Review on Beyond the Odyssey

 

With two Chaos Stones in his possession, Elliot is halfway to recovering them all. However, Elliot’s home life is becoming more complicated. His father has returned, and even with the extra help, Elliot’s mother's condition seems to be worsening. However, there may be something that can save her, a potion that is said to cure any illness. If Elliot wants to find it, he must go further than he has ever been before. Elliot must not only find the third Chaos Stone, but find the potion that will save his mum and Hermes. 

I can’t believe I’m already on book three! I’ve loved this series and this book was no exception. The stakes are higher than ever before, and on top of finding the third Chaos Stone, Elliot must also find Panacea’s Potion. Something I immediately loved was that we got to see more mythological places in this book. For the most part, Elliot has remained in the mortal world, and although he has had to retrieve chaos stones from highly protected places such as The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and The Natural History Museum, they have all been close to where he lives and he was able to go back home at the end of the day. However, Elliot’s search takes him to far more distant places this time, including an island inhabited by the Cyclops, deep under the sea and on a perilous journey across the ocean. I found this book more exciting than the previous two, and I loved that we were being taken away from reality a little more.

 Despite the book heading deeper into mythology, Elliot still faces the very real problem of his mothers declining health. This book seemed to face it more head on, and confirms our suspicions that Josie is suffering from early onset dementia. It was heartbreaking to see things from Josie’s point of view, and how frustrating and confusing everything was for her. People suffering from dementia often retain their long term memory longer than their short term memory, so it was particularly heartbreaking when she was moved to the hospital where nothing was familiar to her and she started to lose herself even more. It was horrible to see Elliot go through this at such a young age, especially when his grief took over to the point he started lashing out at his friends who were just trying to help. I loved how understanding the God’s were, and how they didn’t take his outbursts personally and continued to try to help him.

 The one thing I was disappointed in was the lack of my favourite character, Hermes. Even though him being in a coma was one of the main things that drove the plot, I missed him being around, and I especially missed the brotherly bond between him and Elliot. Hermes seems like the closest thing to a sibling that Elliot has, and I missed their antics and Hermes’ fun personality. I’m hoping the last book has lots of Hermes content to make up for it! 

 There were some interesting new characters in this book, but my favourite has to be Gorgy, Virgo’s pet baby gorgon. Gorgy was constantly getting into mischief, and although he’s tiny and adorable, he actually had some pretty impressive powers of his own that saved Virgo on more than one occasions! I loved that although everyone initially disliked Gorgy, they came to accept him as part of their gang. Really he made me want a pet gorgon of my own!

 I have to talk a little about Virgo, who has to make some pretty tough decisions in this book. Virgo wants nothing more than to be accepted back onto the Zodiac Council and get her kardia back, and will do anything to get what she wants, leading her to make some bad choices, including voting to lock away all the elementals. Virgo eventually realises what she did was wrong, and does her best to fix things. I loved that although Virgo was initially selfish, she came to realise that the freedom of the elementals was more important than her own wants.

 I’m usually good at guessing plot twists, but there was one that came towards the end of the book that I just wasn’t expecting at all! I’m not going to give it away, but it completely surprised me, but at the same time seemed so obvious when it was revealed. There was obviously something strange going on, but I just didn’t pick up on it until the end where it made perfect sense. I love it when a book is able to take me by surprise like that as it rarely happens.

 I didn’t enjoy the book quite as much as the first two just because of Hermes’ not being around, but I did enjoy meeting so many new characters and seeing all the new places. As Hermes is finally back in action, I’m looking forward to reading the final book in the series and seeing how everything ends for Elliot and his friends.