The Burning Maze

“No.

I refuse to share this part of my story. It was the lowest, most humiliating, most awful week in my four-thousand-plus years of life. Tragedy. Disaster. Heartbreak. I will not tell you about it.”

The combative tone of Apollo’s first words encode the novel’s themes, for Apollo, the first-person narrator, does not want to share this part of his human experience due to its humiliating and tragic elements. This reticence foreshadows Jason’s death—the first death of a main character in the entire Percy Jackson universe—even as it affirms the importance of memory. Likewise, Jason’s final words to Apollo will be urge him to remember what he has learned as a human.

“The arrow buzzed, no doubt trying to access Wikipedia. It denies using the Internet. Perhaps, then, it’s just a coincidence that the arrow is always more helpful when we are in an area with free Wi-Fi.”

The whimsical tone of this passage exemplifies a signature feature of Riordan’s narrative style, for he combines elements of ancient mythology with modern culture, using the incongruity between the two to create a comic effect. Here, even in the midst of a perilous moment, Apollo consults the Arrow of Dodona for advice. It is crafted from a sacred ancient grove and capable of dispensing advice, but because the characters are currently underground, Apollo assumes that it is struggling to access Wi-Fi and is therefore less than helpful. In this way, Riordan creates a fantastical tool that ironically mimics the signs of faltering technology in the real world.