Ever since Ovid sat down to chisel the origins of the gods in The Metamorphoses and Homer sang out the adventure of the ultimate heroes in The Iliad, Roman and Greek mythologies have been barreling forward to this epic conclusion:

A bunch of half-god teenagers saving the world.

Okay, maybe Ovid and Homer didn't quite imagine Rick Riordan's epic Heroes of Olympus series back in a time before books even existed…but readers have been waiting for The Blood of Olympus (2014) ever since Percy Jackson first hit the scene in The Lightning Thief  in 2005. After the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series concluded with The Last Olympian in 2009, it seemed like we'd seen the last of our buddy Percy. But never one to disappoint, Rick Riordan debuted a new series, The Heroes of Olympus, in 2010.

The new series started with The Lost Hero (that lost hero being Percy Jackson), and ends with a bang in this here fifth book, which finally wraps up the prophecy that started it all (there's always a prophecy, isn't there?):

Seven half-bloods shall answer the call,
To storm or fire, the world must fall,
An oath to keep with a final breath,
And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.

In The Blood of Olympus, we follow those seven half-bloods—Jason, Piper, Leo, Frank, Hazel, Percy, and Annabeth—on a quest to stop the resurrection of Gaea, the earth mother. And the book is big enough to contain more than seven half-bloods, as another plot follows Reyna and Nico trying to return the Athena Parthenos statue to Camp Half-Blood before an all-out war between the Greeks and the Romans goes into full swing.

If there's one thing the Greeks and Romans do well, it's Drama with a capital D—and the conclusion to The Heroes of Olympus series has plenty of it. Rick Riordan has enough books to fill all ten slots on the bestseller list, and The Blood of Olympus might just win the race.

We've uncovered Rick Riordan's top-secret formula (which he totally shouldn't have shared on Whisper):

God of War the video game – the gore + a modern setting x (five teenagers / Disney marketing magic) = an unputdownable reading experience.

So yeah, we're not going to beat around the bush here. If you started this series, you might as well finish it.

After all, heroes always finish what they've started.

P.S. Want to know why you should care about the whole series? Check out our thoughts on The Lost Hero.