The House of Hades

House of Hades
Alex Engler

This is the fourth book in the heroes of olympus series. At the end of book three, Percy and Annabeth had just finished fighting Arachne but had fallen into a pit that led down to Tartarus. On the other hand, Gaea is rising and is planning to wreck chaos onto the world. To stop her the heroes must close the doors of death and meet her for battle in Athens, the ancient holy lands, in which no demigod is supposed to venture to. This wasn’t their only problem, they also have angered the Roman demigod camp and they are now coming to wage war on the Greek camp and destroy them.
As Percy and Annabeth fell, they felt like they had fallen for hours. Finally you could hear sounds of crying souls and see an opening into a cavern. Were they going to crash and die into the land of Tartarus? Not at all, Percy being a son of Poseidon sensed a river near by and called it to them and had it catch them so they wouldn’t die on impact. They had officially entered the horrifying land of Tartarus. As they looked around they could barely comprehend what they were seeing. It was a large carvern that never seemed to end with a red sky and swirling clouds along with jagged rocks for the land.
Percy and Annabeth wandered about trying to figure a way out of there because they were both injured and exhausted. Pretty soon they figured out that the river of fire was used in the fields of punishment to keep the souls just alive to have them fulfill their punishment. So they drank from the river. It was like eating a ghost chile which is one of the hottest chiles on earth. But it did provide them relief from their injuries for the meantime. They kept on their journey and tried to find the doors of death. Even when faced with monsters that almost killed Percy, they kept on moving through Tartarus trying to stop Gaea from rising and get home to their friends.
Back on earth Percy and Annabeth’s friends were in a panic that their friends had been taken to Tartarus. They ran around on their ship just trying to survive. They had already been attacked by so many monsters that they all had lost count. What were they going to do? They repaired the ship as best as they could and continued on their journey assuming that they could reach the doors of death on the mortal side. Along the way a daughter of Pluto was given a vision of how she would help the quest to save Percy and Annabeth. She would have to learn how to control the Mist, which was what shielded the mortals from seeing the monsters and weapons of the demigods on earth.
Will Percy and Annabeth get out of Tartarus alive and make it home in time to help stop Gaea from rising and save Camp Half-blood from the Romans? Will Leo and the rest of the gang be able to make it to the ancient lands and close the doors of death in time to stop Gaea? I look forward to figuring out these answers.