Percy Jackson and The Battle of the Labyrinth is the fourth installment in the Percy Jackson series and is written by Rick Riordan. In this book, Percy (despite being the narrator) takes a bit of a backseat in the story and gives the lead to Annabeth, who leads her friends to find the inventor of the mythical Labyrinth when they discover its role in a plan led by Kronos’s army to destroy Camp Half-Blood. By making Annabeth the lead character, Riordan explores her character more, as well as emphasizing Annabeth’s relationship with Percy.
Just like the three previous books in the series, I love this book too. This book definitely has the best plot in the series so far, and the parts where Percy and his friends are in the Labyrinth were great. In this book, one of the main villains was a maze. Not a talking maze or a sentient maze, but a regular, magical, stone maze. Obviously, it would be very difficult for most authors to make the main villain of their story a non-living place, but Riordan somehow makes it work. In this book, the Labyrinth is described in such a way that the reader can feel claustrophobic at certain points and tense at all times. However, that doesn’t mean that the story isn’t funny, because there is still some of that classic Percy Jackson humor in this book. While all the previous books were fun and great, they’ve felt as if they’re a bit formulaic. This book takes that general formula and disregards it completely, creating a very original story that is definitely the best in the series so far.