reyna locks eyes with Nico, infusing him with strength. When Bryce tells Reyna how much he looks forward to exposing her secret and slashes her across the face, Nico explodes in anger.

Chapter 31 Summary: “Nico”

After turning Bryce into a spirit, Nico collapses. His dreams cycle through an inexplicable series of images—ravens, horses, and his sister Bianca; Hazel telling him that she wants him to be an exception; the harpy Ella; Clarisse caring for Hedge’s wife, Mellie; Hades sending Nico to Camp Jupiter for the first time; and the goddess of misery, Akhlys, declaring Nico’s sorrow and pain perfect. He wakes up covered in mud-soaked bandages, Hedge’s “sports medicine with a little nature magic” (230). Nico was disappearing so quickly that unicorn draught, nectar, and ambrosia had no effect. Reyna tells him that there’s both good and bad news.

Chapter 32 Summary: “Nico”

Reyna reveals that Nico was in a shadow coma for three days. She and Hedge had been unable to wake him; he’d practically been a ghost. They have only two days to make it back to Camp Half-Blood before the Romans attack, and Nico isn’t ready to shadow-jump yet. Another jump would kill him. Nico apologizes for scaring Reyna and Hedge by what he did to Bryce, and both admit that turning him into a ghost unsettled them. Nico is surprised to find that their criticism hasn’t made him angry. He asks why they didn’t leave him behind, and both Reyna and Hedge affirm that he’s “part of the team” (233). They won’t leave him behind. Everyone has their bad moments, but friends support each other.

The good news is that they’ve seen no sign of either the Romans or Orion, suggesting that Bryce was working alone and that the Amazons and Hunters took down the giant. Reyna hasn’t heard from either Hylla or Thalia but has “to believe they’re still alive” (234). Best of all, Hedge called in favors and has found a new way for them to transport the Athena Parthenos. A group of winged horses appears, led by “the immortal lord of horses,” Pegasus (234).

Chapters 29-32 Analysis

After leaving Puerto Rico, Nico takes the group closer to Long Island, where the showdown with the Roman camp looms. Their landing at the Revolutionary War site in South Carolina enables Riordan to weave ancient history and modern US history together in a way that illuminates both. Characteristically, he refers to soldiers on both sides as demigods, noting that the Roman demigods fought on the British side and the Greek demigods on the American side. Rome was a centralized empire that expanded its power and influence by military conquest, while the Greek world was more decentralized, a collection of independent city-states during the classical period and later a collection of smaller empires. The comparison of modern US history with Roman and Greek ancient history contextualizes a central conflict: the US colonialists’ desire to gain independence from the British Empire.

After ending the last section of this quest from Reyna’s point of view, Riordan turns to Nico’s for the revelation of Reyna’s story. This choice enables Riordan to create suspense and a cliffhanger from Reyna’s internal thoughts and emphasize the confusion of Nico and Coach Hedge at the appearance of ghosts on the balcony. Turning to Nico to narrate the story allows it to unfold free of Reyna’s judgments of herself. Riordan conveys how the story sounds to a receiver rather than telling it from the speaker’s perspective. Together, these choices create a dynamic exchange between Reyna and Nico’s points of view that on the structural level mirrors the novel’s themes of Self-Acceptance and Healing (which Reyna still needs to achieve) and Reconciling With and Understanding Others (which Nico and Reyna are developing toward each other).

Bryce was introduced earlier in the narrative as a demigod prone to insubordination and violent behavior who has a particular grievance against Reyna. Riordan draws on a relatively obscure deity who enables Bryce to make use of the war’s casualties in a way that Nico can’t counter. Nico’s extreme reaction to Bryce’s threatening to expose Reyna’s secrets about her father’s state of mind and her inadvertent action reflects both Nico’s anxiety about his own secrets and his growing bond with Reyna.

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By Rick Riordan

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