Literature / The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure

Go forth and find the one who calls out your name,
Who suffers and despairs for refusing to remain;
There leave something of equal value behind,
Or your body and soul no one will ever find.

— The prophecy given to Nico and Will.

The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure, released May 2, 2023, is a standalone book in The Camp Half-Blood Series, co-written by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro. It is written from the POVs of Nico di Angelo and his boyfriend Will Solace, both of whom were introduced waaaay back in the original Percy Jackson books.

The story takes place shortly after the ending of The Trials of Apollo, when Nico received a prophetic message that Titan Iapetus, aka Bob, is trapped in Tartarus by somebody and needs rescuing. Nico and his boyfriend Will take up the call and risk their lives to save the imprisoned Titan from whoever the threat is. In Tartarus, the two heroes battle their inner demons, as well as the outer demons native to the hellish domain.

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The Sun and the Star provides examples of:

• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Apart from getting several POV chapters in The Blood of Olympus, this is the first book in which Nico di Angelo was the main protagonist, despite being a main cast member since Percy Jackson.
  • It's also the first time Will is a main character, having previously been a supporting one in the previous three series.
• And I Must Scream: After Iapetus was captured by Nyx, she tortured him by trapping him inside one of the blobs where monsters in Tartarus reform, to be disintegrated and reintegrated over and over again.
• But Now I Must Go: After returning to Camp Half-Blood, Iapetus immediately takes off to the west, saying that there is somewhere else he wants to be.
• Brown Note:
  • Tartarus' real form will break the sanity of anyone who spends too long seeing it.
  • The Mansion of Night, Nyx's residence. We don't know what it actually does, but both Nico and Will are reduced to tears upon seeing it. Nico manages to dodge it the second time because he consciously avoids eye contact with it, and he helps Will snap out of it.
• Cannot Cross Running Water: Or, at least a specific river. The Heroes manage to escape Nyx in the end by crossing the River Acheron, which makes anyone who touches its waters experience any pain they may or may not deserve, and Nyx is nothing but pain so she is repelled.
• Combination Attack: The way Bob is freed from the regeneration pod is Will channeling his light powers through Nico's Stygian iron sword, allowing the blade to be hot enough to cut open the pod.
• Dark Is Evil: Zigzagged. Tartarus is undoubtedly a gloomy and depressing place, and Nyx is an evil being, but the book's central message is that not everything associated with darkness is misery. Will learns that everyone, including himself, has a little bit of darkness inside their heart, but it's not something to fear, while Nico accepts that darkness will always be his nature, yet he doesn't have to let it define him.
• Dead Person Conversation: After rescuing Iapetus, Nico dreams meeting Bianca and Maria. It turns out, however, that both are real; Hades has taken their souls to meet with Nico.
• Eldritch Location: Tartarus is, as always, a hellish realm of nightmares. Monsters regenerate from blisters on the ground. The aura of the place triggers a wave of negative feelings to bring you closer to despair. On top of all of that, it's the body of Tartarus, the primordial god.
• The Ferryman: While Charon is mentioned, he never appears (likely since his job is to guide souls in the Underworld, not Tartarus). Instead, Nico and Will are guided by various people to enter and journey through Tartarus, ranging from the troglodytes, to Gogyra, the the nymph wife of the River Acheron, and Small Bob, Iapetus' cat.
• Genius Loci: Aside from Tartarus, there is also the Mansion of Night, which is revealed to be alive, made of thousands of insect-like beings.
• The Heartless: The cacodemons created by Nyx are personifications of negative emotions and feelings, in this case Nico's bad memories.
• How We Got Here: The book opens with Nico and Will on the company of a woman named Gorgyra, who prods them to tell stories, in the Underworld. It then cuts to a few days earlier in the mortal world, with Nico and Will preparing to go the Underworld. The narrative shifts between the two timelines several times afterwards, until they eventually merge midway through the book.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Will suggests Nico speak to Dionysus about his dreams, Nico asks him if Dionysus can even get through a conversation without "sarcasm, an insult, or a combination of the two?" Will completely murders him by responding, simply, "Can you?"
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: During the climactic confrontation with Nyx, her children just stand around without helping her. It's later revealed that they are actually rather sick of being ordered around, especially Hypnos, who sets her mansion on fire so Nico, Will, Iapetus, and Small Bob can escape.
• Mother of a Thousand Young: Not only Nyx is the mother of dark deities like Nemesis, Hypnos, and Charon, but she also conceived every single cacodemons in the world, which number in the thousands.
• Perfection Is Static: Nyx's worldview is based on the idea that nobody can change and deny their true nature. She is personally offended that Nico has been improving himself, seeing it as affront to the natural order.
• Series Continuity Error: In Nico's flashback to meeting Nyx, he says that one of her children, Hypnos, put everyone in New York to sleep during the Second Titanomachy. It was actually his son, Morpheus, who did. This is rather strange since The Tower of Nero (released just three years before this book) had confirmed it was the case.
• Title Drop: As they come to rescue him, Iapetus calls Will and Nico "my sun and star."
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: It's mentioned that Tartarus is so vile-looking that demigods automatically wire their brain to see it as something more normal (sort of like how normal people can't see through the Mist), because seeing its real form for too long will break their sanity.

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