Don’t Panic.
A battle’s aftermath, Dionysus isn’t a total jerk, and denial ain’t just a river in– You know what? That saying doesn’t work nearly so well in text. Anyhoo, on we go to the 19th chapter of Michael Reads Percy Jackson: The Battle of the Labyrinth…
The Council Gets Cloven
So hey, I’m still riding high on my having finished the manuscript for A Dragon at the Gate, so I’m going to just dive right on in and not keep you folks waiting any longer! One more chapter of this book to go!
The book wastes no time giving me an explanation for Grover’s battle-saving scream, and of course! Panic! Like, actual, Pan-issued, mythological panic! Geez, I should’ve figured that out. (Well, okay, I don’t know about should, but I wish I’d figured that out. Then I could look all obnoxious and smart. But then Pan was never a mythological character I’d ever looked into very much, so my knowledge of him is limited.)
So that surely is going to be all the proof that the council needs to accept Grover’s story, right? Right? AHAHAHA of course not, that’s not how the world works. (Stupid world. Work more better!) Most (all?) of the satyrs on the council still aren’t buying Grover’s bad news that Pan is gone. Silenus especially is a jerk about it. His denial is, as I said before, quite understandable, but hopefully he’ll come around. I did find myself at least wishing for more of a supported argument from him, even based on denial as such a thing would be. It would’ve been interesting to see how he was justifying all of that denial to himself in the face of eye-witness accounts. But oh well. I’m just glad at least that Dionysus put a stop to the whole “Grover is a traitor” business. I also liked that Grover and Pals are taking the protection gig quite literally and wasting no time getting out there to actively protect specific places.
The minor gods are going over to the Titans’ side? There’s a twist I hadn’t actually expected, though I can’t say as I blame them. The Olympian side doesn’t hardly seem to have done jack against Kronos’s forces, aside from standing aside and letting their half-blood kids do all the work.
So Nico still doesn’t feel welcome at camp. Regardless of how Hades is received on Olympus, I still think that Nico himself is working rather hard on making his own lack of welcome into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wish he’d realize that, but oh well. I am curious to know more about the unanswered questions of his parentage and early childhood support that he’s off to try to learn.
As I mentioned, I did like Dionysus quite a bit in this chapter. I mean, sure, he’s still an insufferable crank, but between his treatment of the council and his helping out Chris, he’s starting to grow on me.
“I was beginning to feel better, so I thought I would talk with you a bit. You always manage to annoy me.” -Dionysus
Just a little, mind you.
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