Around us rose a meager cluster of downtown high-rises - stacks of stone and glass like layered wedges of black and white licorice. Indiana was flat country - highways crisscrossing scrubby brown plains, shadows of winter clouds floating above urban sprawl. “Apollo, just try, will you? Does this look like the city you dreamed about or not?” “Guys, cool it.” Leo patted the dragon’s neck. “That doesn’t mean I can pinpoint her location with my mind! Zeus has revoked my access to GPS!” Just hearing Meg’s name gave me a twinge of pain. “You said your friend Meg would be here.” “You’re the one who’s been having visions,” Calypso reminded me. “Why is it my job to sense things? Just because I used to be a god of prophecy - ” Leo glanced back, his face streaked with soot. I had a flashback to the time I installed a life-size statue of the muse Calliope on my sun chariot and the extra weight of the hood ornament made me nosedive into China and create the Gobi Desert. Despite my New York State junior driver’s license, Leo Valdez didn’t trust me to operate his aerial bronze steed!įestus’ claws scrabbled for a hold on the green copper dome, which was much too small for a dragon his size.
It wasn’t enough that I had to toil upon the earth doing (ugh) heroic quests until I could find a way back into my father’s good graces, or that I had a case of acne which simply would not respond to over-the-counter zit medicine. Oh, the indignities I had suffered since Zeus stripped me of my divine powers! It wasn’t enough that I was now a sixteen-year-old mortal with the ghastly alias Lester Papadopoulos. I, the most important passenger, the youth who had once been the glorious god Apollo, was forced to sit in the back of the dragon. Cold wind blew her chestnut hair into my face, making me blink and spit. “Could we please get to the ground? Gently this time?”įor a formerly immortal sorceress who once controlled air spirits, Calypso was not a fan of flying. No blowtorching public monuments!”īehind him on the dragon’s spine, Calypso gripped Festus’ scales for balance. “Whoa, buddy!” Leo Valdez pulled the dragon’s reins. He landed on the cupola of the Indiana Statehouse, flapped his metallic wings, and blew a cone of fire that incinerated the state flag right off the flagpole. Yet for some reason, Festus decided he did not like Indiana. Ohio he tolerated, even after our encounter with Potina, the Roman goddess of childhood drinks, who pursued us in the form of a giant red pitcher emblazoned with a smiley face.
Pennsylvania he seemed to enjoy, despite our battle with the Cyclopes of Pittsburgh. We’d been traveling west for six weeks, and Festus had never shown such hostility toward a state. When our dragon declared war on Indiana, I knew it was going to be a bad day. In this opening excerpt from the new book, Lester and his friends have landed in Indiana, where there is something definitely weird about the cheery locals. “Writing from the point-of-view of an ex-god is such a fun challenge, especially in The Dark Prophecy, where Apollo has to face a Roman emperor with a very personal vendetta to settle." “Apollo has quickly become one of my favorite characters,” Riordan tells USA TODAY. His quest takes him and several pals (including a robotic dragon named Festus) on a journey across America to find the most dangerous Oracle from ancient times. In The Dark Prophecy, Lester tries to reclaim his place on Mount Olympus by restoring several Oracles that have gone dark. 2 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list in May, Lester found help dealing with his new reality at Camp Half-Blood of Percy Jackson fame. In the first book, The Hidden Oracle, which hit No. It will be published on May 2 by Disney-Hyperion, and USA TODAY has a first look at the jacket and an exclusive excerpt below.
#The dark prophecy riordan series
Now Lester/Apollo is back in The Dark Prophecy, The Trials of Apollo, the second book about Roman demigods in a five-book series for young readers by best-selling author Rick Riordan. In fact, his Greek surname hints at his true identity: he’s Apollo, son of the Greek god Zeus, cast down to Earth as a mere mortal as punishment by his really annoyed dad. Lester Papadopoulos is a typical teenage boy in many ways, but he’s no ordinary 16-year-old.
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