Literature / The Camp Half-Blood Series

The Camp Half-Blood Series is a media franchise by Rick Riordan that encompasses the series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, The Trials of Apollo, and various companion books (like The Demigod Files and The Demigod Diaries).

It exists within the same universe as The Kane Chronicles, which has several short crossover stories with the Camp Half-Blood characters, and Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, which has outright connections in the series proper. The page for the universe as a whole can be found here.

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The books in this franchise are:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

1. The Lightning Thief
2. The Sea of Monsters
3. The Titan's Curse
4. The Battle of the Labyrinth
5. The Last Olympian

All five have been adapted into graphic novels.

There are also four companion books:

• The Demigod Files
• The Ultimate Guide
• Demigods and Monsters
• Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo (found as a short story in Guys Read: Other Worlds and the paperback edition of The Hidden Oracle).

The Heroes of Olympus

1. The Lost Hero
2. The Son Of Neptune
3. The Mark Of Athena
4. The House Of Hades
5. The Blood of Olympus

The first three have been adapted into graphic novels; a graphic novel of The House of Hades is scheduled for release in September 2024.

There is also one companion book:

• The Demigod Diaries

The Trials of Apollo

1. The Hidden Oracle
2. The Dark Prophecy
3. The Burning Maze
4. The Tyrant's Tomb
5. The Tower of Nero

There are also two companion books:

• Camp Half-Blood Confidential
• Camp Jupiter Classified: A Probatio's Journal

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Senior Year Trilogy

• The Chalice of the Gods
• Wrath of the Triple Goddess

Other

• The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure (2023): A sequel to The Trials of Apollo about Nico di Angelo and Will Solace; co-written with Mark Oshiro.

Canon Crossovers:

• Demigods & Magicians
  • "The Son of Sobek"
  • "The Staff of Serapis"
  • "The Crown of Ptolemy"

Companion books not particularly part of a particular series:

• Percy Jackson's Greek Gods
• Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

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Tropes across the franchise:

• Abusive Parents: The gods are often guilty of this. Hera threw Hephaestus off a mountain, Tartarus trapped Damasen in hell for being a Non-Action Guy, Zeus turned his daughter into a tree rather than actually helping her, etc.
• Action Girl: All of the female demigods who stay in the camps are trained in battle, and most can hold their own in a fight. The Olympian goddesses, are no slouch either, and display a wealth of powers.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Between the mythology and this series. Characters like Hestia and Khione are rarely even mentioned in the myths but play major roles here.
  • Characters such as Hylla, Will Solace, Jake Mason and Nico, who are one-off characters when first mentioned, gain greater roles in a newer series.
• Asshole Victim: Several, including...
  • Percy's abusive stepfather Gabe Ugliano, who's Taken for Granite thanks to Medusa's head by the end of The Lightning Thief.
  • Octavian, a Roman legacy of Apollo and the Augur of Camp Jupiter, who leads the attack on Camp Half-Blood in The Blood of Olympus, intending to wipe out the Greek demigods, but is killed when he's caught in his own catapult and sent flying towards Gaea, dying on impact.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Monsters are made of this — they're purely abstract entities who, if their physical forms are destroyed, will merely reform in Tartarus and come back. The minotaur, one of Percy's first monster battles, dies early in book 1 and returns in book 5.
  • Leo Valdez dies in the final book of The Heroes of Olympus, but is revived with the Physician's Cure, having set it up in advance.
• Badass Army: Every major group in the franchise has one-specifically, the Twelfth Legion, the army of demigods from Camp Half-Blood that Percy leads in The Last Olympian, and the einherji.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The gods are mostly jerkasses, but their enemies are worse — they outright try to cause The End of the World as We Know It or some other high-stakes plan.
• Big Good:
  • The gods are supposed to be this, they are certainly "big", but they can't make up their mind on the "good" part.
  • The true closest the series has is Chiron, the centaur Activities Director at Camp-Half-Blood. For untold centuries and throughout every book, he has trained and protected demigods from the perils of the world. He mentored the vast majority of heroes in the various books.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Olympians, as per usual. There's also the fact that the demigods (who are constantly sent on dangerous quests) are their kids and all the Titans, the Giants, and Gaea are related to them either directly or indirectly.
  • Blessing: Gods such as Aphrodite, Ares, and Artemis can bestow blessings to Demigods descended by them for being beautiful, warriors, or hunters. Each god's blessing has distinct attributes like increased strength, restored beauty, and eternal youth.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Unless they are speaking directly to them, demigods almost always address their godly parent by their actual name. Even then, they call them "Mother" or "Father" as more of a respectful title than a name. Calling them "Mom" or "Dad" is a sign the conversation has gotten particularly close or casual.
  • An exception can be when they are talking to one of their half siblings, in which case a "Mom" or "Dad' may slip.
• Circles of Hell: The Underworld has Isles of the Blessed at the top, Elysium below that (or encircling them), the most widely populated Asphodel Fields, the Fields of Punishment and Tartarus.
• Child of Forbidden Love: Percy is this, since his father had sworn on the Styx not to have demigod children.
• Crossover Cosmology: Greek and Roman mythology, with the Egyptian and Norse pantheons given prominent focus in the greater universe. The Trials of Apollo would have Apollo casually mention gods from other pantheons like Indra and Marduk and state the Olympians had always been aware of other divine families.
• Deadpan Snarker: Just about every major character, and plenty of minor characters, get sassy one-liners, and several engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat. The protagonists and their Love Interests are particularly effusive snarkers.
• Divine Parentage: The demigods are half- or at least part-god, and part mortal.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The Amazons. Though technically heroic due to Hylla aiding the heroes, their treatment of men starts with assaulting those who speak and extends to dressing the men in prison uniforms — uniforms that are implied to come standard with some form of shock collar.
• Eldritch Abomination: While he disguises himself as a giant hurricane in The Last Olympian, Typhon is described in Percy Jackson's Greek Gods as an impossibly huge draconic humanoid with a hundred serpents for fingers, and a face that constantly changes to be increasingly horrifying. Just looking at him fills the gods with terror, and can drive mortals and even demigods insane.
• Everyone Is Related: Downplayed. The godly Tangled Family Tree of Classical Mythology is present here, making the demigods and magical creatures all technically family by extension since they're descended from the gods. However, it's also mentioned that the godly DNA doesn't work the same way human DNA does, so any two demigods aren't "related" unless they have the same godly parent.
• Fireball Eyeballs: Ares, Hestia and Hyperion, the latter two justified since they're related to fire and the Sun, while Ares' are described as being more like Nuclear Mushroom Eyeballs.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Every god, titan and primordial assumes a physical form that's safe to look at, in part because mortals (including demi-gods) would be burned up if they saw the gods in their full glory.
• Grouped for Your Convenience: The cabins at Camp Half-Blood each represent one of the Greek gods and goddesses. Demigods attending the camp stay in the respective cabins patronized by their immortal parents.
• God: Usually mentioned, but doesn't appear. Though apparently, Thor is miffed with Jesus for not showing up to a fight centuries back.
• Hates Their Parent: Numerous demigods side with the Titans to spite their divine parents who refused to acknowledge them and left them alone in a dangerous world filled with monsters trying to eat them around every corner.
• The Heartless: Monsters are frequently described as such. Chiron calls them "archetypes" who are born "from the chaos and barbarism that is always bubbling underneath civilization", just like the gods are the collective spirit of Western Civilization. As a result monsters can never truly be killed, as they have Resurrective Immortality and can only be sent back to Tartarus to regenerate.
• Hellhound: A race of massive, dog-like monsters from the Underworld, the children of Nyx (Greek primordial goddess of the night) and the monster Cerberus (the guard dog of the underworld, a son of the monsters Typhon and Echidna). Many appear throughout the series, including Mrs. O'Leary, who was tamed by a demigod and became friendly.
• Humans Are Morons: Or rather mortals are, thanks to the Mist. It hides supernatural events and beings from their eyes, so they see things like a demigod and a war god sword-fighting and assume they're using guns instead.
• I Gave My Word: An oath on the River Styx is magically binding. Unless you are a god apparently. Even then, breaking them brings down punishment on those they're close to.
• Immortality Promiscuity: As in the original myth, the Greek gods have kept up their promiscuous habits and it's implied numerous historical figures are their demigod children as well. It turns out the Norse gods have also been at it as well.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Manipulating the Mist can cause this effect; an unwitting person can be convinced of things that didn't happen through it. Demigods are harder to fool, but not invulnerable.
• Kid Hero: Most of the main characters are in their teens. Justified given the short lifespans of many demigods.
• Meaningful Name: Many half-bloods have names that reflect their divine parentage.
• Medicinal Cuisine: Greek and Roman demigods can consume ambrosia and nectar, the food of the gods, to quickly recover from their wounds and exhaustion. The downside is that their mortal bodies can only handle so much, and eating too much of it will cause them to combust. This is why it's reserved for emergencies.
• Modernized God: This happens to some of the gods and monsters of Classical Mythology since they have to adapt to modern North America. For example, Ares appears as a violent biker, Iris, Greek messenger goddess of rainbows^note said to "travel on rainbows" to deliver messages, has more or less abandoned the 'messenger' part of her job and now runs a small store, the Amazons run Amazon.com, and Mount Olympus is over the Empire State Building. It's implied that this has happened to most, if not all, of the gods and monsters, as they adapt to the current heart of Western Civilizations.
• Oh, My Gods!: The characters tend to exclaim based on the Greek/Roman gods in the setting.
• Our Gods Are Different: The Olympians of the Greek and Roman pantheons are shapeshifting immortal time abysses that choose to look like humans (or other physical disguises) as to not kill everyone with their true forms. They hold great power over their own domains.
• Pantheon Sitcom: Downplayed. The main characters' quests are the focus, but the more dysfunctional aspects of the gods' relationships to each other tend to play out in the background.
• Physical God: The gods and titans take physical forms, and have immense control over their demesnes.
• Reality Warper: The Gods and Titans, of course. Anyone with sufficient skill to manipulate the Mist, to a lesser extent.
• Semi-Divine: The demigods, half-human half-god.
• Short Story: Several canon ones exist and they're listed above.
• Urban Fantasy: Ancient Hellenic gods, monsters, and artifacts all exist in the 21st-century United States.
• The Worf Effect: The Athena Parthenos, shilled as an artifact of great power, barely holds back Gaea's power, and later doesn't do all that much better against the giant statue of Nero. Justified in the first case, given that Athena is a goddess and Gaea a step or two above her — even Athena herself couldn't have done much. Apollo handwaves the latter situation as a case of Gods Need Prayer Badly, and Camp Half-Blood being almost entirely deserted weakens her power.

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